Page:History of California, Volume 3 (Bancroft).djvu/422

404 found on the roots of his California plants gold enough to make a watch-seal! In November 1833 a vessel en route from the Columbia to Honolulu with Douglas and Chief Factor Finlayson on board touched at San Francisco in distress; and the botanist from his 'tent on the hill at Yerba Buena' wrote to Hartnell, recounting some of his later hair-breadth escapes in the far north, sending warm regards for friends at Monterey, and expressing his hope of meeting them again — "though not, God willing, before I see the 'land o' cakes.'" He never saw either Scotland or California again; for in July 1834, during one of his solitary excursions at the Islands, he fell into a pit