money or price, what he needed.  That night we slept on Salinas Plain, and the next morning reached Monterey.  All the missions and houses at that period were alive with fleas, which the natives looked on as pleasant titillators, but they so tortured me that I always gave them a wide berth, and slept on a saddle-blanket, with the saddle for a pillow and the serape, or blanket, for a cover.  We never feared rain except in winter.  As the spring and summer of 1848 advanced, the reports came faster and faster from the gold-mines at Sutter’s saw-mill.  Stories reached us of fabulous discoveries, and spread throughout the land.  Everybody was talking of “Gold! gold!” until it assumed the character of a fever.  Some of our soldiers began to desert; citizens were fitting out trains of wagons and packmules to go to the mines.  We heard of men earning fifty, five hundred, and thousands of dollars per day, and for a time it seemed as though somebody would reach solid gold.  Some of this gold began to come to Yerba Buena in trade, and to disturb the value of merchandise, particularly of mules, horses, tin pans, and articles used in mining:  I of course could not escape the infection, and at last convinced Colonel Mason that it was our duty to go up and see with our own eyes, that we might report the truth to our Government.  As yet we had no regular mail to any part of the United States, but mails had come to us at long intervals, around Cape Horn, and one or two overland.  I well remember the first overland mail.  It was brought by Kit Carson in saddle-bags from Taos in New Mexico.  We heard of his arrival at Los Angeles, and waited patiently for his arrival at headquarters.  His fame then was at its height, from the publication of Fremont’s books, and I was very anxious to see a man who had achieved such feats of daring among the wild animals of the Rocky Mountains, and still wilder Indians of the Plains.  At last his arrival was reported at the tavern at Monterey, and I hurried to hunt him up.  I cannot express my surprise at beholding a small, stoop-shouldered man, with reddish hair, freckled face, soft blue eyes, and nothing to indicate extraordinary courage or daring.  He spoke but little, and answered questions in monosyllables.  I asked for his mail, and he picked up his light saddle-bags containing the great overland mail, and we walked together to headquarters, where he delivered his parcel into Colonel Mason’s own hands.  He spent some days in Monterey, during which time we extracted with difficulty some items of his personal history.  He was then by commission a lieutenant in the regiment of Mounted Rifles serving in Mexico under Colonel Sumner, and, as he could not reach his regiment from California, Colonel Mason ordered that for a time he should be assigned to duty with A. J. Smith’s company, First Dragoons, at Los Angeles.  He remained at Los Angeles some months, and was then sent back to the United Staten with dispatches, traveling two thousand miles almost alone, in preference to being encumbered by a large party.