200 A CALIFORNIA TEAMP. 



ment. Many by their prodigality at Salt Lake, or among the 

 Mormon settlements, had emptied their purses, and these found 

 themselves in a sorry plight indeed. The poor fellows might 

 have been seen at the street corners dolefully discussing their 

 affairs, present and prospective. Some were going to San Pedro 

 to take stowaway luck on the steamer to San Francisco; 

 others to continue their tramp up the coast to the same place, 

 a journey of five hundred miles over a rough, thinly-settled 

 country. I never heard how they got through. I am sorry 

 to say that in those times we did not worry much about what 

 became of one another. 



Shortly after sunset I left Los Angeles, and with one of my 

 fellow ox-drivers of the plains began a night's march for San 

 Pedro, thirty miles away. At this time I can hardly say why 

 I started at that hour, but either because it was pleasanter 

 traveling by night than by day, or for fear of missing the 

 steamer, or to save the cost of a night's lodging. I think for 

 the latter reason, as the five dollar gold piece I got for my 

 rifle was broken up and the fragments so reduced, that I had 

 barely enough for my expenses to San Francisco, independent 

 of my passage money, which I would not touch. My com- 

 panion was " Dutch Joe," he of the profane tongue and reck- 

 less disposition; but the poor fellow was dead broke now and 

 I pitied him. He had been a Mississippi steamboat man, and 

 was calculating to " beat" his way up the coast after he once 

 got on the steamer. 



Passing through a street lined with gardens of orange, fig 

 and other semi-tropical trees, and bordered with hedges of 

 willow and long extensions of grape-trellises, we left the City 

 of Angels. Had we the wisdom we afterward possessed, we 

 w^ould have known these picturesque roadside borders were 

 screens for expert throwers of the lasso, who practiced on trav- 

 elers their noted skill and choked and robbed them ; and that 

 the sterile pampas beyond was the haunt of picturesque ban- 



