On the following day, the 21st, we started out on the same route downstream. A few isolated villages were encountered, their inhabitants gone, which the soldiers reconnoitred. I did not see them, nor did I want to go ashore, but in the village where the two old women who had been baptized were left, the soldiers were told that it had been abandoned by the natives, after they had destroyed the houses. Such is the fear that fills the breasts of these unfortunate heathen. At ten-thirty o'clock in the morning we left the main stream of the Sacramento, which makes a turn here and runs to the northwest, and took a branch which here cuts off from the big river and runs southward. After having sailed along this branch for five miles, we suddenly came upon a village of the heathen, situated on the east bank of the branch, or slough. All the Indians ran away, hiding themselves in the brush and tule swamps. It was possible to gather up only a few women and children of both sexes and nine buck Indians. This was with much effort, for the troops had to wade through the water at places up to their waist, and passage was entirely prevented by the mud. The reverend fathers occupied themselves by baptizing some feeble old women and another woman, who was seen to be seriously ill. As soon as the reverend fathers had finished I made a short speech to the Indians and left them in their village. We continued sailing until six o'clock in the afternoon when we stopped at the confluence of this slough and the River San Joaquin. The latter comes down from the southeast and joins the River of the Holy Sacrament so as to form the bays of the Tulpunes, Ompines, and Chupucanes. From here the two rivers, in one body, discharge through the Strait of the Karquines so as to empty into the Bay of San Francisco. On the 22nd the Reverend Father Fray Narciso decided to ascend the San Joaquin River in order to visit a rancheria called Pasasimes. Together with Sergeant Soto I obtained information concerning the situation of this village and the condition of the Indians living in it, with the purpose of going in another direction in case there was no fear of an attack by the heathen. The said Soto told me that in the region in which this village is situated there was no cause for apprehension, that the Indians of this village went often to Mission San José and that they were very docile. Nevertheless I gave the necessary orders and instructions for him, with seven soldiers, to accompany the Reverend Father Duran while I with the corporal and four soldiers separated from them with the idea of returning to the southwest and northwest of the Island of the Quenemsias, where the runaway Christians of San José were hiding.