RIDE OF COL. FREMONT FROM LOS ANGELES TO MONTEREY AND BACK.—THE
PARTY.—THE RELAYS.—CHARACTER OF THE COUNTRY.—THE RINCON.—SKELETONS
OF DEAD HORSES.—A STAMPEDE.—GRAY BEARS.—RECEPTION AT MONTEREY.—THE
RETURN.—THE TWO HORSES RODE BY COL. FREMONT.—AN EXPERIMENT.—THE
RESULT.—CHARACTERISTICS OF THE CALIFORNIA HORSE.—FOSSIL REMAINS.—THE
TWO CLASSES OF EMIGRANTS.—LIFE IN CALIFORNIA.—HEADS AGAINST TAILS.
The ride of Col. Fremont in March, 1847, from the ciudad de los Angeles
to Monterey in Alta California—a distance of four hundred and twenty
miles—and back, exhibits in a strong light the iron nerve of the rider,
and the capacities of the California horse. The party on this occasion,
consisted of the colonel, his friend Don Jesúse Pico, and his servant
Jacob Dodson. Each had three horses, nine in all, to take their turn
under the saddle, and relieve each other every twenty miles; while the
six loose horses galloped ahead, requiring constant vigilance and action
to keep them on the path. The relays were brought under the saddle by
the lasso, thrown by Don Jesúse or Jacob, who, though born and raised in
Washington, in his long expeditions with Col. Fremont, had become expert
as a Mexican with the lasso, sure as a mountaineer with the rifle, equal
to either on horse or foot, and always a lad of courage and fidelity.
The party left los Angeles on the morning of the 22d, at daybreak,
though the call which took the colonel to Monterey, had reached him only
the evening before. Their path lay through the wild mountains of San
Fernando, where the steep ridge and precipitous glen follow each other
like the deep hollows and crested waves of ocean, under the driving
force of the storm. It was a relief when a rough ravine opened its
winding gallery on the line of their path. They reached at length the
maritime defile of El Rincon, or Punto Gordo, where a mountain bluff
shoulders its way boldly to the sea, leaving for fifteen miles only a
narrow line of broken coast, lashed at high tide, and in the gale, by
the foaming surf. The sun was on the wave of the Pacific, when they
issued from the Rincon; and twilight still lingered when they reached
the hospitable rancho of Don Thomas Robbins—one hundred and twenty-five
miles from los Angeles. The only limb in the company which seemed to
complain of fatigue was the right arm of Jacob, incessantly exercised in
lashing the loose horses to the track, and lassoing the relays. None of
the horses were shod—an iron contrivance unknown here, except among a
few Americans. The gait through the day had been a hand-gallop, relieved
at short intervals by a light trot. Here the party rested for the night,
while the horses gathered their food from the young grass which spread
its tender verdure on the field.
Another morning had thrown its splendors on the forest when the party
waved their adieu to their hospitable host, and were under way. Their
path lay over the spurs of the Santa Barbara mountains; and close to
that steep ridge, where the California battalion, under Col. Fremont,
encountered on the 25th Dec., 1846, a blinding storm, which still throws
its sleet and hail through the dreams of those hardy men. Such was its
overpowering force, that more than a hundred of their horses dropped
down under their saddles. Their bleaching bones still glimmering in the
gorges, and hanging on the cliffs, are the ghastly memorials of its
terrific violence. None but they, who were of their number, can tell
what that battalion suffered. The object of that campaign accomplished,
and the conquest of California secured, the colonel, with his friend and
servant, was now on his brief return. Their path continued over the
flukes and around the bluffs of the coast mountains, relieved at
intervals by the less rugged slopes and more level lines of the cañada.
The hand-gallop and light trot of their spirited animals brought them,
at set of sun, to the rancho of their friend, Capt. Dana, where they
supped, and then proceeding on to San Luis Obispo, reached the house of
Don Jesúse, the colonel’s companion, at nine o’clock in the evening—one
hundred and thirty-five miles from the place where they broke camp in
the morning!
