After long talks over the "pros and cons," I concluded to go for a long eighteen months from my beloved home, and decided to join "Col. H. L. Webb's California Company" which was being organized. I was appointed second in command owing to my knowledge of backwoodsman's life and the experience of my Texas trip; and after eight weeks of weariness and anxiety found I was to take charge of eighty men and, with $27,000.00 belonging to the Company, was to meet Col. Webb at Cairo. I had talked with fathers, and with young men who wished to learn all about a backwoodsman's life in half an hour, made purchases of arms and implements and various needful articles, and finally all was ready, and the date of departure decided upon. _Feb. 8th, 1849._ A day of hurry began, and three o'clock found us on board the steamer "Transport," surrounded by the company and a crowd of their friends and ours to see us off. Fathers took my hands in both theirs, and in scarcely audible voices begged me to take care of only sons, brothers asked me to give counsel and advice to younger brothers, men I had never seen gave hearty hand clasps that told of sound hearts, and said: "My brother's with you, treat him right and if he is _my_ brother he'll die for you, or with you." The final words of clergymen as they gave us their parting advice and blessing, were drowned by the tolling of the last bell. Its knell went to my heart like a funeral note, and I was too much overcome to answer the cheer of the hundreds who came down to see us off, and in silence waved my cap to my brother and friends, and in deep mental sorrow prayed God for courage and ability to do all I had promised to try to do. My men looked back to New York's beautiful battery, and I paced the boiler deck almost alone, watching the red sunset and cooling my burning face and aching head with the north-west wind, cold and frosty from the snow covered palisades, turning often to look up "our North River" to see if I could get one glimpse of that home so long to be unseen. The tide was low so we had to take the outside, and I went to the bow to look over Sandy Hook towards the broad Atlantic, and to try to realize that the Pacific had to be seen before I could again return to my own beautiful coast. It was a most curious sight as I entered the cabin of the boat to see the different feelings exhibited; some were in deep thought; some in sorrowful anxiety; some gay, and again others with evidently forced merriment; but in the main, cheerfulness was certainly on every side, and when I had to announce that we had been promised what was not on board, a good supper, not a murmur was heard, and merriment was created by the imitations of the orders of the New York eating-houses such as: "roast beef rare," "plum pudding both kinds of sauce," etc.