DIVISION ONK — PRE-PASADKNIAN. 85 



left by Commodore Stockton or Fremont to hold the place. They heard of 

 his approach, and escaped in the night. Garfias left a small Mexican gar- 

 rison there, and one also at San Buena Ventura, and then returned to Los 

 Angeles with forty or fifty recruits for Gen, Flores' army, but did not ar- 

 rive until after the battle of Dominguez. He brought in as a prisoner from 

 Santa Barbara an American named George Nidever, who refused to give 

 his parole ; but Nidever escaped from Garfias at Los Angeles, succeeded in 

 reaching Stockton's army, and was in the battles ot January 8 and 9, 1847. 

 This Nidever was the same man who afterward in 1853 discovered and res- 

 cued the native Indian woman who had lived on San Nicholas island en- 

 tirely alone for eighteen years. He was offered $1,000 to sell her for a 

 traveling show ; but he was opposed to slavery, and refusing the golden 

 bribe, he gave her protection and a home in his own family till she died, 



THE BATTLE OF DOMINGUEZ. 



On reaching San Pedro, lyieut. Gillespie embarked with his troops Oc- 

 tober 4, for safety, on the merchant ship Vandalia, which chanced to be ly- 

 ing there. October 6 Capt. Mervine arrived there from San Francisco with 

 the U. S. frigate Savannah. On the 7th he landed 350 of his men, who 

 were then joined by Gillespie's men, but without horses or cannon, for Gil- 

 lespie told Mervine that the Mexicans had no artillery, as he had brought 

 away and destroyed all their cannon, and therefore he would need none. 

 This force of 400 men marched to the Dominguez ranch house and camped 

 there for the night. The next morning, October 8, they formed in march- 

 ing order and started for Los Angeles, but were immediately attacked by a 

 force of ninety men under Don Jose Antonio Carrillo, one of the Spaniards 

 whom Gillespie had so indiscreetly arrested only three weeks before. Car- 

 rillo had a small brass cannon, [the historic "Woman's gun "], which his 

 men manoeuvered by hauling it about with rawhide ropes tied to the pom- 

 mels of their saddles. They would dash forward and fire it at Mervine 's 

 marching column, then gallop off with it out of musket range and reload, then 

 back to the front, discharge it, and off again. They fired four times in this 

 way during a running fight of about three miles, and had loaded again with 

 their last ball ; but by this time six Americans had been killed and six or 

 seven wounded, and Mervine retreated to San Pedro, buried his dead on 

 Deadman's Island, and re-embarked his crestfallen troops. 



On his retreat, Mervine stopped at the ranch house again, and com- 

 pelled an old workman there to hitch up an ox-cart and haul the dead 

 bodies to the beach at San Pedro. During these operations some accoutre- 

 ments of killed or wounded men and a flag were carelessly left behind. 

 These were gathered up by Carrillo's men as trophies of their victory. 

 During the next month, November, Don Antonio F. Coronel started as a 

 commissioner to Mexico to obtain funds and other aid for Gen. Flores' 



