SANTA BARBARA TAKEN.—LIEUT. TALBOT AND HIS TEN.—GAMBLING IN
PRISON.—RECRUITS.—A FUNNY CULPRIT.—MOVEMENTS OF COM.
STOCKTON.—BEAUTY AND THE GRAVE.—BATTLE ON THE SALINAS.—THE CAPTAIN’S
DAUGHTER.—STOLEN PISTOLS.—INDIAN BEHIND A TREE.—NUPTIALS IN
CALIFORNIA.
MONDAY, NOV. 9. The guard of ten, commanded by Lieut. T. Talbot, and
posted at Santa Barbara to maintain the American flag, arrived here last
evening. When the insurrection broke out at the south, they were
summoned by some two hundred Californians to surrender. They contrived,
however, under cover of night, to effect their escape. Their first halt
was in a thicket, to which they were pursued by some fifty of the enemy
on horseback. They waited, like lions in their lair, till the foe was
within good rifle shot, and then discharged their pieces with terrific
effect. The surviving assailants left their dead, and rushed back for
reinforcements: but in the mean time, the hardy ten had pushed their way
several leagues to the east, and gained a new ambush. An Indian might
perhaps have trailed them; but their pursuers had not this wild
sagacity. They rode here and there, penetrating every thicket, but the
right one, and to prevent their escape at night, set fire to the woods.
But one ravine, overhung with green pines, covered them with its
mantling shadows; through this they made their noiseless escape.
To avoid the Californians, who were coming down in great numbers from
the north to join their comrades in the south, the party of ten held
their course to the east. They spent several days in attempting to find
the pass which leads through the first range of the Californian
mountains to the valley of the San Joaquin; but being unacquainted with
the topography of the country, their utmost efforts were baffled. During
this time they suffered greatly from hunger and thirst: the rugged
steeps, among which they were straying, yielded neither streams nor
game. At last, they fell in with a Cholo, the Arab of California, who
kindly offered to conduct them to the mountain pass, and surrendered the
use of his horse to carry their knapsacks and blankets. The pass was
gained; but their hospitable guide still continued with them till they
reached a tribe of Indians on the opposite side. Here he took leave of
them, declining all compensation for his pains, and started back for his
wild mountain home.
The Indians received them kindly, gave them their best acorns to eat,
and their purest water to drink. These are the Indians who were brought
before me a few months since, charged with an attempt to steal a drove
of horses from Carmel. There being no positive proof of guilt, they were
kindly treated, and instead of being threatened with dungeons and death,
were dismissed with many beautiful presents. These presents they still
preserved, and exhibited them with evident gratification and pride to
their new guests.
Lieut. Talbot and party, guided by these faithful Indians, now held
their course through the valley of the San Joaquin. Their progress was
delayed by the sickness of one of their companions, whom they were
obliged to carry on a litter. They subsisted entirely on the wild game
which they killed. They were all on foot; and after travelling nearly
five hundred miles in this manner, reached Monterey, where they were
welcomed to the camp of Col. Fremont with three hearty cheers.
TUESDAY, NOV. 10. The merchant ship Euphemia arrived to-day from the
Sandwich Islands, bringing the intelligence that the Columbus, bearing
the broad pennant of Com. Biddle, had sailed from Honolulu for
Valparaiso. We shall not then see that noble ship on this coast; she is
bound homeward round the Cape. Her eight hundred men, with Com. Biddle
at their head, would have been a great accession to our strength. It is
not, however, a naval force of which we stand in greatest need. The war
in California can never be decided from the deck. We want some five
hundred horsemen, thoroughly accustomed to the saddle and the rifle, and
a few pieces of flying-artillery. Without these we shall have constant
attempts at revolution. They will invariably end in the defeat of those
who get them up, but will involve private property and the public
tranquility.
