PACIFIC AND BEERING'S STRAIT. 59 



imagined, however, that he still entertained hopes of 

 the conversion of one of the party, and that with this 

 view he again occasioned a delay in furnishing horses 

 for the next day's journey ; offering as excuses, that 

 some of the horses of the mission were engaged hy 

 soldiers in pursuit of a Mexican exile, who had de- 

 serted ; that others had been taken by the vaqu^ros to 

 look after a male and female Indian, who had likewise 

 absconded, and that the rest were gone to join the ex- 

 pedition against Los Gentiles, the Cosemenes. Vexed 

 at this delay, the party endeavoured to hire horses at 

 their own expense, but the price demanded was so 

 exorbitant that they determined to wait the return of 

 those that were said to be absent. 



It is more than probable that some one of my 

 readers may have been in the same predicament — in a 

 strange town, in a strange country, with a beast 

 fatigued to death, and an urgent necessity for pro- 

 ceeding ; he will then easily remember the amiable 

 and benevolent alacrity with which the inhabitants 

 endeavoured to lighten his load of every stray crown 

 they could obtain from him, on every pretence that 

 ingenious cupidity can invent. So at least did the 

 good people at San Juan, when padre Arroyo would 

 no longer assist our poor companions. Private horses 

 could be had, it was true, but the terms were either 

 thirteen shillings sterling for the journey, or seven- 

 teen shillings sterling for the purchase of the horse, 

 which in California is considered so exorbitant that 

 our shipmates did not think proper to suifer the im- 

 position, and awaited the horses belonging to the 

 mission. 



After a day's delay, during which they again heard 

 many invectives against the new government of 



