come out with Stevenson’s regiment as quartermaster, and was at the time the chief-quartermaster of the department.  His office was in the old custom-horse standing at the northwest corner of the Plaza.  He had hired two warehouses, the only ones there at the time, of one Liedsdorff, the principal man of Yerba Buena, who also owned the only public-house, or tavern, called the City Hotel, on Kearney Street, at the southeast corner of the Plaza.  I stopped with Folsom at Mrs. Grimes’s, and he sent my horse, as also the other three when Barnes had got in after dark, to a coral where he had a little barley, but no hay.  At that time nobody fed a horse, but he was usually turned out to pick such scanty grass as he could find on the side-hills.  The few government horses used in town were usually sent out to the Presidio, where the grass was somewhat better.  At that time (July, 1847), what is now called San Francisco was called Yerba Buena.  A naval officer, Lieutenant Washington A. Bartlett, its first alcalde, had caused it to be surveyed and laid out into blocks and lots, which were being sold at sixteen dollars a lot of fifty vuras square; the understanding being that no single person could purchase of the alcalde more than one in-lot of fifty varas, and one out-lot of a hundred varas.  Folsom, however, had got his clerks, orderlies, etc., to buy lots, and they, for a small consideration, conveyed them to him, so that he was nominally the owner of a good many lots.  Lieutenant Halleck had bought one of each kind, and so had Warner.  Many naval officers had also invested, and Captain Folsom advised me to buy some, but I felt actually insulted that he should think me such a fool as to pay money for property in such a horrid place as Yerba Buena, especially ridiculing his quarter of the city, then called Happy Valley.  At that day Montgomery Street was, as now, the business street, extending from Jackson to Sacramento, the water of the bay leaving barely room for a few houses on its east side, and the public warehouses were on a sandy beach about where the Bank of California now stands, viz., near the intersection of Sansome and California, Streets.  Along Montgomery Street were the stores of Howard & Mellus, Frank Ward, Sherman & Ruckel, Ross & Co., and it may be one or two others.  Around the Plaza were a few houses, among them the City Hotel and the Custom-House, single-story adobes with tiled roofs, and they were by far the most substantial and best houses in the place.  The population was estimated at about four hundred, of whom Kanakas (natives of the Sandwich Islands) formed the bulk.

At the foot of Clay Street was a small wharf which small boats could reach at high tide; but the principal landing-place was where some stones had fallen into the water, about where Broadway now intersects Battery Street.  On the steep bluff above had been excavated, by the navy, during the year before, a bench, wherein were mounted a couple of navy-guns, styled the battery, which, I suppose, gave name to the street.  I explained to Folsom the object of my visit, and learned from him that he had no boat in which to send me to Sonoma, and that the only, chance to get there was to borrow a boat from the navy.  The line-of-battle-ship Columbus was then lying at anchor off the town, and he said if I would get up early the next morning I could go off to her in one of the market-boats.