Page:History of California, Volume 3 (Bancroft).djvu/187

Rh in all 22,000 persons, receiving from the padres certificates by which the value of his services was to be finally estimated by a 'high dignitary' in the north. After a week's visit to Ross, where everything pleased the American, and where he received $100 for his medical services, he returned and presented his certificates to the padre at San Francisco. On July 8th John Cabortes, presumably Padre Juan Cabot, presented the amateur physician a paper, by which he gave him 500 cattle and 500 mules, with land on which to pasture the same—to be delivered when he had become a Catholic and a Mexican citizen. "When I had read this," says Pattie, "I was struck dumb. My anger choked me." But he soon recovered his speech sufficiently to give the padre his opinion in the matter, to say that he came from a country where the laws compelled a man to pay another what he justly owed him without condition of submission to "any of his whimsical desires;" that as a protestant he would not change his opinions for all the money the mission was worth, and that as an American, "rather than consent to be adopted into the society and companionship of such a band of murderers and robbers," he would suffer death. For this "honest and plain utterance" of his feelings, he was ordered to leave the house; and, keeping his rifle ready for any one the priest might send after him, he bought a horse for three dollars, and started for Monte El Rey!

At the capital Pattie shipped on an American vessel, and for several months ploughed the Pacific, touching at various ports. He does not name the vessel, and he gives no particulars of his voyage, save