ten hours a day, leading or following after the horses,
camping under the trees, and now and then keep
ing alternate watch over the stock by night.
We were miserably fed, and half frozen while in the mountains, but we soon descended into the quiet Sacramento valley, where the nights are warm with perpetual summer.
The old drover, whose great vice was avarice, quarrelled with his men at Los Angelos, whither he had gone to get a herd of Mexican horses after dis posing of the American stock, to take with him on the back trip, and only escaped by adroitly suing out warrants, and leaving them all there in gaol for threatening his life. The cause of the trouble was the old man s avarice. He had made a loose contract with the roving vaqueros, and on settlement refused to pay them scarcely a tithe of their earnings. I remained with him. We returned to the north with a great herd of half-wild horses, driven by a band of almost perfectly wild men : men of all nationalities and conditions, though chiefly Mexicans, all anxious to reach the rich mines of the north.
Drovers in this country always leave the line of travel and all frequented roads that they may obtain fresh grass for their stock. In the long, long journey north we passed through many tribes of Indians, and except in the mountains, I noticed that all the Indians from Southern to Northern California were low, shiftless, indolent, and cowardly. Th
