been entered into with parties in New York and New Orleans for a monthly line of steamers from those cities to California, via Panama.  Lieutenant-Colonel Burton had come up from Lower California, and, as captain of the Third Artillery, he was assigned to command Company F, Third Artillery, at Monterey.  Captain Warner remained at Sacramento, surveying; and Halleck, Murray, Ord, and I, boarded with Dona Augustias.  The season was unusually rainy and severe, but we passed the time with the usual round of dances and parties.  The time fixed for the arrival of the mail-steamer was understood to be about January 1, 1849, but the day came and went without any tidings of her.  Orders were given to Captain Burton to announce her arrival by firing a national salute, and each morning we listened for the guns from the fort.  The month of January passed, and the greater part of February, too.  As was usual, the army officers celebrated the 22d of February with a grand ball, given in the new stone school-house, which Alcalde Walter Colton had built.  It was the largest and best hall then in California.  The ball was really a handsome affair, and we kept it up nearly all night.  The next morning we were at breakfast:  present, Dona Augustias, and Manuelita, Halleck, Murray, and myself.  We were dull and stupid enough until a gun from the fort aroused us, then another and another.  “The steamer” exclaimed all, and, without waiting for hats or any thing, off we dashed.  I reached the wharf hatless, but the dona sent my cap after me by a servant.  The white puffs of smoke hung around the fort, mingled with the dense fog, which hid all the water of the bay, and well out to sea could be seen the black spars of some unknown vessel.  At the wharf I found a group of soldiers and a small row-boat, which belonged to a brig at anchor in the bay.  Hastily ordering a couple of willing soldiers to get in and take the oars, and Mr. Larkin and Mr. Hartnell asking to go along, we jumped in and pushed off.  Steering our boat toward the spars, which loomed up above the fog clear and distinct, in about a mile we came to the black hull of the strange monster, the long-expected and most welcome steamer California.  Her wheels were barely moving, for her pilot could not see the shore-line distinctly, though the hills and Point of Pines could be clearly made out over the fog, and occasionally a glimpse of some white walls showed where the town lay.  A “Jacob’s ladder” was lowered for us from the steamer, and in a minute I scrambled up on deck, followed by Larkin and Hartnell, and we found ourselves in the midst of many old friends.  There was Canby, the adjutant-general, who was to take my place; Charley Hoyt, my cousin; General Persifer F. Smith and wife; Gibbs, his aide-de-camp; Major Ogden, of the Engineers, and wife; and, indeed, many old Californians, among them Alfred Robinson, and Frank Ward with his pretty bride.  By the time the ship was fairly at anchor we had answered a million