The City of the Saints, and Across the Rocky Mountains to California

by Sir Richard Francis Burton

Department of the East.—The country east of the Mississippi River; head-quarters at Troy, N. Y.

Department of the West.—The country west of the Mississippi River, and east of the Rocky Mountains, except that portion included within the limits of the departments of Texas and New Mexico; head-quarters at St. Louis, Mo.

Department of Texas.—The State of Texas, and the territory north of it to the boundaries of New Mexico, Kansas, and Arkansas, and the Arkansas River, including Fort Smith. Fort Bliss, in Texas, is temporarily attached to the department of New Mexico; head-quarters at San Antonio, Texas.

Department of New Mexico.—The Territory of New Mexico; head-quarters at Santa Fé, New Mexico.

Department of Utah.—The Territory of Utah, except that portion of it lying west of the 117th degree of west longitude; head-quarters, Camp Floyd, U. T.

Department of the Pacific.—The country west of the Rocky Mountains, except those portions of it included within the limits of the departments of Utah and New Mexico, and the district of Oregon; head-quarters at San Francisco, California.

District of Oregon.—The Territory of Washington and the State of Oregon, excepting the Rogue River and Umpqua districts in Oregon; head-quarters at Fort Vancouver, Washington Territory.

OUTPOST SYSTEMS.We all prepared for the “gravity of the situation” by discharging and reloading our weapons, and bade adieu, about 9 30 A.M., to Fort Kearney. Before dismissing the subject of forts, I am disposed to make some invidious remarks upon the army system of outposts in America.

The War Department of the United States has maintained the same system which the British, much to their loss—I need scarcely trouble the reader with a list of evils done to the soldier by outpost duty—adopted and pertinaciously kept up for so long a time in India; nay, even maintain to the present day, despite the imminent danger of mutiny. With the Anglo-Scandinavian race, the hate of centralization in civil policy extends to military organization, of which it should be the vital principle. The French, gifted with instinct for war, and being troubled with scant prejudice against concentration, civil as well as military, soon abandoned, when they found its futility, the idea of defending their Algerian frontier by extended lines, block-houses, and feeble intrenched posts. They wisely established, at the centres of action, depôts, magazines, and all the requisites for supporting large bodies of men, making them pivots for expeditionary columns, which by good military roads could be thrown in overwhelming numbers, in the best health and in the highest discipline, wherever an attack or an insurrectionary movement required crushing.

The necessity of so doing has long occurred to the American government, in whose service at present “a regiment is stationed to-day on the borders of tropical Mexico; to-morrow, the war-whoop, borne on a gale from the northwest, compels its presence to the frozen latitudes of Puget’s Sound.” The objections to altering their present highly objectionable system are two: the first is a civil consideration, the second a military one.