Having unsaddled our tired animals and turned them loose to graze for the night, we placed our baggage under the cover of a small tent, and, taking our seats by the huge camp fire, made known as far as was expedient our business.  We soon ascertained that we had ridden the entire day (about 40 miles) directly out of our course to Nappa Valley and Sonoma, and that the Indian’s information was all wrong.  We were now near the shore of a large lake, called the Laguna by Californians, some fifty or sixty miles in length, which lake is situated about sixty or seventy miles north of the Bay of San Francisco; consequently, to-morrow we shall be compelled to retrace our steps and find the trail that leads from Harriett’s house to Nappa, which escaped us this morning.  We received such directions, however, from Mr. Greenwood, that we could not fail to find it.

We found in the camp, much to our gratification after a long fast, an abundance of fat grisly bear-meat and the most delicious and tender deer-meat.  The camp looked like a butcher’s stall.  The pot filled with bear-flesh was boiled again and again, and the choice pieces of the tender venison were roasting, and disappearing with singular rapidity for a long time.  Bread there was none of course.  Such a delicacy is unknown to the mountain trappers, nor is it much desired by them.

The hunting party consisted of Mr. Greenwood, Mr. Turner, Mr. Adams, and three sons of Mr. G., one grown, and the other two boys 10 or 12 years of age, half-bred Indians, the mother being a Crow.  One of these boys is named “Governor Boggs,” after ex-governor Boggs of Missouri, an old friend of the father.  Mr. Greenwood, or “Old Greenwood,” as he is familiarly called, according to his own statement, is 83 years of age, and has been a mountain trapper between 40 and 50 years.  He lived among the Crow Indians, where he married his wife, between thirty and forty years.  He is about six feet in height, raw-boned and spare in flesh, but muscular, and, notwithstanding his old age, walks with all the erectness and elasticity of youth.  His dress was of tanned buckskin, and from its appearance one would suppose its antiquity to be nearly equal to the age of its wearer.  It had probably never been off his body since he first put it on.  “I am,” said he, “an old man—­eighty-three years—­it is a long time to live;—­eighty-three years last—.  I have seen all the Injun varmints of the Rocky Mountains,—­have fout them—­lived with them.  I have many children—­I don’t know how many, they are scattered; but my wife was a Crow.  The Crows are a brave nation,—­the bravest of all the Injuns; they fight like the white man; they don’t kill you in the dark like the Black-foot varmint, and then take your scalp and run, the cowardly reptiles.  Eighty-three years last——­; and yet old Greenwood could handle the rifle as well as the best on ’em, but for this infernal humour in my eyes, caught three years ago in bringing the