Page:Mexico, Aztec, Spanish and Republican, Vol 1.djvu/368

346 of California, and was obliged by him to return as his guide, whilst a new messenger was despatched towards the east, with the missives, escorted by the residue of the troop which was deemed useless for further military efforts on the shores of the Pacific.

But before Kearney reached his destination, a change had come over affairs in California. Castro returned to the charge in September with a large Mexican force headed by General Flores, and the town of Los Angeles and the surrounding country having revolted, expelled the American garrison. Four hundred marines who landed from the Savannah under Captain Mervine, were repulsed, while the garrison of Santa Barbara, under Lieutenant Talbott had retired before a large body of Californians and Mexicans. Frémont, immediately resolving to increase his battalion, raised four hundred and twenty-eight men, chiefly from the emigrants who moved this year to California. He mounted his troopers on horses procured in the vicinity of San Francisco and Sutter's Fort, and marched secretly but quickly to San Luis Obispo, where he surprised and captured. Don Jesus Pico, the commandant of that military post. Pico having been found in arms had broken his parole, given during the early pacification, and a court-martial sentenced him to be shot; but Frémont, still steadily pursuing his humane policy towards the Californians, pardoned the popular and influential chieftain, who, from that hour, was his firm friend throughout the subsequent troubles.

On Christmas day of 1846, amid storm and rain, in which a hundred horses and mules perished, Frémont and his brave battalion passed the mountain of Santa Barbara. Skirting the coast through the long maritime pass at Punto Gordo,—protected on one flank by one of the vessels of the navy, and assailed, on the other, by fierce bands of mounted Californians,—they moved onward until they reached the plain of Couenga where the enemy was drawn up with a force equal to their own. Frémont summoned the hostile troops to surrender, and after their consent to a parley, went to them with Don Jesus Pico and arranged the terms of the capitulation, by which they bound themselves to deliver their arms to our soldiers and to conform, at home, to the laws of the United States, though no Californians should be compelled to take an oath of allegiance to the United States, until the war was ended and the treaty either exonerated them or changed their nationality.

Meanwhile General Kearney, on his westward march from Santa Fé, had reached a place called Warner's Rancho, thirty-three miles from San Diego, where a captured Californian mail for Sonoma apprised him that the southern part of the territory was wrested