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.

But I have passed over a very interesting fact.  As soon as we had returned from our first visit to the gold-mines, it became important to send home positive knowledge of this valuable discovery.  The means of communication with the United States were very precarious, and I suggested to Colonel Mason that a special courier ought to be sent; that Second-Lieutenant Loeser had been promoted to first-lieutenant, and was entitled to go home.  He was accordingly detailed to carry the news.  I prepared with great care the letter to the adjutant-general of August 17, 1848, which Colonel Mason modified in a few Particulars; and, as it was important to send not only the specimens which had been presented to us along our route of travel, I advised the colonel to allow Captain Folsom to purchase and send to Washington a large sample of the commercial gold in general use, and to pay for the same out of the money in his hands known as the “civil fund,” arising from duties collected at the several ports in California.  He consented