e pleasant. It rained one day, and during two days the
winds blew strong and cold from the north-west. The nights are cool,
but fires are not requisite to comfort. The snow-clad mountains, about
twenty-five or thirty miles to the east of us, contrast singularly with
the brilliant fresh verdure of the plain.

On the 18th of January General Kearny, with the dragoons, left for San
Diego. There was understood to be a difference between General Kearny
and Commodore Stockton, and General Kearny and Colonel Fremont, in
regard to their respective powers and duties; which, as the whole
subject has subsequently undergone a thorough investigation, and the
result made public, it is unnecessary for me to allude to more
particularly. I did not converse with General Kearny while he was at
Los Angeles, and consequently possessed no other knowledge of his views
and intentions, or of the powers with which he had been invested by the
President, than what I derived from report.

On the 19th, Commodore Stockton and suite, with a small escort, left
for San Diego. Soon after his departure the battalion was paraded, and
the appointment of Colonel Fremont as governor of California, and
Colonel W.H. Russell, as secretary of state, by Commodore Stockton, was
read to them by Colonel Russell. It was announced, also, that, although
Colonel Fremont had accepted the office of chief civil magistrate of
California, he would still retain his military office, and command the
battalion as heretofore.

Commodore Shubrick, however, arrived at Monterey on the 23rd of
January, in the U.S. ship Independence, and, ranking above Commodore
Stockton, assumed the chief command, as appears by the date of a
general order published at Monterey, and written on board the United
States ship Independence, on February 1st, thanking the volunteers for
their services, and announcing the restoration of order. For I should
state that an insurrection, headed by Don Francisco Sanchez, had broken
out in the upper portion of California some time towards the last of
December, which had been put down by a detachment of marines and
volunteers. The insurgents had committed some outrages, and among other
acts had taken prisoner Lieutenant W.A. Bartlett, acting Alcalde of San
Francisco, with some other Americans. An account of the suppression of
this affair I find in the "Californian" newspaper of February 6th, 1847,
from which it appears, "that a party of one hundred and one men,
com