and we hitched up and started for the Coaumnes River.  About twelve miles off was the Mokelumne, a wide, bold stream, with a canoe as a ferry-boat.  We took our wagon to pieces, and ferried it and its contents across, and then drove our mules into the water.  In crossing, one mule became entangled in the rope of the other, and for a time we thought he was a gone mule; but at last he revived and we hitched up.  The mules were both pack-animals; neither had ever before seen a wagon.  Young Seton also was about as green, and had never handled a mule.  We put on the harness, and began to hitch them in, when one of the mules turned his head, saw the wagon, and started.  We held on tight, but the beast did not stop until he had shivered the tongue-pole into a dozen fragments.  The fact was, that Seton had hitched the traces before he had put on the blind-bridle.  There was considerable swearing done, but that would not mend the pole.  There was no place nearer than Sutter’s Fort to repair damages, so we were put to our wits’ end.  We first sent back a mile or so, and bought a raw-hide.  Gathering up the fragments of the pole and cutting the hide into strips, we finished it in the rudest manner.  As long as the hide was green, the pole was very shaky; but gradually the sun dried the hide, tightened it, and the pole actually held for about a month.  This cost us nearly a day of delay; but, when damages were repaired, we harnessed up again, and reached the crossing of the Cosumnes, where our survey was to begin.  The expediente, or title-papers, of the ranch described it as containing nine or eleven leagues on the Cosumnes, south side, and between the San Joaquin River and Sierra Nevada Mountains.  We began at the place where the road crosses the Cosumnes, and laid down a line four miles south, perpendicular to the general direction of the stream; then, surveying up the stream, we marked each mile so as to admit of a subdivision of one mile by four.  The land was dry and very poor, with the exception of here and there some small pieces of bottom land, the great bulk of the bottom-land occurring on the north side of the stream.  We continued the survey up some twenty miles into the hills above the mill of Dailor and Sheldon.  It took about a month to make this survey, which, when finished, was duly plotted; and for it we received one-tenth of the land, or two subdivisions.  Ord and I took the land, and we paid Seton for his labor in cash.  By the sale of my share of the land, subsequently, I realized three thousand dollars.  After finishing Hartnell’s survey, we crossed over to Dailor’s, and did some work for him at five hundred dollars a day for the party.  Having finished our work on the Cosumnes, we proceeded to Sacramento, where Captain Sutter employed us to connect the survey of Sacramento City, made by Lieutenant Warner, and that of Sutterville, three miles below, which was then being surveyed by Lieutenant J. W. Davidson, of the First Dragoons.  At Sutterville, the plateau