HDQRS. DETACH. FIRST Regiment INFTY. CALIFORNIA VOLS.,
Camp Wright, October 31, 1861.

[Colonel JAMES H. CARLETON,

First California Volunteers, Commanding:]

COLONEL: I have detained your expressman returning from Fort Yuma twenty-four hours to send by him to you the monthly returns of this post camp. I have reviewed, inspected, and mustered the command to-day, and forward by messenger all the returns I can furnish with the limited number of blanks I have. I hope that you will find them correct. I have no one here who is well posted in making out returns, and errors may have occurred. I hope that you will forward to me blanks of every description that I will require, also general orders, all of which I am much in want of. The command is getting along very well. The men are improving in their drill very fast. I have been for several days drilling in skirmishing, which is a change, and the command enter into it with much spirit. Your instructions in reference to recitations I have not been able to pay as much attention to as I would wish, because a great deal of my time has beent aken up with getting off Lieutenant-Colonel West's command, which left here on successive days, also Captain Roberts' company for San Diego. Captain Roberts' company left here on the 28th instant, and the day after I received your orders to send him on without delay I wrote to you that I was much in want of some one that I could trust who spoke the language (Spanish) of this neighborhood. If I could be furnished with some one to interpret for me it would be to the interest of the service. I find that every one here is suspicious of one another, and all, without one exception, have but one idea, and that is to make something out of the Government. Carrillo raised the price of hay from 1 to 4 cents per pound as soon as he arrived here; or rather, left orders to do it after he left with Colonel West. I refused to buy from him at that price, and purchased from Warner four tons, at $40 per ton, and I think can get more at the same price. The worst feature in the whole affair was his major-domo telling me that hay or barley for my own horses would cost me nothing. He may or may not have given such instructions to him, but, nvertheless, it was done. I will have no trouble about barley or hay either. The conbination have quarreled among themselves, and are willing to seell at fair prices. In reference to beef, Mr. Wallace has no copy of his contract, and I have none either, and cnanot tellw hether his contract was for twenty days or for twenty issuing days, and as the latter closes out his stock I have given him the benefit of the doubt. I have had a number of applications to furnish me with beef, and have had them make them in writing. They rull all the way from 8 1/2 cents per pound to 6 cents to deliver at the camp at any point from Oak Grove, including the boundaries of Warner's ranch. My lowest bid is from Francisco O'Campo. I had it reported to me on the evening of the 28th after dark that a party of from sixteen to twenty men were encamped in the valley at Agua Caliente, all mounted. I sent out Captain Greene with thirty men to hem them in, whilst Lieutenant Hargrave, with twenty men, accompanied by Surgeon Prentiss and a guide, crossed above them to close in on them and capture them, but, march, to my disappointment, and the command also, it turned out to be a false alarm. They had to return without their game. Some loose horses had been roaming around, which alarmed my informant, and it was easy to imagine them mounted.