WEDNESDAY, NOV. 11. I found one of our prisoners at work to-day without
a shirt, and supposed at first that he was indulging in some whim; but
ascertained, upon further inquiry, that he had gambled it away to a
fellow-prisoner. They had no cards or dice, but had managed to
substitute a bone, which they whirled into the air, and which decided
the game by falling with this or that end into the ground. I made the
winner give back the shirt, which he did with evident reluctance, as he
had played his own against it, and would have been, had he lost, as
naked as his neighbor. An Indian, and Californian too, will gamble to
the skin of their teeth, and even part with their grinders were they
articles of value to others. But a tooth is much like the principle of
life, which avails no one save its owner.
THURSDAY, NOV. 12. Capt. Grigsby arrived to-day from Sonoma with thirty
mounted riflemen and sixty horses, and joined Col. Fremont’s encampment.
Capt. Hastings is expected in every day from San José with sixty men,
well mounted, and twice that number of horses. Every rider here,
destined on an arduous expedition, must have one or two spare horses,
especially at this season of the year, when no feed can be procured
except the slender grass which has sprung up in the recent showers, and
which contains very little sustenance. It is easier to procure provender
for a thousand horses on a march in the United States than ten here. And
yet the table-lands here are covered through the summer with wild oats.
But where are the reapers? On horseback, galloping about and carousing
at this rancho and that. Their sickles are the rein, their sheaves a
pack of cards, their flails a guitar.
“No cocks do them to rustic labor call,
From village on to village sounding clear;
To tardy swain no shrill-voiced matron’s squall,
Nor hammer’s thump disturbs the vacant ear.”
FRIDAY, NOV. 13. Two fellows of Mexican origin were brought before me
to-day, charged with breaking open the money-chest of the eating-house
where they had transiently stopped, and taking from it about five
hundred dollars. The owner having immediate occasion to go to his chest,
discovered his loss, and suspected at once the persons concerned in it.
They were apprehended, and soon after the money was found in the back
yard, where it had been hastily buried after having been tied up in a
handkerchief, which was identified as the neck-cloth of one of the
accused. One discovery led to another, till the evidences of guilt,
involving both, were fully established.
One of them then said there was no use in trying to get rid of the
business any longer, and he would now tell the whole story straight as
an arrow. He said that he and Antonio had talked over the matter the
night before, and that he then attempted to reach the chest, but that
the person in whose room it lay, and who had been asleep, suddenly
stopped snoring, and getting alarmed he ran down stairs. But this
morning, while Antonio was entertaining the rest, and treating them to
cocktails, he slipped up to the chamber, broke the lock, and filled his
pockets with the coin. He had no time, he said, to pick out the gold,
which would have been a great convenience, but scraped up silver and
gold as they came, leaving in the chest about as much as he took. It was
very vexatious, he said, to leave so much, but his pockets would hold no
more: he was really afraid they would fetch away with what they had got.
But he buoyed them up with his hands, reached the back yard, where he
delivered the money over to Antonio, who received it in his handkerchief
and buried it; but buried it in exactly the wrong spot, for he went off
into a corner instead of sinking it where everybody must step over it.
He told this story with a countenance which played between a tragic and
comic expression. Antonio, who had been both diverted and alarmed by the
narrative of his accomplice, when it came his turn to speak, said his
companion was the funniest fellow alive; he believed he would joke on
the scaffold, if he could shake a kink out of the rope, and get
breathing time for it. They were both a strange compound of wit and
villany. They were sentenced to the public works for three years.
SATURDAY, NOV. 14. The Savannah arrived here to-day from the leeward,
and reports the Congress on her way to San Diego, where she had gone to
reinforce the garrison. This important post had been recaptured by the
Americans, under the command of Capt. Merrit, an emigrant officer of
undaunted courage. He had been obliged to evacuate it a few weeks
before, and was fortunate in being able to get his men on board a whale
ship lying in the offing at the time. But a portion of the force opposed
to him having been withdrawn to support the Mexican flag at los Angeles,
he landed again in the night, and took the garrison by surprise. This
being the most southern post in California, Com. Stockton deemed it of
the first importance to make its possession secure. To effect this
object, he was obliged to postpone his purpose of recapturing at once
the capital of the province. The best way to fight the Californians is
to hem them in. They never turn upon you as lions at bay. The
possibility of an escape is an element in their courage. They never
borrow resolution from despair. They are so accustomed to range at
freedom, to make their homes wherever adventure or caprice may carry
them, that the idea of being cooped up to one place has almost as much
privation and misery in it as the slave-ship inflicts upon its captives.
