Commodore Shubrick commanded this expedition, and took Halleck along as his engineer-officer.  They captured Mazatlan and Guaymas, and then called on Colonel Mason to send soldiers down to hold possession, but he had none to spare, and it was found impossible to raise other volunteers either in California or Oregon, and the navy held these places by detachments of sailors and marines till the end of the war.  Burton also called for reenforcements, and Naglee’a company was sent to him from Monterey, and these three companies occupied Lower California at the end of the Mexican War.  Major Hardie still commanded at San Francisco and above; Company F, Third Artillery, and Shannon’s company of volunteers, were at Monterey; Lippett’s company at Santa Barbara; Colonel Stevenson, with one company of his regiment, and the company of the First Dragoons, was at Los Angeles; and a company of Mormons, reenlisted out of the Mormon Battalion, garrisoned San Diego—­and thus matters went along throughout 1847 into 1848.  I had occasion to make several trips to Yerba Buena and back, and in the spring of 1848 Colonel Mason and I went down to Santa Barbara in the sloop-of-war Dale.

I spent much time in hunting deer and bear in the mountains back of the Carmel Mission, and ducks and geese in the plains of the Salinas.  As soon as the fall rains set in, the young oats would sprout up, and myriads of ducks, brant, and geese, made their appearance.  In a single day, or rather in the evening of one day and the morning of the next, I could load a pack-mule with geese and ducks.  They had grown somewhat wild from the increased number of hunters, yet, by marking well the place where a flock lighted, I could, by taking advantage of gullies or the shape of the ground, creep up within range; and, giving one barrel on the ground, and the other as they rose, I have secured as many as nine at one discharge.  Colonel Mason on one occasion killed eleven geese by one discharge of small shot.  The seasons in California are well marked.  About October and November the rains begin, and the whole country, plains and mountains, becomes covered with a bright-green grass, with endless flowers.  The intervals between the rains give the finest weather possible.  These rains are less frequent in March, and cease altogether in April and May, when gradually the grass dies and the whole aspect of things changes, first to yellow, then to brown, and by midsummer all is burnt up and dry as an ashheap.

When General Kearney first departed we took his office at Larkin’s; but shortly afterward we had a broad stairway constructed to lead from the outside to the upper front porch of the barracks.  By cutting a large door through the adobe-wall, we made the upper room in the centre our office; and another side-room, connected with it by a door, was Colonel Mason’s private office.

I had a single clerk, a soldier named Baden; and William E. P. Hartnell, citizen, also had a table in the same room.  He was the government interpreter, and had charge of the civil archives.  After Halleck’s return from Mazatlan, he was, by Colonel Mason, made Secretary of State; and he then had charge of the civil archives, including the land-titles, of which Fremont first had possession, but which had reverted to us when he left the country.