lige 3 114 
old gun was mounted in this hovel, looking through an embrasure 
to the westward. In this building I was told that I could stow my 
party and my instruments safely. - 
_ We preferred the open-air and the muddy plaza, saturated with 
all sorts of filth, to this wretched hole; but having no alternative, 
our chronometers and instruments were stowed in it and guarded 
by the indefatigable Mr, Bestor. I went off to accept from the hos- 
pitality of a friend the first bed I had seen in many months. 
About midnight there was one of those false alarms which ever and 
anon disturbed this goodly town. Four burly fellows rushed to 
man this gun, but they found themselves unexpectedly opposed by 
Mr. Bestor and two or three of my party. But for this timely re- 
sistance, my whole little stock of chronometers, barometer, &c., 
. would have been totally destroyed. In the morning, through the 
_ kind exertions of my friend, Captain Gillespie, I was enabled to | 
get a house with two rooms, the only unoccupied quarters in the — 
town. Foreseeing employment of a different nature, my little 
5 patty occupied themselves busily in collecting and bringing up 
~~ the notes of our field-work. 
_ On the 28th December I received notification from General 
a Kearny to leave my party in San Diego and report te him for duty, 
as the acting adjutant general of the forces; Captain Turner, his 
adjutant general, having been assigned “by him to the command o 
_ the remnant of the company of the Ist dragoons. 
= “Mr. Warner was still too unwell, from the wounds received at 
San’ Pasqual, to accompany us, or to commence the survey of 
San Diego bay. Wishing to have a secure place to deposite my 
instruments, notes, &c., T applied to Captain Dupont to give them 
 aplace on board the Cyane, He granted this request, and kindly 
_. 4imsisted that, Mr. Bestor and Mr. Stanly should also go on board, 
where they could pursue their work unmolested. 
_ [should be very ungrateful if I-did not here make my acknow- 
_ ledgments to Captain Dupont, and all the officers of the nayy with 
as Eg iy r 
whom we were thrown in contact, for the uniform kindness and the 
ani 
. 
generous hospitality with which they always supplied our personal 
wants, and the promptness with which they rendered assistance in 
‘amy public enterprise. ~ ‘ 
y work as topographical engineer may be considered to end at 
| se place; and that portion of the map embraced between San 
Diego and the Pueblo or Ciudad de los Angeles is compiled from 
existing maps, with slight alterations made by myself from a view 
: of the ground, without the aid of instruments. 
: The coast is taken from old Spanish charts, published in Madrid 
_ in 1825, kindly furnished me by Captain Wilkes. The harbor of 
© San Diego has been surveyed by Captain, Sir Edward Belcher, of 
- » the royal navy, whose determination of the longitude of the spit to 
_. thé»south of Punta Loma, published in his ‘¢ voyage round the 
world,” has been adopted, in the absence of time or instruments to , 
enable me to make the requisite observations. _ 
The longitude of the same point by Malispina 117° 17’, and the _ 
. chronometric longitude brought by myself from my last station — 