The arrival of Col. Fremont having got wind, the rancheros of San Luis
were on an early stir, determined to detain him. All crowded to his
quarters with their gratulations, and the tender of a splendid
entertainment, but his time was too pressing: still escape was
impossible, till a sumptuous breakfast had been served, and popular
enthusiasm had expressed its warm regard. This gratitude and esteem were
the result of that humane construction of military law, which had spared
the forfeited lives of the leaders in the recent insurrectionary war. It
was eleven o’clock in the morning before the colonel and his attendants
were in the saddle. Their tired horses had been left, and eight fresh
ones taken in their places, while their party had been increased by the
addition of a California boy, in the capacity of vaquero. Their path
still lay through a wild broken country, where primeval forests frowned,
and the mountain torrent dashed the tide of its strength. At eight in
the evening they reached the gloomy base of the steep range which guards
the head waters of the Salinas or Buenaventura, seventy miles from San
Luis. Here Don Jesúse, who had been up the greater part of the night
previous, with his family and friends, proposed a few hours rest. As the
place was the favorite haunt of marauding Indians, the party for safety
during their repose, turned off the track, which ran nearer the coast
than the usual rout, and issuing through a cañada into a thick wood,
rolled down in their serapes, with their saddles for their pillows,
while their horses were put to grass at a short distance, with the
Spanish boy in the saddle to keep watch. Sleep once commenced, was too
sweet to be easily given up; midnight had passed when the party were
roused from their slumbers by an _estampedo_ among their horses, and the
loud calls of the watch boy. The cause of the alarm proved not to be
Indians, but gray bears, which infest this wild pass. It was here that
Col. Fremont with thirty-five of his men, in the summer preceding, fell
in with several large bands of these ferocious fellows, who appeared to
have posted themselves here to dispute the path. An attack was ordered,
and thirteen of their grim file were left dead on the field. Such is
their acknowledged strength and towering rage, when assaulted, the
bravest hunters, when outnumbered, generally give them a wide berth.
When it was discovered that they had occasioned this midnight stampede,
the first impulse was to attack them; but Don Jesúse, who understood
their habits and weak points, discouraged the idea, stating that “people
_gente_ can scare bears,” and with that gave a succession of loud
halloos, at which the bears commenced their retreat. The horses by good
fortune were recovered, a fire kindled, and by break of day, the party
had finished their breakfast, and were again in the saddle. Their path,
issuing from the gloomy forests of the Soledad, skirted the coast range,
and crossed the plain of the Salinas to Monterey, where they arrived
three hours to set of sun, and ninety miles from their last
camping-tree.
The principal citizens of Monterey, as soon as the arrival of Col.
Fremont was announced, assembled at the office of the alcalde, and
passed resolutions inviting him to a public dinner; but the urgency of
his immediate return obliged him to forego the proffered honor. At four
o’clock in the afternoon of the day succeeding that of their arrival,
the party were ready to start on their return. The two horses rode by
the colonel from San Luis Obispo, were a present to him from Don Jesúse,
who now desired him to make an experiment with the abilities of one of
them. They were brothers, one a year younger than the other, both the
same color—cinnamon—and hence called _el canelo_, or _los canelos_. The
elder was taken for the trial, and lead off gallantly as the party
struck the plain which stretches towards the Salinas. A more graceful
horse, and one more deftly mounted, I have never seen. The eyes of the
gathered crowd followed them till they disappeared in the shadows of the
distant hills. Forty miles on the hand-gallop, and they camped for the
night. Another day dawned, and the elder canelo was again under the
saddle of Col. Fremont, and for ninety miles carried him without change,
and without apparent fatigue. It was still thirty miles to San Luis,
where they were to pass the night, and Don Jesúse insisted that canelo
could easily perform it, and so said the horse in his spirited look and
action. But the colonel would not put him to the trial; and shifting the
saddle to the younger brother, the elder was turned loose to run the
remaining thirty miles without a rider. He immediately took the lead,
and kept it the whole distance, entering San Luis on a sweeping gallop,
and neighing with exultation on his return to his native pastures. His
younger brother, with equal spirit, kept the lead of the horses under
the saddle, bearing on his bit, and requiring the constant check of his
rider. The whole eight horses made their one hundred and twenty miles
each in this day’s ride, after having performed forty the evening
before. The elder cinnamon, who had taken his rider through the forty,
carried him ninety miles further to-day, and would undoubtedly have
taken him through the remaining thirty miles had Col. Fremont continued
him under the saddle.
