A mile or two further on, and we passed the grave of one whom I had known well in Monterey. He was a young man of many amiable and excellent qualities; was on his way to the mines; but in crossing a gulch, now entirely dry, but through which a freshet then swept, became entangled with the gearing of his horses, and was drowned. An evergreen tree throws its perpetual shadows on the mound where he rests, and the wild birds sing his requiem. His widowed mother, who dwells by the rushing tide of the Missouri, will long look for his return, and still doubt in her grief the story of his death. But never will her eyes again rest on his. Till the heavens be no more he shall not awake, nor be raised out of his sleep. Our road for ten miles lay through a level plain corresponding in its cheerless aspect to that we had passed on the other side of the San Joaquin. We encountered a drove of wild elk with their forest of branching horns, but they kept beyond the range of our rifles, and our horses were too tired to be put on the pursuit. We had only the satisfaction of venting, in words, our spleen on their speed, but little cared they for that. They run away at times, as it would seem, from their own horns, for our road was strewn with these cast-off coronets. Leaving the plain we ascended into a rolling country lightly timbered with oak, pine, and birch. We wound rapidly forward, till we encountered a stream, and a plot of green grass which had escaped the fire that had been straggling about among the hills. We were without a guide, and on a trail which at times became rather faint and difficult, and no one knew where we might next meet with water, so we tethered, collected our wood for the night, and lit our camp-fire. We had no more potatoes or onions for a stew, and made our supper on broiled pork, hard bread, and coffee. We had our saddles for our pillows, the green earth for our couch, and the bright stars to light us to our rest. FRIDAY, SEPT. 29. One of our company discovered near our camp this morning a little lake, with fish darting about in its lucid waters. Our twine was soon out and hooked, the alder supplied us with poles, and we answered exactly to Dr. Johnson’s definition of angling—“Line and rod, with a worm at one end and a fool at the other,” for not a fish would bite; they were not to be caught with a poor wriggling worm, when golden flies were floating about. They were fish of a better taste; and we had to breakfast as we had done before, on broiled pork, hard bread, and coffee. A famished crow, as if in sympathy with our wants, rattled his bones near by on a dry limb.