I knew that we had been travelling out of our course all day, and it was now three o’clock, P.M.  Rain and mist had succeeded each other, and the sun was hidden from us by dark and threatening masses of clouds.  We had no compass with us, and could not determine the course to Nappa Valley or Sonoma.  Believing that the Indian would have some knowledge of the latter place, we made him comprehend that we wished to go there, and inquired the route.  He pointed in a direction which he signified would take us to Sonoma.  We pointed in another course, which it seemed to us was the right one.  But he persisted in asserting that he was right.  After some further talk, for the shirt on my back he promised to guide us, and, placing a ragged skin on one of our horses, he mounted the animal and led the way over the next range of hills.  The rain soon poured down so hard upon the poor fellow’s bare skin, that he begged permission to return, to which we would not consent; but, out of compassion to him, I took off my over-coat, with which he covered his swarthy hide, and seemed highly delighted with the shelter from the pitiless storm it afforded him, or with the supposition that I intended to present it to him.

Crossing several elevated and rocky hills, just before sunset, we had a view of a large timbered valley and a sheet of water, the extent of which we could not compass with the eye, on account of the thickness of the atmosphere.  When we came in sight of the water, the Indian uttered various exclamations of pleasure; and, although I had felt but little faith in him as a pilot from the first, I began now to think that we were approaching the Bay of San Francisco.  Descending into the valley, we travelled along a small stream two or three miles, and were continuing on in the twilight, when we heard the tinkling of a cow-bell on the opposite side of the stream.  Certain, from this sound, that there must be an encampment near, I halted and hallooed at the top of my voice.  The halloo called forth a similar response, with an interrogation in English, “Who the d——­l are you—­Spaniards or Americans?” “Americans.”  “Show yourselves, then, d——­n you, and let us see the colour of your hide,” was the answer.

“Tell us where we can cross the stream, and you shall soon see us,” was our reply.

“Ride back and follow the sound of my voice, and be d——­d to you, and you can cross the stream with a deer’s jump.”

Accordingly, following the sound of the voice of this rough colloquist, who shouted repeatedly, we rode back in the dark several hundred yards, and, plunging into the stream, the channel of which was deep, we gained the other side, where we found three men standing ready to receive us.  We soon discovered them to be a party of professional hunters, or trappers, at the head of which was Mr. Greenwood, a famed mountaineer, commonly known as “Old Greenwood.”  They invited us to their camp, situated across a small opening in the timber about half a mile distant.