On the 7th the march was resumed, and, near San Bernardo, Kearny's advance encountered and defeated a small party of the Californians who had taken post on a hill. At San Bernardo, the troops remained till the morning of the 11th, when they were joined by a party of sailors and marines, under Lieutenant Gray. They then proceeded upon their march, and on the 12th, arrived at San Diego; having thus completed a march of eleven hundred miles through an enemy's country, with but one hundred men. The force of General Kearny having joined that of Commodore Stockton, the expedition against Los Angeles, of which we have given an account in this chapter, was successfully consummated, and tranquillity restored in California. General Kearny and Commodore Stockton returned to the United States in January, 1847, leaving Colonel Fremont to exercise the office of governor and military commandant of California. No further events of an importance worth recording occurred till the treaty of peace between the United States and Mexico. CHAPTER VI. DISCOVERY OF THE GOLD PLACERS. By the treaty concluded between the United States and Mexico, in 1847, the territory of Upper California became the property of the United States. Little thought the Mexican government of the value of the land they were ceding, further than its commercial importance; and, doubtless, little thought the buyers of the territory, that its soil was pregnant with a wealth untold, and that its rivers flowed over golden beds. This territory, now belonging to the American Union, embraces an area of 448,961 square miles. It extends along the Pacific coast, from about the thirty-second parallel of north latitude, a distance of near seven hundred miles, to the forty-second parallel, the southern boundary of Oregon. On the east, it is bounded by New Mexico. During the long period which transpired between its discovery and its cession to the United States, this vast tract of country was frequently visited by men of science, from all parts of the world. Repeated examinations were made by learned and enterprising officers and civilians; but none of them discovered the important fact, that the mountain torrents of the Sierra Nevada were constantly pouring down their golden sands into the valleys of the Sacramento and San Joaquin. The glittering particles twinkled beneath their feet, in the ravines which they explored, or glistened in the watercourses which they forded, yet they passed them by unheeded. Not a legend or tradition was heard among the white settlers, or the aborigines, that attracted their curiosity. A nation's ransom lay within their grasp, but, strange to say, it escaped their notice--it flashed and sparkled all in vain.[1]