t, through weariness and disgust, gave up the chase, and became a
devoted lover of chasing still wilder game in the beautiful regions
around. For days and weeks I did naught but ride and hunt, and became so
inured to long fatiguing tramps and night bivouacs, that with the
ever-varying excitement of the sport, I not only slept the sounder in
the open air, but enjoyed better health than I had before known. The
climate of the interior is far dryer, clearer and more salubrious than
by the sea. On the coast we were frequently for many successive days,
annoyed by raw, foggy weather, and on one occasion there was a light
fall of snow, but every league inland gives a more genial invigorating
temperature. There are very few unhealthy spots in either Central or
Lower California. On the low banks and tributaries of the Bay of San
Francisco, fever prevails to a great extent during the summer and fall,
but elsewhere all epidemic disorders are extremely rare. The summer
subsequent to our arrival in Monterey, a malignant fever attacked and
carried off a number of foreigners, but this, although not severe upon
the natives, was regarded as something extraordinary.

In these hunting excursions I was often attended by some friendly
hunter, whose time hung heavy on his hands, but usually by the same
little fellow who had been my pilot through the Carmelo mountains; his
name was Juaquin Luis, and by far the most intelligent, handsome boy in
the place. On Sundays, with his gala dress of blue velvet trowsers, red
sash, glazed hat and silver rope around it, he was quite a picture. His
knowledge of all the roads, most intricate paths and passes for many
leagues, was remarkable, and at times I was almost confounded at his
apparently instinctive sagacity--he knew the haunts and habits of game,
was a capital shot, rode a horse like part of the animal, never daunted,
never dismayed, never without an expedient, he was the most perfect
child of the woods conceivable, and quite won my heart by his
intelligence. He was always delighted to be my companion, for not being
one of those wise children who knew their sires, his home was none of
the pleasantest, for his dame was living with a cross-grained cobler, in
_relatione_, or as the youngster expressed it, she was wedded, _detras
la iglesia_--behind the church--or in other words, had cheated the
priest out of his marriage dues, and being, I fancied, rather given to
aguadiente, the domestic felicity of th