"On this ride, the grass on the road was the food for the horses. At Monterey they had barley; but these horses, meaning those _trained and domesticated_, as the cañalos were, eat almost anything of vegetable food, or even drink, that their master uses, by whom they are petted and caressed, and rarely sold. Bread, fruit, sugar, coffee, and even wine, (like the Persian horses,) they take from the hand of their master, and obey with like docility his slightest intimation. A tap of the whip on the saddle, springs them into action; the check of a thread rein (on the Spanish bit) would stop them: and stopping short at speed they do not jostle the rider or throw him forward. They leap on anything--man, beast, or weapon, on which their master directs them. But this description, so far as conduct and behavior are concerned, of course only applies to the trained and domesticated horse." CHAPTER XXX. During the autumn of 1846, Fremont had had no time to visit his Mariposa purchase; but in the winter, while at Los Angelos, inviting Carson and Godey and two of his Delaware Indians, and his constant attendant Dobson, to take a tramp with him for hunting, in the time of sunny skies in February, he extended his hunt thither, and accomplished the discovery that he had a well-wooded and well-watered--for California well watered--tract of land, of exceeding beauty, clothed, as it was at this season, with a countless variety of flowering plants, these being the grasses of the country, and seemingly well adapted for tillage, certainly an excellent spot for an immense cattle ranche. They killed deer and antelope and smaller game, and with the lasso captured a score of wild horses from a drove of hundreds that fled at their approach; returning to Los Angelos within a week from the time of their departure, laden with the spoils of the chase.