The party left los Angeles on the morning of the 22d, at daybreak, though the call which took the colonel to Monterey, had reached him only the evening before. Their path lay through the wild mountains of San Fernando, where the steep ridge and precipitous glen follow each other like the deep hollows and crested waves of ocean, under the driving force of the storm. It was a relief when a rough ravine opened its winding gallery on the line of their path. They reached at length the maritime defile of El Rincon, or Punto Gordo, where a mountain bluff shoulders its way boldly to the sea, leaving for fifteen miles only a narrow line of broken coast, lashed at high tide, and in the gale, by the foaming surf. The sun was on the wave of the Pacific, when they issued from the Rincon; and twilight still lingered when they reached the hospitable rancho of Don Thomas Robbins—one hundred and twenty-five miles from los Angeles. The only limb in the company which seemed to complain of fatigue was the right arm of Jacob, incessantly exercised in lashing the loose horses to the track, and lassoing the relays. None of the horses were shod—an iron contrivance unknown here, except among a few Americans. The gait through the day had been a hand-gallop, relieved at short intervals by a light trot. Here the party rested for the night, while the horses gathered their food from the young grass which spread its tender verdure on the field. Another morning had thrown its splendors on the forest when the party waved their adieu to their hospitable host, and were under way. Their path lay over the spurs of the Santa Barbara mountains; and close to that steep ridge, where the California battalion, under Col. Fremont, encountered on the 25th Dec., 1846, a blinding storm, which still throws its sleet and hail through the dreams of those hardy men. Such was its overpowering force, that more than a hundred of their horses dropped down under their saddles. Their bleaching bones still glimmering in the gorges, and hanging on the cliffs, are the ghastly memorials of its terrific violence. None but they, who were of their number, can tell what that battalion suffered. The object of that campaign accomplished, and the conquest of California secured, the colonel, with his friend and servant, was now on his brief return. Their path continued over the flukes and around the bluffs of the coast mountains, relieved at intervals by the less rugged slopes and more level lines of the cañada. The hand-gallop and light trot of their spirited animals brought them, at set of sun, to the rancho of their friend, Capt. Dana, where they supped, and then proceeding on to San Luis Obispo, reached the house of Don Jesúse, the colonel’s companion, at nine o’clock in the evening—one hundred and thirty-five miles from the place where they broke camp in the morning!