or less than a
first-rate horse, and then the other, which signified a good large
mule. I closed by saying that I was ready to exchange presents whenever
it suited his convenience.

They looked at each other for some time without speaking, but finally
got up and walked away, and I was not troubled with them again.

INDIAN FIGHTING.

The military system, as taught and practiced in our army up to the time
of the Mexican war, was, without doubt, efficient and well adapted to
the art of war among civilized nations. This system was designed for
the operations of armies acting in populated districts, furnishing
ample resources, and against an enemy who was tangible, and made use of
a similar system.

The vast expanse of desert territory that has been annexed to our
domain within the last few years is peopled by numerous tribes of
marauding and erratic savages, who are mounted upon fleet and hardy
horses, making war the business and pastime of their lives, and
acknowledging none of the ameliorating conventionalities of civilized
warfare. Their tactics are such as to render the old system almost
wholly impotent.

To act against an enemy who is here to-day and there to-morrow; who at
one time stampedes a herd of mules upon the head waters of the
Arkansas, and when next heard from is in the very heart of the
populated districts of Mexico, laying waste haciendas, and carrying
devastation, rapine, and murder in his steps; who is every where
without being any where; who assembles at the moment of combat, and
vanishes whenever fortune turns against him; who leaves his women and
children far distant from the theatre of hostilities, and has neither
towns or magazines to defend, nor lines of retreat to cover; who
derives his commissariat from the country he operates in, and is not
encumbered with baggage-wagons or pack-trains; who comes into action
only when it suits his purposes, and never without the advantage of
numbers or position--with such an enemy the strategic science of
civilized nations loses much of its importance, and finds but rarely,
and only in peculiar localities, an opportunity to be put in practice.

Our little army, scattered as it has been over the vast area of our
possessions, in small garrisons of one or two companies each, has
seldom been in a situation to act successfully on the offensive against
large numbers of these marauders, and has often been condemned to hold
itself almost exclusively upon the de