Page:Thirty-One Years on the Plains and in the Mountains.djvu/198

140 and had it not been for the kindness of the Goshoot Indians, we would have perished for the want of water.

When I told a good Indian in that village where we were going, he sat down and with his finger marked a diagram in the dust, showing the lay of the country that we must pass ever, every little blind spring near the trail, the different mountains and valleys, and made it so plain that we could scarcely have made a mistake on the trip.

On arriving at Los Angeles we found only one white man in the place, and he was the only person in the whole town that could speak the English language. He had arrived there some years before, married a Mexican woman and had got to be very wealthy. He tried to induce us to go farther up the coast, telling us if we started for San Francisco the country was full of Mexicans, and that they despised all Americans and would be sure to murder us on our way; but as we had started for San Francisco, we were determined to see that city if possible. After laying over one day with the old American we resumed our journey.

The next place we struck was Monterey, where is now the famous Hotel del Monte, about two hundred miles from Los Angeles. Here we did not find a man who could speak a word of English, and we found the Mexicans still more selfish than in Los Angeles.

We began to think that the old white man had told the truth, for we would not have been surprised at any time to have been attacked by a band of Mexicans.

While here I saw two persons that I thought to be curiosities. They were of Indian parentage, light complexion and had eyes of a pink color. One was a boy about