strength by camping out for a few days in the Coast Range Mountains
beyond Monterey, but the anxiety and strain of the long journey had been
greater than he realized, and he broke down and became very ill. For two
nights he lay out under the trees in a kind of stupor and at length was
rescued by two frontiersmen in charge of a goat-ranch, who took him to
their cabin and cared for him until he partly recovered.

"Here is another curious start in my life," he wrote to Sidney Colvin.
"I am living at an Angora goat-ranch, in the Coast Line Mountains,
eighteen miles from Monterey. I was camping out, but got so sick that
the two rancheros took me in and tended me. One is an old bear hunter,
seventy-two years old, and a captain from the Mexican War; the other a
pilgrim, and one who was out with the bear flag and under Fremont when
California was taken by the States. They are both true frontiersmen, and
most kind and pleasant. Captain Smith, the bear hunter, is my physician,
and I obey him like an oracle....

"I am now lying in an upper chamber, with the clinking of goat bells in
my ears, which proves to me that the goats are come home and it will
soon be time to eat. The old bear hunter is doubtless now infusing tea;
and Tom the Indian will come in with his gun in a few moments....

"The business of my life stands pretty nigh still. I work at my notes of
the voyage. It will not be very like a book of mine; but perhaps none
the less successful for that. I will not deny that I feel lonely
to-day.... I have not yet had a word from England, partly, I suppose,
because I have not yet written for my letters to New York; do not blame
me for this neglect, if you knew all I have been through, you would
wonder I had done as much as I have. I teach the ranch children reading
in the morning, for the mother is from home sick.