Page:History of California, Volume 3 (Bancroft).djvu/572

554 in having captured 70 of the fugitives, with 50 muskets and other arms. The soldiers were to be set free according to the laws of war; the officers were sent to the governor as prisoners.

Naturally accounts of this battle written from memory, though numerous, present many discrepancies. There is a very general tendency to grossly exaggerate the forces engaged, really a little more than 100 men on each side, and to speak of assaults repelled, and other purely imaginary details. Castañeda's force had, as it would seem, no artillery, but included a party of New Mexicans armed with rifles. Castro's approach was altogether unsuspected until at dawn he made his presence known, having by that time seized all the garrison's horses, cut off communication with Angeles, and also probably cut off the water supply, thus obliging the soldiers to quench their thirst mainly with the mission wine. Two guns were placed on the shore-side in the direction of the chapel, and one perhaps on the elevation back of the mission. Early in the fight a rifleman from the church tower killed one of Castro's men. The guns were then directed upon the church, which in 1874 still bore some slight marks of the cannonade, and from the walls of which in the course of certain repairs some time in the past decade a cannon-ball is said to have been taken. The "continuous firing of two days" was perhaps continuous only with considerable intervals between the volleys, and it could not have continued into the second day for a longer time than was necessary to make