It is customary to send out, each year, detachments of recruits to the different departments of the West. These men are enlisted and collected at the depots within the States; and, whenever a sufficient force is collected to fill up the requisitions, they are dispatched, at the proper seasons, to their respective regiments. Those intended for New Mexico set out during the summer months. They are rarely sent at the same time, or as the same command of men. These recruits are a hard set to manage, especially when traveling through the States, where they are exposed to temptation. On arriving at the commencement of their hardships, on the plains, it is usually found that many have deserted, and also that many might have done so with benefit to the government. Military service with recruits, and the same with old soldiers, are two different things. With the former, officers are obliged to command, threaten and punish, to accomplish in one day, what the latter would perform without much trouble in half the time. Recruits know little or nothing about marching or camp duty; and, in taking care of them, an officer has his hands full. Even the most minute items have to be looked to; for example, they are men rarely used to fire-arms, being, for the most part, foreigners by birth, and are just as apt to load a gun with the ball of the cartridge first down, as with the powder. Old soldiers look upon these new comers as verdant in the extreme, and the pranks they often play upon them are very humorous. With patient discipline, they become serviceable men, and are an honor to the standard which they carry; and, what appears to be the strangest fact of all, frequently the poorest looking recruit may make the best soldier. This is a fair picture of the men Capt. Ewell was commanding.