On leaving California, about the first of January, 1850, he decided to go down the coast to Mazatlan and thence overland through Mexico. He came to that conclusion after long consultations with his friends, none of whom could or dared accompany him, while all told him of robbers, deserts, impassable streams, and dangerous wild beasts which awaited all travellers in that benighted and trackless country. Mr. Taylor would have enjoyed some thrilling adventures; and the fears of his advisers only made him more decided in his determination to go. So, alone, and with but slight knowledge of the Spanish language, he disembarked at Mazatlan on the Mexican coast, near the mouth of the Gulf of California, and with a pair of pistols and a dwarfed mule, started into the unknown wilds of that tropical land. [Illustration: CASTLE OF CHAPULTEPEC.] His hardships were many, and his fatigue at times almost unbearable; but his love for things new and strange, for the unexplored and unknown, kept him moving perseveringly on through the thickets and ravines of upper Mexico. By great skill and considerable assurance he managed to keep in the good graces of the people he met, and for several days, in the forests and in the villages, he met, with very kind and hospitable treatment. On one occasion, however, he fell among thieves. Before he arrived at the city of Mexico, and while still in the wilderness of the interior of the Mexican highlands, he was suddenly attacked by three Mexican robbers, to whose marauding purposes he could make no resistance, he having placed such reliance upon the good faith of the natives as to carry his pistol without a cartridge in it. The banditti made him dismount and hand over what little money in coin he happened to have, and after taking such blankets and trinkets as they desired, left him with his hands tied behind him, to get on as best he could. Fortunately they did not want his horse, which he had bought in place of the useless mule, and after extricating himself from his bonds by long struggles, he mounted his horse and rode on to Mexico with his drafts for money all intact. He seems to have placed less reliance on the Mexicans, after that encounter, and took good care to ride out of range of their muskets and to keep himself supplied with ammunition.