350 volunteers in addition to those already under his command.[41]  A week later the Alexander brought from the United States thirty more recruits for the army. "We have not heard," declared the Galvestonian, "whether they were recruited out of the charity hospital or the calaboose -- perhaps neither"; yet, the Telegraph and Texas Register[42]  was quick to defend them, declaring that it had "not seen a finer set of troops in Texas."

Heading west from Houston around July 3 with his company, Ross received at the Navidad reports from San Antonio that a force of Mexicans and Indians was concentrating between the Nueces and the Río Grande; the reports expressed fear that this force might descend upon Béxar. Ross promptly advanced toward San Antonio reaching that city late in August with sixty-five men.[43]  He was at Gonzales the first week in September, and from there apparently went to Goliad. Claiming now that he had been given discretionary powers, he interpreted his orders liberally, and assumed that the best way to protect the western frontier was to cross the Río Grande and levy war upon the authority responsible for the banditti raids upon Texas.[44]  Therefore, he proceeded to cast his lot with Canales, meeting him at the Agua Dulce, near San Patricio, sixty miles southwest of La Bahía.

Several days after Ross left Houston, Colonel Henry W. Karnes arrived in the city on Saturday, July 6, from San Antonio[45]  to see to the recruiting of his frontier regiment. Captain William F. Wilson raised a company of Mounted Volunteers at Galveston for Karnes' regiment.[46]  The fitting out of Ross' company and the enlistment of volunteers to strengthen Karnes' unit must have given some consolation at Houston to the permanent and more stable residents of the place, for at the end of the year we find Dr. Ashbel Smith, an important speculator in Texas real estate, writing that "Business is become very brisk in Houston, and is much greater than any previous year. The