=Hardship of Excessive Toil.=--One cause of so many men breaking down in health was the excessive toil at the wagons through the sand stretches of the road, began early in the march from Santa Fe--while yet in the valley of the Rio del Norte, in fact, and continuing along the whole route to and through the California desert lying between the Colorado and the coast range of mountains. "Our course now lay down the Rio del Norte [The Rio Grande]," says Sergeant Tyler. "We found the roads extremely sandy in many places, and the men while carrying blankets, knapsacks, cartridge boxes (each containing thirty-six rounds of ammunition), and muskets on their backs, and living on short rations, had to pull at long ropes to aid the teams. The deep sand alone, without any load was enough to wear out both man and beast." Later he remarks: "We had to leave the river for a time, and have twenty men to each wagon with long ropes to help the teams pull the wagons over the sand hills. The commander perched himself on one of the hills, like a hawk on a fence post, sending down his orders with the sharpness of--well, to the Battalion, it is enough to say--Colonel Cooke." One of the Battalion celebrates this incident of the march in doggerel verse of which two stanzas follow: "Our hardships reach their rough extremes, When valiant men are roped with teams, Hour after hour, and day by day, To wear our strength and lives away. * * * * * "We see some twenty men or more With empty stomachs and foot sore, Bound to one wagon plodding on Through sand, beneath a burning sun."[36:b] In the trackless part of the Battalion's march through the sand stretches, in addition to pulling at the wagons, companies marched in double-single file, in each other's footsteps, to make tracks for the wagon wheels. =Irrigation in New Mexico.=--It was while at Santa Fe, and while passing down the Rio del Norte, that the Battalion saw, for the first time, irrigation in operation. Tyler thus describes it: "Canals for irrigation purposes were found all along the banks of the river. Some of them several miles in length. They conveyed water to the farms, or as they were called in that country, ranchos. There being little or no rain during the growing season, the water was made to flow over the ground until it was sufficiently saturated, and then shut off until needed again for the same purpose." =March Down the Rio Grande.=--As the command in its southward movement down the Rio Grande reached the point where General Kearny left the valley for a direct march westward--228 miles south of Santa Fe--and where, too, Kearny had abandoned his wagons; the guides declared it impossible to follow the Gila route proper with the wagons; and hence a circuit to the south through Sonora via Janos and Fronteras was proposed and determined upon at a council of officers.