Leaving the midshipman and four sailors to guard the boat, we started on foot with the other four for Sonoma Town, which we soon reached.  It was a simple open square, around which were some adobe-houses, that of General Vallejo occupying one side.  On another was an unfinished two-story adobe building, occupied as a barrack by Bracken’s company.  We soon found Captain Brackett, and I told him that I intended to take Nash a prisoner and convey him back to Monterey to answer for his mutinous behavior.  I got an old sergeant of his company, whom I had known in the Third Artillery, quietly to ascertain the whereabouts of Nash, who was a bachelor, stopping with the family of a lawyer named Green.  The sergeant soon returned, saying that Nash had gone over to Napa, but would be back that evening; so McLane and I went up to a farm of some pretensions, occupied by one Andreas Hoepner, with a pretty Sitka wife, who lived a couple of miles above Sonoma, and we bought of him some chickens, pigs, etc.  We then visited Governor Boggs’s family and that of General Vallejo, who was then, as now, one of the most prominent and influential natives of California.  About dark I learned that Nash had come back, and then, giving Brackett orders to have a cart ready at the corner of the plaza, McLane and I went to the house of Green.  Posting an armed sailor on each side of the house, we knocked at the door and walked in.  We found Green, Nash, and two women, at supper.  I inquired if Nash were in, and was first answered “No,” but one of the women soon pointed to him, and he rose.  We were armed with pistols, and the family was evidently alarmed.  I walked up to him and took his arm, and told him to come along with me.  He asked me, “Where?” and I said, “Monterey.”  “Why?” I would explain that more at leisure.  Green put himself between me and the door, and demanded, in theatrical style, why I dared arrest a peaceable citizen in his house.  I simply pointed to my pistol, and told him to get out of the way, which he did.  Nash asked to get some clothing, but I told him he should want for nothing.  We passed out, Green following us with loud words, which brought the four sailors to the front-door, when I told him to hush up or I would take him prisoner also.  About that time one of the sailors, handling his pistol carelessly, discharged it, and Green disappeared very suddenly.  We took Nash to the cart, put him in, and proceeded back to our boat.  The next morning we were gone.

Nash being out of the way, Boggs entered on his office, and the right to appoint or remove from civil office was never again questioned in California during the military regime.  Nash was an old man, and was very much alarmed for his personal safety.  He had come across the Plains, and had never yet seen the sea.  While on our way down the bay, I explained fully to him the state of things in California, and he admitted he had never looked on it in that light