Here I found our mule, whose obstinate memory had carried him home to his old stable,--also the remaining events in Vance's brief, but brilliant career. That ornament of the Utah and Yo-Semite expeditions had entered Mariposa on Clark's horse,--lost our eighty golden dollars at a single session of bluff,--departed gayly for Coulterville, where he sold Clark's horse at auction for forty dollars, including saddle and bridle, and immediately at another game of bluff lost the entire purchase-money to the happy buyer, (Clark got his horse again on proving title,)--and finally vanished for parts unknown, with nothing in his pocket but buttons, or in his memory but villanies. Nowhere out of California or Old Spain can there exist such a modern survivor of the days of Gil Blas! Too happy in the recovery of Clark's and our own animals to waste time in hue-and-cry, I loaded my two reclaimed pack-beasts with all that our commissariat needed,--nooned at Clark's, on my way back, the third day after leaving the Valley for Mariposa, and that same night was among my rejoicing comrades at the head of the Great Yo-Semite. That afternoon they had come to the bottom of the flour-bag, after living for three days on unleavened slapjacks without either butter or sirup. I have seen people who professed to relish the Jewish Passover-bread; but, after such an experience as our party's, I venture to say they would have regarded it worthy of a place among the other abolished types of the Mosaic dispensation. As for me and the mule, we felt our hearts swell within us as if we had come to raise the siege of Leyden. In that same enthusiasm shared our artists, _savans_, and gentlemen, embracing the shaggy neck of the mule as he had been a brother what time they realized that his panniers were full. Can any one wonder at my early words, "A slapjack may be the last plank between the woodsman and starvation"?