Note 31:d — IV. THE MARCH OF THE BATTALION FROM FORT LEAVENWORTH.

Later, Col. Cooke again complains of his teams, in the following passage: "I have brought road tools and have determined to take through my wagons; but the experiment is not a fair one, as the mules are broken down at the outset. The only good ones, about twenty, which I bought near Albuquerque, were taken for the express for Fremont's mail—the General's order requiring the twenty-one best in Santa Fe." (Cooke's Conquest, p. 93). To this Sergeant Tyler adds: "It is but justice to the Colonel to state here that with few exceptions, the mule and ox teams used from Santa Fe to California were the same worn out and broken down animals that we had driven all the way from Council Bluffs and Fort Leavenworth; indeed, some of them had been driven all the way from Nauvoo, the same season." (Tyler's Battalion, p. 175).