fully expected, that we should be back to
Monterey several days before that time had expired. It was purely a
question of hard riding. Andreas and his party had started, as far
as we could learn, three days in advance of us, and no doubt knew
the track better than the old trapper who had undertaken to
accompany us as guide. He had never penetrated further than the foot
of the Sierra, so that if we were compelled to cross the mountains
we should have to seek for some Indians to guide us on our course.
By pressing our horses hard we succeeded in crossing the hills of
the coast range that night, and encamped some slight way down the
descent, in as sheltered a spot as we could manage to select. The
night was quite frosty, but we made up a blazing fire, and, well
wrapped up in our serapes, slept till morning, without feeling much
inconvenience from the cold. Next day we struck the river of the
lakes, and found it thickly hemmed in with timber along its whole
course. We soon found a fording place, and encamped at night a few
miles from the east bank. The following morning we fell in with some
civilized Indians, who informed us, in answer to our inquiries, that
a party of three whites passed along the trail the evening before
last, and that they would have encamped not far from this spot.

These Indians, Don Luis informed me, had all of them been attached
to the Californian Missions; but, since the downfall of these
establishments, they had moved across the coast range, and had
located themselves in the neighbourhood of the Tule Lakes,
subsisting chiefly on horseflesh. To gratify their appetites,
however, instead of giving chase to the number of wild horses--here
called mustangs--that are scattered over the extensive prairies in
the neighbourhood of the lakes, they adopt a much lazier method of
supplying their larder. This is, to make predatory excursions across
the mountains, and to drive off a large herd of tame horses,
belonging to some poor ranchero, at a time; these they slaughter,
and subsist on as long as the flesh lasts, when they set out again
on a similar expedition. Sometimes they are pursued, and, if
overtaken, butchered forthwith; but, in general, they manage to
escape some little distance into the interior, where they are safe
not to be followed.

We put spurs into our horses, and soon cleared the marshy ground
intervening between us and the Fork, which we forded, and rode for
several miles through a country t