sometimes a brace of pistols.  These, with the rifle and holster-pistols, are the arms carried by officers and privates.  A single bugle (and a sorry one it is) composes the band.  Many an embryo Napoleon, in his own conceit, whose martial spirit has been excited to flaming intensity of heat by the peacock-plumage and gaudy trappings of our militia companies, when marching through the streets to the sound of drum, fife, and brass band, if he could have looked upon us, and then consulted the state of the military thermometer within him, would probably have discovered that the mercury of his heroism had fallen several degrees below zero.  He might even have desired that we should not come

    “Between the wind and his nobility.”

War, stripped of its pageantry, possesses but few of the attractions with which poetry and painting have embellished it.  The following is a list of the officers composing the California Battalion:—­Lieut.-colonel J.G.  Fremont, commanding; A.H.  Gillespie, major; P.B.  Reading, paymaster; H. King, commissary; J.R.  Snyder, quartermaster, since appointed a land-surveyor by Colonel Mason; Wm. H. Russell, ordnance officer; T. Talbot, lieutenant and adjutant; J.J.  Myers, sergeant-major, appointed lieutenant in January, 1847.

Company A.—­Richard Owens, captain; Wm. N. Loker, 1st lieutenant, appointed adjutant, Feb. 10th, 1847; B.M.  Hudspeth, 2d lieutenant, appointed captain, Feb. 1847, Wm. Findlay, 2d lieutenant, appointed captain, Feb. 1847.

Company B.—­Henry Ford, captain; Andrew Copeland, 1st lieutenant.

Company C.—­Granville P. Swift, captain; Wm. Baldridge, 1st lieutenant; Wm. Hartgrove, 2d do.

Company D.—­John Sears, captain; Wm. Bradshaw, 1st lieutenant.

Company E.—­John Grigsby, captain; Archibald Jesse, 1st lieutenant.

Company F.—­L.W.  Hastings, captain (author of a work on California); Wornbough, 1st lieutenant; J.M.  Hudspeth, 2d do.

Company G.—­Thompson, captain; Davis 1st lieutenant; Rock, 2d do.

Company H.—­R.T.  Jacobs, captain; Edwin Bryant, 1st lieutenant (afterwards alcalde at San Francisco); Geo. M. Lippincott, 2d do., of New York.

Artillery Company.—­Louis McLane, captain (afterwards major); John.  K. Wilson, 1st lieutenant, appointed captain in January, 1847; Wm. Blackburn, 2d do. (now alcalde of Santa Cruz).

Officers on detached Service and doing Duty at the South.—­S.  Hensley, captain; S. Gibson, do. (lanced through the body at San Pascual); Miguel Pedrorena, do., Spaniard (appointed by Stockton); Stgo.  Arguello, do., Californian (appointed by do.); Bell, do. (appointed by do.), old resident of California (Los Angeles); H. Rhenshaw, 1st lieutenant, (appointed by do.); A. Godey, do. (appointed by do.); Jas. Barton, do. (appointed by do.); L. Arguello, do., Californian (appointed by do.).