TRAVELS IN THE CALIFORNIA S. 
95 
from danger which never existed, and for protecting the 
villains that pretended its existence as an excuse for shed¬ 
ding blood. 
No other event occurred that day worthy of being no¬ 
ticed, except the waves of those poor fellow’s who wore 
floating down the coast in the prison-ship went weeping 
through the streets, beseeching all they met to go down to 
Santa Barbara and bring back their husbands. 
I spent my time among the foreigners, who had been let 
out of prison, in gathering information relative to the coun¬ 
try, which will be given in another part of the volume. 
The evening was passed at Mr. Larkin’s. We 'were hap¬ 
py, not because we felt no danger around us, for there was 
much of it. But we were glad that no more groans came 
up from the damp dungeons ! That none of our countrymen 
were calling for air, and water, and food, from those infernal 
dens ! Alas, for those who w T ere on their way to Mexico 
We thought of them sadly ; they might be dying ; but we 
called hope to our aid, and believed that better hours would 
soon dawn on their misery. More than one hundred of our 
countrymen were released from impending death ! Bolts 
grated no more! chains clanked no more on the silent 
night! And we felt in our own persons something of that 
returning security to life which sends through the soul of 
the most reckless and inexpressible sense of pleasure. 
The next morning the green before the governor’s house 
was graced with a portly effigy of Senor Judas Iscariot ! 
One ankle out of joint, and other parts disarranged, for the 
especial gratification of his inferiors in moral qualities. The 
senor w r as assumed to be dead. His optics glared rather 
sorrowfully upon the multitude around him, as if loth to 
look the last time on congenial hearts ! He held in his 
hand a scroll, containing a last will and testament, in which 
his several virtues and possesions were bequeathed to vari¬ 
ous persons residing in the country. 
In the afternoon the American and some other gentlemen 
15 
