The goats were easily captured and taken on board the schooner, and
thence to shore but many were drowned in the transit, and when driven to
San Francisco the dead were scattered all along the route. Although wild
they seemed to lack the vitality that tame goats possess. The
speculation proved a disappointment to the projectors.
At the adobe house, kept by a Spaniard we had breakfast, then shouldered
our packs for the march of ten leagues to Los Angeles for there was no
chance to ride. It was night before we reached the City of Angels, and
here I staid a day to take a look at the first city I saw in California
in March 1850.
I inquired for my mining companion, W.M. Stockton who worked with
Bennett and myself near Georgetown in 1850, and found he lived near the
old mission of San Gabriel nine miles away, whither I walked and found
him and family well and glad to see me. He had jumped an old pear
orchard which was not claimed by the Mission Fathers, although it was
only three-fourths of a mile away. The trees were all seedlings and very
large, probably 50 or more years old. Some of the Mission buildings were
falling down since they had been abandoned, and the Americans would go
to these houses and remove the tile flooring from the porches and from
the pillars that supported them. These tiles were of hard burned clay,
in pieces about a foot square, and were very convenient to make fire
places and pavements before the doors of their new houses.
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