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after our safe arrival in San Diego, worn-out and suffering from nearly two years' wandering upon the uninhabited deserts of Texas, Arizona, northern Sonora, and a portion of New Mexico, I received a warm, cordial and brotherly letter from the Hon. Jere Clemens, Senator from Alabama, who had been my Lieutenant-Colonel during a portion of the Mexican war, after the death of Col. Ransom, and the capture of Chapultepec, which letter informed me that although the appropriation for the Boundary Commission had passed Congress, yet John B. Weller, Senator from California, had managed to have inserted in it a proviso which would have the effect of rendering that appropriation unavailable, and that the probabilities were we would be disbanded in the deserts, without money, or the means of return to our friends and home at the East. He also advised me to leave the Commission, as we had arrived within the precincts of civilization, and pursue some other avocation. The advice and arguments of my former superior, whose kindness and remembrance had followed me throughout our toilsome and dangerous career, convinced my mind