They still might deem their scope too pent,
Though each had leave to pitch his tent
Where’er his wildest wish might urge,
Within creation’s utmost verge.
SUNDAY, NOV. 15. One of the most beautiful ladies in Monterey has this
day been consigned to the silent grave. She was in the bloom of life,
and visions of happiness threw their enchantments along the vista of her
future years. She had all that wealth and beauty can bestow. Her
personal charms were rivalled only by those of her mind. Her heart
trembled through every fibre of her frame.
“Whene’er with soft serenity she smiled,
Or caught the orient blush of quick surprise,
How sweetly mutable, how brightly wild,
The liquid lustre darted from her eyes!
Each look, each motion, waked a new-born grace,
That o’er her form a transient glory cast:
Some lovelier wonder soon usurped the place,
Chased by a charm still lovelier than the last.”
But she is gone! she has left us like the bird which carolled in the
morn, and departed upon its slanting ray. But her virtues survive in a
brighter sphere; her beauty is stamped with immortality; her hand
strikes a harp that will pour its melodies when the groves and streams
of earth are silent.
MONDAY, NOV. 16. A Delaware Indian, quite out of breath, entered Col.
Fremont’s camp this morning with the intelligence that an irregular
engagement took place last evening between a party of forty Americans,
and a hundred and fifty Californians, on the Salinas river, about
fifteen miles from Monterey. The Americans were coming down from San
Juan, and had with them three hundred fresh horses which they had
brought from the Sacramento. The intelligence of their approach had
reached the Californians, who had mustered all their force in this
quarter, more for the purpose of capturing the horses than their riders.
But the Americans, who were sixty strong, anticipating the possibility
of an attack in crossing the river, left their horses, except those they
rode, in the rear with twenty of their number, while forty came ahead to
engage the Californians. They were surprised at their numbers, but
rushed at once into the encounter. Capt. Foster was killed in the first
charge, and Capt. Burrows, who was wounded in the first, fell in leading
the second. Two American privates were killed, and a number of
Californians. The encounter took place near sunset, and the Americans
remained in possession of the ground.
The Delaware Indian, when the firing had slackened, left the field to
bring the intelligence to Col. Fremont; but having to turn the enemy’s
line, he was attacked by three Californians—one of whom he shot with his
rifle, another he killed with his tomahawk, and the third fled. His
horse broke down before he got in, and he ran the rest of the way on
foot. He reports that Thomas O. Larkin, Esq., the American consul, had
been captured the night before, while at a rancho between this and San
Juan. He had left Monterey to visit a sick child at San Francisco, and
stopped for the night, when he was suddenly pounced upon: nor wife nor
child will in any probability see him soon again. He will be closely
guarded; his life will be considered good for that of several prominent
Californian officers who have broken their parol; and not unlikely some
half-dozen may, in the event of disaster, be redeemed through his
liberation.
TUESDAY, NOV. 17. Col. Fremont, with his three hundred riflemen, took
his departure from Monterey this morning. They presented a very
formidable line as they wound around the bay and disappeared in the
shadows of the hills.
Spur on my men; the bugle peals
Its last and stern command,—
A charge! a charge!—an ocean burst
Upon a stormy strand.
The artillery is under the command of Capt. McLain, an officer of much
private worth and professional merit. He has at present two beautiful
brass-pieces, well mounted, and will have two more of the same
description on leaving San Juan. With these he will be able to do good
execution. Nothing alarms the Californians so much as a piece of
flying-artillery. They had rather see the very Evil One come scraggling
over the hills.
