unable to make a trip back to Panama, as was expected of her.  As soon as we reached San Francisco, the first thing was to secure an office and a house to live in.  The weather was rainy and stormy, and snow even lay on the hills back of the Mission.  Captain Folsom, the quartermaster, agreed to surrender for our office the old adobe custom house, on the upper corner of the plaza, as soon as he could remove his papers and effects down to one of his warehouses on the beach; and he also rented for us as quarters the old Hudson Bay Company house on Montgomery Street, which had been used by Howard & Mellua as a store, and at that very time they were moving their goods into a larger brick building just completed for them.  As these changes would take some time, General Smith and Colonel Ogden, with their wives, accepted the hospitality offered by Commodore Jones on board the Ohio.  I opened the office at the custom house, and Gibbs, Fitzgerald, and some others of us, slept in the loft of the Hudson Bay Company house until the lower part was cleared of Howard’s store, after which General Smith and the ladies moved in.  There we had a general mess, and the efforts at house-keeping were simply ludicrous.  One servant after another, whom General Smith had brought from New Orleans, with a solemn promise to stand by him for one whole year, deserted without a word of notice or explanation, and in a few days none remained but little Isaac.  The ladies had no maid or attendants; and the general, commanding all the mighty forces of the United States on the Pacific coast, had to scratch to get one good meal a day for his family!  He was a gentleman of fine social qualities, genial and gentle, and joked at every thing.  Poor Mrs. Smith and Mrs. Ogden did not bear it so philosophically.  Gibbs, Fitzgerald, and I, could cruise around and find a meal, which cost three dollars, at some of the many restaurants which had sprung up out of red-wood boards and cotton lining; but the general and ladies could not go out, for ladies were rara aves at that day in California.  Isaac was cook, chamber-maid, and everything, thoughtless of himself, and struggling, out of the slimmest means, to compound a breakfast for a large and hungry family.  Breakfast would be announced any time between ten and twelve, and dinner according to circumstances.  Many a time have I seen General Smith, with a can of preserved meat in his hands, going toward the house, take off his hat on meeting a negro, and, on being asked the reason of his politeness, he would answer that they were the only real gentlemen in California.  I confess that the fidelity of Colonel Mason’s boy “Aaron,” and of General Smith’s boy “Isaac,” at a time when every white man laughed at promises as something made to be broken, has given me a kindly feeling of respect for the negroes, and makes me hope that they will find an honorable “status” in the jumble of affairs in which we now live.