After a detention of half a day at San Luis Obispo by a rain-storm, the
party resumed the horses they had left there, and which took them back
to los Angeles in the same time they had brought them up. Thus making
their five hundred miles each in four days, with the interval of repose
occupied in the ride from San Luis to Monterey and back. In this whole
journey from los Angeles to Monterey and back—making eight hundred and
forty miles—the party had actually but one relay of fresh horses; the
time on the road was about seventy-six hours. The path through the
entire route lies through a wild broken country, over ridges, down
gorges, around bluffs, and through gloomy defiles, where a traveller,
unused to these mountains, would often deem even the slow trot
impracticable. The only food which the horses had, except a few quarts
of barley at Monterey, was the grass on the road; though the trained and
domesticated horses, like the canelos, will eat or drink almost every
thing which their master uses. They will take from his caressing hand
bread, fruits, sugar, coffee; and, like the Persian horse, will not
refuse a bumper of wine. They obey with gentlest docility his slightest
intimation; a swing of his hand, or a tap of his whip on the saddle,
will spring them into instant action, while the check of a thread-rein
on the Spanish bit will bring them to a dead stand; and yet in these
sudden stops, when rushing at the top of their speed, they manage not to
jostle their rider, or throw him forward. They go where their master
directs, whether it be a leap on the foe, up a flight of stairs, or over
a chasm. But this is true only of the conduct and behavior of those
horses trained like the canelos, who vindicate, in the mountain glens of
California, their Arabian origin. They are all grace, fleetness, muscle,
and fire; gentle as the lamb, lively as the antelope, and fearless as
the lion.
MARINE REMAINS.
The hills around Monterey are full of marine shells. You can turn them
out wherever you drive your spade into the ground. The Indians dig and
burn them for lime, which is used in whitewashing the adobe walls of
houses, and which makes them glimmer in the sun like banks of
freshly-driven snow. It has not sufficient strength for the mason, but
no other was in use when we landed at Monterey. The first regular
lime-kiln was burnt by me for the town-hall I found the stone about ten
miles from Monterey, and the lime it produced of a superior quality.
When the lime, hair, lath, and sand were brought together, no little
curiosity was awakened by the heterogeneous mass, and the admiration was
equally apparent when each took its place and performed its part in the
plaster and hard finish of the wall and ceiling. Thousands came to see
the work; it was the lion of the day. But the curiosity of the geologist
would turn from this to the fossil oyster-shells in the hills; and when
he has exhausted those on the coast, let him turn inland, and he will
find on the mountains, two hundred miles from the sea, and on elevations
of a thousand feet, the same marine productions; and not only these, but
the skeleton of a whale almost entire. How came that monster up there,
high and dry, glimmering like the pale skeleton of a huge cloud between
us and the moon? Did the central fire which threw up the mountain ridge,
throw him up on its crest? How astonished he must have been to find
himself up there, blowing off steam among volcanoes and comets! Now let
our _savans_ quit their cockle-shells and petrified herring, and tell us
about that whale. They will find him near the rancho of Robert
Livermore, on a mountain which overlooks the great valley of the San
Joaquin. There he reposes in grim majesty, while the winds of ages pour
through his bleaching bones their hollow dirge.
THE TWO CLASSES OF EMIGRANTS.
The emigrants to California are composed of two classes—those who come
to live by their wits, and those who come to accumulate by their work.
The wit capitalists will find dupes for a time—small fish in shallow
waters—but a huge roller will soon heave them all high and dry! This is
the last country to which a man should come, who is above or beneath the
exercise of his muscles. Every object he meets addresses him in the
admonitory language which gleams in the motto of the Arkansas
bowie-knife—“root, hog, or die.” But then he has this encouragement: he
can root almost anywhere, but _root_ he must. They who come relying on
their physical forces, and who are largely endowed with the organs of
perseverance, will succeed. But if they stay too long in San Francisco,
their enthusiasm will have an ague-fit, and their golden dream turn to
sleet and hail. They should hasten through and dash at once into their
scene of labor; nor should they expect success without corresponding
efforts; if fortune favors them to-day, she will disappoint them
to-morrow; her favors and frowns fall with marvellous caprice; the
digger must be above the one and independent of the other; he must rely
upon his own resources; and upon his fidelity to one unchanged and
unchangeable purpose. He comes here to get gold, not in pounds or
ounces, but in grains; his most instructive lesson will be by the side
of the ant-hill. There he sees a little industrious fellow, foregoing
the pastimes of other insects, and bringing another grain to his heap;
working on with right good heart through the day, and sometimes taking
advantage of the moon, and plying his task through the luminous night.
Let him watch that ant, and go and do likewise, if he would return from
California with a fortune. I don’t recommend him to come here and
convert himself into a pismire for gold; but if he _will_ come, the more
he has of the habits of that little groundling the better.