WEDNESDAY, NOV. 18. The horses which the Californians were endeavoring
to reach in their rencounter on the river, were all preserved. Their
loss would have been irretrievable in this campaign. The twenty men with
whom they were left, declared they would perish to a man sooner than
give them up. Rash as this resolution may seem, it would, had the
emergency occurred, have been terribly realized. The American engaged in
this war puts his life on the die. He must prevail or perish. If there
shall be a general engagement between the forces now in the field, it
will be one of the most frightful on record. The Americans are
outnumbered three to one,—still they are determined to hazard the issue;
and would, probably, were the odds much greater. As horsemen, the
Californians excel them; but they are greatly their superiors in the use
of the rifle and in maneuvering artillery. And these, after all, are the
weapons and engines that must decide a hot engagement. Neither party has
any veteran cuirassiers to hew their way to triumph through the cloven
crests of the foe. The most terrific encounters on the field of Waterloo
were between those who wielded the glaive. With them, at least,
“An earthquake might have passed unheededly away.”
THURSDAY, NOV. 19. How strangely the lights and shadows of life are
blended! As I passed this evening the house of Capt. de la T——, a light
strain of music came floating out from the corridor upon the silent air.
It was the daughter of the captain whose hand swept the guitar which
accompanied the modulations of her melodious voice. Her father and her
uncle are both in the ranks of the Californians, leading a forlorn hope,
after having broken their parol of honor, and forfeited their lives. And
yet she is gay as if her father were only out hunting the gazelle. Just
list the numbers as they break from her thoughtless heart:—
Fly not yet, ’tis just the hour
When pleasure, like the midnight flower,
That scorns the eye of vulgar light,
Begins to bloom for sons of night,
And maids who love the moon!
And yet that moon before it wanes may gleam upon her father’s grave. But
she knows it not. She thinks this war will end as other Californian
wars—in smoke. But it is a tempest-cloud charged with bolted thunder.
FRIDAY, NOV. 20. A German complained to me this morning that one of the
volunteers, a countryman of his, under Col. Fremont, had stolen from him
a pair of valuable pistols. He strongly suspected the person who had
taken them. I sent for him; he confessed the act, delivered up the
pistols, and begged me, as this was his first offence, not to expose
him. He was a youth of eighteen or so, slightly built, and with a fair
and remarkably ingenuous countenance. I told him he must take heed, as
one offence often paves the way to another; but as he was in the
campaign, and might soon be on the field of peril and death, his error
should rest in silence with his own conscience. The tears stood in his
eyes.
SATURDAY, NOV. 21. Capt. Foster, it appears, was not shot in the heat of
the engagement on the river. He had rushed forward in advance to
reconnoiter, and was suddenly surrounded from an ambush, and fell,
bravely fighting to the last. A Delaware Indian, who was hastening to
his rescue, finding himself hotpressed, jumped from his horse behind a
tree, from which he shot three of his antagonists, and then effected his
escape. His living breastwork now shows in its scathed rind, how well it
served him. It looks as if the auger-worm had bored there for an age.
There is something about a tree, with an Indian behind it, armed with a
rifle, pointing this way and that, which awkwardly tests a man’s nerves.
You seem to be shooting at the muzzle of his rifle instead of him; and
that is not the worst of it, he is all the while shooting at you. If
partial concealment lends a charm to beauty, it also lends terror to an
Indian. We think of the brake as much as the serpent coiled in its
shadows. Were lightning to fall without thunder, people would put
conductors on their bean-poles; and yet the blazing bolt strikes and
shivers while the lagging thunder is yet unheard.
SUNDAY, NOV. 22. As soon as it will be prudent to withdraw our men from
their posts on the Sabbath, I intend to propose a religious service. We
shall soon be able to gather fifty or more. Every house here has a
ball-room where the gay may dance, and a Madonna to whom the afflicted
may kneel; but none have a chapel; and if they had, the forms of
Protestant worship would be held a profanation. There is only one way to
get to heaven here, and that is through the absolving power of the Papal
See. Every other path leads to purgatorial pangs and penal fire.
MONDAY, NOV. 23. It is said the Californians are born on horseback; it
may also be said they are married on horseback. The day the marriage
contract is agreed on between the parties, the bridegroom’s first care
is to buy or borrow the best horse to be found in his vicinity. At the
same time he has to get, by one of these means, a silver-mounted bridle,
and a saddle with embroidered housings. This saddle must have, also, at
its stern, a bridal pillion, with broad aprons flowing down the flanks
of the horse. These aprons are also embroidered with silk of different
colors, and with gold and silver thread. Around the margin runs a string
of little steel plates, alternated with slight pendants of the same
metal. These, as the horse moves, jingle like a thousand mimic bells.
