As he rode, the fog receded slowly.  He left the chaparral and rode by green marshes cut with sloughs and stained with vivid patches of orange.  The frogs in the tules chanted their hoarse matins.  Through brush-covered plains once more, with sparsely wooded hills in the distance, and again the tules, the marsh, the patches of orange.  He rode through a field of mustard; the pale yellow petals brushed his dark face, the delicate green leaves won his eyes from the hot glare of the ascending sun, the slender stalks, rebounding, smote his horse’s flanks.  He climbed hills to avoid the wide marshes, and descended into willow groves and fields of daisies.  Before noon he was in the San Juan Mountains, thick with sturdy oaks, bending their heads before the madrono, that belle of the forest, with her robes of scarlet and her crown of bronze.  The yellow lilies clung to her skirts, and the buckeye flung his flowers at her feet.  The last redwoods were there, piercing the blue air with their thin inflexible arms, gray as a dusty band of friars.  Out by the willows, whereunder crept the sluggish river, then between the hills curving about the valley of San Juan Bautista.

At no time is California so beautiful as in the month of June.  De la Vega’s wild spirit and savage purpose were dormant for the moment as he rode down the valley toward the mission.  The hills were like gold, like mammoth fawns veiled with violet mist, like rich tan velvet.  Afar, bare blue steeps were pink in their chasms, brown on their spurs.  The dark yellow fields were as if thick with gold-dust; the pale mustard was a waving yellow sea.  Not a tree marred the smooth hills.  The earth sent forth a perfume of its own.  Below the plateau from which rose the white walls of the mission was a wide field of bright green corn rising against the blue sky.

The padres in their brown hooded robes came out upon the long corridor of the mission and welcomed the traveller.  Their lands had gone from them, their mission was crumbling, but the spirit of hospitality lingered there still.  They laid meat and fruit and drink on a table beneath the arches, then sat about him and asked him eagerly for news of the day.  Was it true that the United States of America were at war with Mexico, or about to be?  True that their beloved flag might fall, and the stars and stripes of an insolent invader rise above the fort of Monterey?

De la Vega recounted the meagre and conflicting rumours which had reached California, but, not being a prophet, could not tell them that they would be the first to see the red-white-and-blue fluttering on the mountain before them.  He refused to rest more than an hour, but mounted the fresh horse the padres gave him and went his way, riding hard and relentlessly, like all Californians.