CALIFORNIA ON CHARACTER.
Life in California impresses new features on old characters, as a fresh
mintage on antiquated coins. The man whose prudence in the States never
forsakes him, and whose practical maxim is, “a bird in the hand is worth
two in the bush,” will _here_ throw all his birds into the bushes,
seemingly for the mere excitement of catching them again. He finds
himself in an atmosphere so strongly stirred and stirring, that he must
whirl with it, and soon enjoys the strong eddy almost as much as the
still pool. He may hang perhaps a moment on the verge of a cataract, but
if it spreads below to a tranquil lake, down he goes, and emerges from
the boiling gulf calm and confident as if lord of the glittering
trident. Or he may have been, while in the States, remarked for his
parsimony, pinching every cent as it dropped into the contribution-box
as if there was a spasm between his avarice and alms. But in California
that cent so awfully pinched soon takes the shape of a doubloon, and
slides from his hand too easily to leave even the odor of its value
behind. I have known five men, who never contributed a dollar in the
States for the support of a clergyman subscribe here five hundred
dollars each per annum, merely to encourage, as they termed it, “a good
sort of a thing in the community.” I have seen a miser, who would have
sold a hob-nail from his heel for old iron, in bartering off his saddle
throw in the horse; and then exchange a lump of perfectly pure gold for
one half quartz, merely because it struck his fancy! Such are some of
the anomalies in character which a life in California produces. If you
doubt it, make the experiment, and you will soon find your own heart,
though gnarled as a knot, cracking open, and turning inside out like a
kernel of parched corn.
HEADS AND TAILS.
My friend William Blackburn, alcalde of Santa Cruz, often hits upon a
method of punishing a transgressor, which has some claims to originality
as well as justice. A young man was brought before him, charged with
having sheared, close to the stump, the sweeping tail of another’s
horse. The evidence of the nefarious act, and of the prisoner’s guilt,
was conclusive. The alcalde sent for a barber, ordered the offender to
be seated, and directed the tonsor to shear and shave him clean of his
dark flowing locks and curling moustache, in which his pride and vanity
lay This was hardly done, when Mr. B, counsel for the prisoner entered,
and moved an arrest of judgment. “Oh, yes,” said the alcalde, “as the
shears and razor have done their work, judgment may now rest.” “And
under what law,” inquired the learned counsel, “has this penalty been
inflicted?” “Under the Mosaic,” replied the alcalde: “that good old
rule—eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hair for hair.” “But,” said the
biblical jurist, “_that_ was the law of the Old Testament, which has
been abrogated in the New.” “But we are still living,” returned the
alcalde, “under the old dispensation, and must continue there till
Congress shall sanction a new order of things.” “Well, well,” continued
the counsel, “old dispensation or new, the penalty was too severe—a
man’s head against a horse’s tail!” “That is not the question,” rejoined
the alcalde: “it is the hair on the one against the hair on the other;
now as there are forty fiddles to one wig in California, the inference
is just, that horsehair of the two is in most demand, and that the
greatest sufferer in this case is still the owner of the steed.” “But,
then,” murmured the ingenious counsel, “you should consider the young
man’s pride.” “Yes, yes,” responded the alcalde, “I considered all that,
and considered too the stump of that horse’s tail, and the just pride of
his owner. Your client will recover his crop much sooner than the other,
and will manage, I hope, to keep it free of the barber’s department in
this court;” and with this, client and counsel were dismissed.
SPANISH COURTESIES.
The courtesies characteristic of the Spanish linger in California, and
seem, as you encounter them amid the less observant habits of the
emigration, like golden-tinted leaves of Autumn, still trembling on
their stems in the rushing verdure of Spring. They exhibit themselves in
every phase of society and every walk of life. You encounter them in the
church, in the fandango, at the bridal altar, and the hearse: they adorn
youth, and take from age its chilling severity. They are trifles in
themselves, but they refine social intercourse, and soften its
alienations. They may seem to verge upon extremes, but even then they
carry some sentiment with them, some sign of deference to humanity. I
received a cluster of wild-flowers from a lady, with a note in pure
Castilian, and bearing in the subscription the initials of the words,
which rudely translated mean, “I kiss your hand.” One might have felt
tempted to write her back—
Thou need’st not, lady, stoop so low
To print the gentle kiss:
Can hands return what lips bestow,
Or blush to show their bliss?