Thence we proceeded up Amador Valley to Alameda Creek, and so on to the old mission of San Jose; thence to the pueblo of San Jose, where Folsom and those belonging in Yerba Buena went in that direction, and we continued on to Monterey, our party all the way giving official sanction to the news from the gold-mines, and adding new force to the “fever.”

On reaching Monterey, we found dispatches from Commodore Shubrick, at Mazatlan, which gave almost positive assurance that the war with Mexico was over; that hostilities had ceased, and commissioners were arranging the terms of peace at Guadalupe Hidalgo.  It was well that this news reached California at that critical time; for so contagious had become the “gold-fever” that everybody was bound to go and try his fortune, and the volunteer regiment of Stevenson’s would have deserted en masse, had the men not been assured that they would very soon be entitled to an honorable discharge.

Many of our regulars did desert, among them the very men who had escorted us faithfully to the mines and back.  Our servants also left us, and nothing less than three hundred dollars a month would hire a man in California; Colonel Mason’s black boy, Aaron, alone of all our then servants proving faithful.  We were forced to resort to all manner of shifts to live.  First, we had a mess with a black fellow we called Bustamente as cook; but he got the fever, and had to go.  We next took a soldier, but he deserted, and carried off my double-barreled shot-gun, which I prized very highly.  To meet this condition of facts, Colonel Mason ordered that liberal furloughs should be given to the soldiers, and promises to all in turn, and he allowed all the officers to draw their rations in kind.  As the actual valve of the ration was very large, this enabled us to live.  Halleck, Murray, Ord, and I, boarded with Dona Augustias, and turned in our rations as pay for our board.

Some time in September, 1848, the official news of the treaty of peace reached us, and the Mexican War was over.  This treaty was signed in May, and came to us all the way by land by a courier from Lower California, sent from La Paz by Lieutenant-Colonel Burton.  On its receipt, orders were at once made for the muster-out of all of Stevenson’s regiment, and our military forces were thus reduced to the single company of dragoons at Los Angeles, and the one company of artillery at Monterey.  Nearly all business had ceased, except that connected with gold; and, during that fall, Colonel Mason, Captain Warner, and I, made another trip up to Sutter’s Fort, going also to the newly-discovered mines on the Stanislaus, called “Sonora,” named from the miners of Sonora, Mexico, who had first discovered them.  We found there pretty much the same state of facts as before existed at Mormon Island and Coloma, and we daily received intelligence of the opening of still other mines north and south.