198 JOHN C. FREMONT. 



Spanish boy in the saddle to watch. Sleep, when 

 commenced, was too sweet to be easily given up, 

 and it was half-way between midnight and day 

 when the sleepers were aroused by an estampedo 

 among the horses and the calls of the boy. The 

 cause of the alarm was soon found : not Indians, 

 but white bears, this valley being their great re- 

 sort, and the place where Colonel Fremont and 

 thirty-five of his men encountered some hundred of 

 them the summer before, killing thirty upon the 

 ground. 



"The character of these bears is well known, and 

 the bravest hunters do not like to meet them with- 

 out the advantage of numbers. On discovering the 

 enemy, Colonel Fremont felt for his pistols; but 

 Don Jesus desired him to lie still, saying that 

 'people could scare bears,' and immediately hal- 

 looed to them in Spanish, and they went off. Sleep 

 went off also; and the recovery of the horses 

 frightened by the bears, building a rousing fire, 

 making a breakfast from the hospitable supplies of 

 San Luis Obispo, occupied the party till daybreak, 

 when the journey was resumed eighty miles, and 

 the afternoon brought the party to Monterey. 



"The next day, in the afternoon, the party set 

 out on their return, and, the two horses rode by 

 Colonel Fremont from San Luis Obispo being a 



