During one evening of Easter, soon after we had arrived at the _meson_, some one came rushing in, informing us that the guerillas had surrounded us. Seizing our arms, we hastened to the court, where all was confusion. There were thirty robbers outside the walls. They said that they were government soldiers, and loudly demanded admittance, asserting that they came from the alcalde. The proprietor told them they were ladrones, and refused to admit them. They left soon after, threatening to return. The alcalde came in much alarmed, and told us that they were robbers; that the troops of government never traveled during Easter, and if they did they were bound to report themselves to him. We mutually pledged ourselves, in case of an attack during the night upon the town or upon our quarters, to aid the citizens or they us, as the case might be. We made our preparations for defense, and slept with our arms at our sides. Nothing more was heard of the robbers. In the vicinity of Tocotes we crossed over a remarkable mountain. For several hours we were ascending by zigzag paths, each turn bringing us higher among the clouds. When we had reached the summit point, we were several thousand feet above many of our companions and all the mules, a distance of more than two miles by the road, but in a direct line not more than one quarter of a mile, for we could distinctly hear the loud talking of the company and the shouts of the mule-drivers. We looked over the edge of the precipice, and watched our companions as they wound their way slowly up. The view was very grand, though it produced a painful giddiness. Soon after ascending this mountain, our way led us through the crater of an old volcano. There were the pumice-stone, the scoria, and the charred and blackened rocks, as though they had but just issued, boiling and bursting, from the bowels of the earth. We could imagine that we smelt the sulphurous vapor and felt the volcanic heat arising from the pent-up fires below, so fresh did the whole field of desolation and ruin appear. And our imaginations were carried back to the fearfully terrific scenes which had been enacted here. The descent from the table-land down to the shores of the Pacific is abrupt and steep. On the 12th of April we reached San Blas, a dull and unhealthy sea-port. At this place, our company, which had hung together in fragments, was dissolved. Men alone are not social beings; and the numerous attempts to bind them together in California gold-mining associations are as vain as the attempt to make a rope of sand.