Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 18.djvu/141



CHAPTER SEVEN En Route— San Blas to Fort Vancxwver.

From San Bias Kelley continued his journey by water to La Paz on the gulf coast of Lower California and thence to Lorett. His course then lay northward by land to San Diego, where he arrived with a single guide on April 14, 1834.* Of his experiences on this part of the journey, much of it through a country that to-day is wild and forbidding, there is unfor- tunately little in the writings of Kelley to inform us.* That he collected "specimens of some of the precious metals of Lower California, which he put into the hands of that eminent geologist, Dr. [Charles T.] Jackson, of Boston,' he declared in one of his petitions to congress.'

While at La Paz he shipped his theodolite and some of his baggage to the Sandwich Islands. He also seems to have lost his "el^[ant sword." While in the wilderness of Lower Cali- fornia, he devised "an instrument for making astronomical observations," notwithstanding the imperative need of direct- ing his attention to matters terrestrial in a country whose thiev- ing natives almost aroused his admiration. "About the same time," he continued, "the breech of my gun was broken short off near the lock, and stolen by an Indian for its silver orna- ments. A new one was soon provided, by substituting, in part, a section of a wild bull's horn. It is a curious repair, and an obvious improvement in the gun stock — ^it has better shape and is more convenient for use."*

At Pueblo, near San Diego, Kelley met the man whose name was to be associated with his own in the history of the settle-

1 KcUcjr, Hist, of th* Stitltnunt of Oregon, S3'4>

2 'That portion of the n«rratiTC from the time of leayinff Gandlaxara to that of arriving at San Diego, owing either to mistake or inaorertence. or loss of manuscript. « . is wanting." — Ibid., xi n.

3 Kelley, PeHHon, 1866:4. "I found gold, rilyer and copper and other of the precious metals, in Lower California." — Sittltment of Oregon, 118.

4 Kelley, Mtmcriai, 18^:14. This gvm he presented to the Amherst college museum a ftw years before nia death.