Page:Narrative of a Voyage around the World - 1843.djvu/190

136 two years; but from the wild state of the animals when dragged to the port, the blood is too much excited to allow of fair trial. Beef in these climates requires more sugar and nitre than in colder regions.

Monterey I found as much increased as San Francisco had fallen into ruin. It was still, however, very miserable, and wanting in the military air of 1827. The adobe or mud-brick battery remained, and had been newly bedaubed during the late of independence. There were guns it is true, (about seven,) but they were in a state infinitely more dangerous to those using them, than to those against whom they might have been used. An Englishman was found possessing sufficient courage to fire one at the crisis of the revolution. That gun decided the question!

Yet I find in the restrictions enjoined on poor Douglas that he was in honour bound "to desist from entering or taking plans of the fortifications!" which consisted of a mud wall of three sides, open in the rear, with breastwork about three feet in height; Avitli rotten platforms for seven guns, the discharge of which would annihilate their remains of carriages. The muzzles of one or two brass twenty-four pounders, very old and very handsome, are absent, and their vents might, upon an emergency, be used to load, provided it became necessary to make a second effort to discharge the shot, as I have once witnessed. The visit of La Venus had stripped the place of most of the supplies of which we stood in need.