It is deeply to be regretted that any thing subsequently occurred to disturb this spirit of mutual deference and generous devotion to the crisis which pressed upon our arms. It is not my purpose to comment on this feature in the affairs of California; but it is due to truth that history should be set right; that facts warped from their true position should be reinstated on their own pedestals. The army has covered itself with laurels on the plains of Mexico, and might have won honors here with an adequate force; but to rely on sixty dragoons in the face of a thousand Californians, armed with the rifle and lance, and accustomed to the saddle from their birth, is to trifle with the stern solemnities of war. It is requiring too much of us, who have lived here through the war, and are conversant with its history, to claim our assent to the allegation, that California has been conquered through the achievements of the army. _That_ unshrinking arm of the nation has done its work well and fast elsewhere, but only the vibrations of its blows have trembled across the confines of California. For matter of these the Mexican flag would still be flying over these hills and valleys. The seamen or the Pacific squadron, as reliable on land as faithful on the deck, and the emigrants, who have come here to find a home, have wrenched this land of wealth and promise from the grasp of Mexico, and unfurled the stars and stripes, where they will wave evermore. Let the laurel light where it belongs. TUESDAY, AUG. 10. An Indian galloped to my door this morning, having in lead a splendid pied horse, richly caparisoned, and with an invitation from a ranchero, forty miles distant, that I would come and spend a few days with him at his country-seat; so I placed the office in the hands of Don Davido, well competent to its duties, and with my secretary, Mr. G——, mounted on another noble animal, started for the mansion of my old friend from the mountains of Spain, now in the winter of age, but with a heart warm as a sunbeam. The town, with its white dwellings, soon vanished behind the pine and evergreen oak, which crown the hills, that throw around it their arms of waving shade. The little lakes, navelled in the breaks of the forest, flashed on the eye; the water-fowl, in clouds, took wing; the quail whirled into the bushes; and the deer bounded off to their woodland retreats. A grizzly bear, with a storm of darkness in his face, stood his ground, and never even blinked at the crack of our pistols.