The bride, also, comes in for her share in these nuptial preparations.
The bridegroom must present her with at least six entire changes of
raiment, nor forget, through any sentiment of delicacy, even the
chemise. Such an oversight might frustrate all his hopes; as it would be
construed into a personal indifference,—the last kind of indifference
which a California lady will forgive. He therefore hunts this article
with as much solicitude as the Peri the gift that was to unlock
Paradise. Having found six which are neither too full nor too slender,
he packs them in rose-leaves which seem to flutter like his own heart,
and sends them to the lady as his last bridal present. She might
naturally expect him to come next.
The wedding-day having arrived, the two fine horses, procured for the
occasion, are led to the door, saddled, bridled, and pillioned. The
bridegroom takes up before him the godmother, and the godfather the
bride, and thus they gallop away to church. The priest, in his richest
robes, receives them at the altar, where they kneel, partake of the
sacrament, and are married. This over, they start on their return,—but
now the gentlemen change partners. The bridegroom, still on the pillion,
takes up before him his bride. With his right arm he steadies her on the
saddle, and in his left hand holds the reins. They return to the house
of the parents of the bride, where they are generally received with a
discharge of musketry. Two persons, stationed at some convenient place,
now rush out and seize him by his legs, and, before he has time to
dismount, deprive him of his spurs, which he is obliged to redeem with a
bottle of brandy.
The married couple then enter the house, where the near relatives are
all waiting in tears to receive them. They kneel down before the parents
of the lady, and crave a blessing, which is bestowed with patriarchal
solemnity. On rising, the bridegroom makes a signal for the guests to
come in, and another for the guitar and harp to strike up. Then
commences the dancing, which continues often for three days, with only
brief intervals for refreshment, but none for slumber: the wedded pair
must be on their feet; their dilemma furnishes food for good-humored
gibes and merriment. Thus commences married life in California. This
stream, it is to be hoped, is much smoother than its fount.
TUESDAY, NOV. 24. Monterey has been for the last two days remarkably
quiet. The excitement occasioned by the battle on the Salinas has sunk
into a dead calm. They who fell have received Christian burial; and they
who survived have departed, some to find graves elsewhere. The great
tragedy of life here is so filled with incident that it requires no
stage effect. It is the visionary sword which eluded the grasp of
Macbeth, turned into flashing steel.
WEDNESDAY, NOV. 25. A Californian in trouble, often disregards the
suggestions of national pride and personal resentment, and seeks succor
where it can best be had. One of them who had been dangerously wounded
in the late engagement, came into Monterey this morning, and applied to
our surgeon to have the ball extracted from his hip. He seemed to think
that as he had been disabled by one American, it was only right and
proper he should be restored by another. He will then probably be off to
fight us again. Nor does this in him argue a want of gratitude. He seeks
the field to encounter his foes, much on the same principle that you do
the wood to hunt wild game. You level your rifle at the hawk, not
because he has injured you, but partly to exercise your skill, and
partly because he is a saucy fellow, screeching about and frightening
the other birds. I never yet saw the little king-bird chase a hawk, or
the sword-fish pursue a whale, without a sentiment of delight. Neither
have harmed me; but I hate all tyrants, whether they are on wings, fins,
or legs.
THURSDAY, NOV. 26. Some of the shopkeepers here have been so long in the
habit of smuggling under the former high rate of duties, that now they
hardly know how to give up the trick, though there is very little motive
for pursuing it. I caught a Frenchman to-day endeavoring to evade the
municipal duty on rum. He had a hundred subterfuges, and flew from one
to another, like a frightened catbird in the bush. His words fell so
thick and fast that they quite covered up his falsehoods; the leaves of
a wind-shaken tree in autumn conceal the nuts which fall with them to
the ground. It is idle to expect honesty in a man who resorts to it only
in the failure of his craft and cunning. His integrity is like the
religion of some sailors—breaking out in shipwreck.