TRAVELS IN THE CALIFORNIAS. 
291 
rado, and that effort of sublime forbearance required to re¬ 
ceive his answer. For it is deemed an established principle 
in the physiology of courage as well as of steamboats, that 
too great a pressure upon the internal surface of an enclosing 
boiler will cause a bursting, disastrous, in a certain sense, to 
those in the vicinity. Soldiers going into battle for the first 
time are said to give the happiest illustrations of this law. 
Be this as it may, however, true it is, that when the courier 
related to him all that the Governor had said, the exalted 
Bon exhibited a capacity in the manufacture of fury at short 
notice, which made the floor tremble on which he stood; and 
it is currently believed that if there had not been a hiatus be¬ 
tween the demand of the Don and the said refusal of Alva¬ 
rado, greater danger to the integrity of the Don’s physical 
system would have been the unwholesome consequence. As 
it was, however, that immense personage merely took a glass 
of native wine, and summoned his friends to arms for doing 
battle in behalf of La Republica Mexicana. 
Alarm, that protecting genius of all cowards, is declared to 
have a swift wing. At all events, no sooner did the banner 
of the glorious old Don begin to flap on the breezes of wake¬ 
ful night, than she presented her fluttering form at Monterey, 
and whispered in the ear of Alvarado, of power, of camps, 
of carnage fields, of fame’s bold clarion, and the terror of 
his uncle Don. All these things put together made one 
other thing quite clear to Alvarado’s vast comprehension ; 
namely, that he must again take to the field—-the field in 
which in 1835 he had earned bright laurels, and again fight 
as he then did, for country and freedom, or bow submissively 
before the overpowering valor of his great rival. Nor was 
his genius at fault in this trying exigency. He took his reso¬ 
lution ; and having done so, what else could the world have 
expected, than that his Excellency and the never-to-be- 
equalled Captain Jose Castro, of villainous memory, should 
call the troops to arms and march for the seat of war. And 
this they certainly did as nearly as circumstances permitted ; 
