I took one soldier with me, Private Barnes, with four horses, two of which we rode, and the other two we drove ahead.  The first day we reached Gilroy’s and camped by a stream near three or four adobe-huts known as Gilroy’s ranch.  The next day we passed Murphy’s, San Jose, and Santa Clara Mission, camping some four miles beyond, where a kind of hole had been dug in the ground for water.  The whole of this distance, now so beautifully improved and settled, was then scarcely occupied, except by poor ranches producing horses and cattle.  The pueblo of San Jose was a string of low adobe-houses festooned with red peppers and garlic; and the Mission of Santa Clara was a dilapidated concern, with its church and orchard.  The long line of poplar-trees lining the road from San Jose to Santa Clara bespoke a former period when the priests had ruled the land.  Just about dark I was lying on the ground near the well, and my soldier Barnes had watered our horses and picketed them to grass, when we heard a horse crushing his way through the high mustard-bushes which filled the plain, and soon a man came to us to inquire if we had seen a saddle-horse pass up the road.  We explained to him what we had heard, and he went off in pursuit of his horse.  Before dark he came back unsuccessful, and gave his name as Bidwell, the same gentleman who has since been a member of Congress, who is married to Miss Kennedy, of Washington City, and now lives in princely style at Chico, California.

He explained that he was a surveyor, and had been in the lower country engaged in surveying land; that the horse had escaped him with his saddle-bags containing all his notes and papers, and some six hundred dollars in money, all the money he had earned.  He spent the night with us on the ground, and the next morning we left him there to continue the search for his horse, and I afterward heard that he had found his saddle-bags all right, but never recovered the horse.  The next day toward night we approached the Mission of San Francisco, and the village of Yerba Buena, tired and weary—­the wind as usual blowing a perfect hurricane, and a more desolate region it was impossible to conceive of.  Leaving Barnes to work his way into the town as best he could with the tired animals, I took the freshest horse and rode forward.  I fell in with Lieutenant Fabius Stanley, United States Navy, and we rode into Yerba Buena together about an hour before sundown, there being nothing but a path from the Mission into the town, deep and heavy with drift-sand.  My horse could hardly drag one foot after the other when we reached the old Hudson Bay Company’s house, which was then the store of Howard and Mellus.  There I learned where Captain Folsom, the quartermaster, was to be found.  He was staying with a family of the name of Grimes, who had a small horse back of Howard’s store, which must have been near where Sacramento Street now crosses Kearney.  Folsom was a classmate of mine, had