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.

Toward the close of June, 1848, the gold-fever being at its height,
by Colonel Mason's orders I made preparations for his trip to the
newly-discovered gold-mines at Sutter's Fort. I selected four good
soldiers, with Aaron, Colonel Mason's black servant, and a good
outfit of horses and pack-mules, we started by the usually traveled
route for Yerba Buena. There Captain Fulsom and two citizens
joined our party. The first difficulty was to cross the bay to
Saucelito. Folsom, as quartermaster, had a sort of scow with a
large sail, with which to discharge the cargoes of ships, that
could not come within a mile of the shore. It took nearly the
whole day to get the old scow up to the only wharf there, and then
the water was so shallow that the scow, with its load of horses,
would not float at the first high tide, but by infinite labor on
the next tide she was got off and safely crossed over to Saucelito.
We followed in a more comfortable schooner. Having safely landed
our horses and mules, we picked up and rode to San Rafael Mission,
stopping with Don Timoteo Murphy. The next day's journey took us
to Bodega, where lived a man named Stephen Smith, who had the only
steam saw-mill in California. He had a Peruvian wife, and employed
a number of absolutely naked Indians in making adobes. We spent a
day very pleasantly with him, and learned that he had come to
California some years before, at the personal advice of Daniel