him back to Los Angeles immediately, to disband his volunteers, and to cease the exercise of authority of any kind in the country.  Feeling a natural curiosity to see Fremont, who was then quite famous by reason of his recent explorations and the still more recent conflicts with Kearney and Mason, I rode out to his camp, and found him in a conical tent with one Captain Owens, who was a mountaineer, trapper, etc., but originally from Zanesville, Ohio.  I spent an hour or so with Fremont in his tent, took some tea with him, and left, without being much impressed with him.  In due time Colonel Swords returned from the Sandwich Islands and relieved me as quartermaster.  Captain William G. Marcy, son of the Secretary of War, had also come out in one of Stevenson’s ships as an assistant commissary of subsistence, and was stationed at Monterey and relieved me as commissary, so that I reverted to the condition of a company-officer.  While acting as a staff officer I had lived at the custom-house in Monterey, but when relieved I took a tent in line with the other company-officers on the hill, where we had a mess.

Stevenson’a regiment reached San Francisco Bay early in March, 1847.  Three companies were stationed at the Presidio under Major James A. Hardier one company (Brackett’s) at Sonoma; three, under Colonel Stevenson, at Monterey; and three, under Lieutenant-Colonel Burton, at Santa Barbara.  One day I was down at the headquarters at Larkin’s horse, when General Kearney remarked to me that he was going down to Los Angeles in the ship Lexington, and wanted me to go along as his aide.  Of course this was most agreeable to me.  Two of Stevenson’s companies, with the headquarters and the colonel, were to go also.  They embarked, and early in May we sailed for San Pedro.  Before embarking, the United States line-of-battle-ship Columbus had reached the coast from China with Commodore Biddle, whose rank gave him the supreme command of the navy on the coast.  He was busy in calling in—­“lassooing “—­from the land-service the various naval officers who under Stockton had been doing all sorts of military and civil service on shore.  Knowing that I was to go down the coast with General Kearney, he sent for me and handed me two unsealed parcels addressed to Lieutenant Wilson, United States Navy, and Major Gillespie, United States Marines, at Los Angeles.  These were written orders pretty much in these words:  “On receipt of this order you will repair at once on board the United States ship Lexington at San Pedro, and on reaching Monterey you will report to the undersigned.-JAMES BIDDLE.”  Of course, I executed my part to the letter, and these officers were duly “lassooed.”  We sailed down the coast with a fair wind, and anchored inside the kelp, abreast of Johnson’s house.  Messages were forthwith dispatched up to Los Angeles, twenty miles off, and preparations for horses made for us to ride up.  We landed, and, as Kearney held to my arm in ascending the steep path up the