y
heated, the patient would draw himself into the oven; a blanket would be
thrown over the open end, and hot stones put into the water until the
patient could stand it no longer. He was then withdrawn from his steam
bath and doused into the cold stream near by. This treatment may have
answered with the early ailments of the Indians. With the measles or
small-pox it would kill every time.

During my year on the Columbia River, the small-pox exterminated one
small remnant of a band of Indians entirely, and reduced others
materially. I do not think there was a case of recovery among them,
until the doctor with the Hudson Bay Company took the matter in hand and
established a hospital. Nearly every case he treated recovered. I
never, myself, saw the treatment described in the preceding paragraph,
but have heard it described by persons who have witnessed it. The
decimation among the Indians I knew of personally, and the hospital,
established for their benefit, was a Hudson's Bay building not a stone's
throw from my own quarters.

The death of Colonel Bliss, of the Adjutant General's department, which
occurred July 5th, 1853, promoted me to the captaincy of a company then
stationed at Humboldt Bay, California. The notice reached me in
September of the same year, and I very soon started to join my new
command. There was no way of reaching Humboldt at that time except to
take passage on a San Francisco sailing vessel going after lumber. Red
wood, a species of cedar, which on the Pacific coast takes the place
filled by white pine in the East, then abounded on the banks of Humboldt
Bay. There were extensive saw-mills engaged in preparing this lumber
for the San Francisco market, and sailing vessels, used in getting it to
market, furnished the only means of communication between Humboldt and
the balance of the world.

I was obliged to remain in San Francisco for several days before I found
a vessel. This gave me a good opportunity of comparing the San
Francisco of 1852 with that of 1853. As before stated, there had been
but one wharf in front of the city in 1852--Long Wharf. In 1853 the
town had grown out into the bay beyond what was the end of this wharf
when I first saw it. Streets and houses had been built out on piles
where the year before the largest vessels visiting the port lay at
anchor or tied to the wharf. There was no filling under the streets or
houses. San Francisco presented the same general appear