TUESDAY, DEC. 8. The banditti, that have hovered for some weeks past in the vicinity of Monterey, have made it unsafe to venture out on our hunting excursions, unless in sufficient numbers to repel an attack. But last evening, the want of exercise, and of something to relieve the endless monotony of beef on the table, induced me forth. I took my boy, and put into his hands one of Colt’s revolving rifles, and took myself the fowling-piece. We had hardly got a mile from town, when two horsemen broke from the covert of the woods, and dashed down in our direction. I had but little more than time to exchange pieces with my boy, when they were within rifle shot. Their garb showed them to be Californians. My heart beat a great deal louder than usual. But they suddenly wheeled, and soon disappeared behind one of the hills which look out on the bay. They had no arms, except pistols at the saddle-bow. Whether they had hostile intentions, I know not: their movements had very much that appearance; and I must say I never before experienced so fully those feelings men describe in going into battle. They are not fear so much as an intensity of excitement, which seems as if it would suffocate life: it is dispelled with the first gun. I had once occasion to repel an exasperated Spaniard with a pistol, and though I had anticipated his attack, was prepared for it, and believed that the aim of the pistol would make him sheath his knife; still there was for a moment an intensity of feeling that would, if prolonged, destroy one. We continued our hunting, but changed our ground to the vicinity of the sea, and brought home a dozen curlew, which almost rival in flavor the canvas-back duck.