was a fabrication of his own. There could be no debt of gratitude to a man who had acted as Don Abrahan had that day at the harbor, planning in his deliberate craftiness to profit by the reward for the sailor's return or, failing in that, to add another slave to his plantation. There was nothing owing Don Abrahan on that score.
Henderson's conception of the inland geography of that country was vague. He only knew that it was a land of weary distances, guarded well, as Don Felipe had said, by mountains and deserts on the east, the sea on the west. Baja California, at the south, was a land of torment, he had been told by sailors who had been cast away on its shores. To the north there were leagues of dark forest, he knew from sighting them from the ship. Of the social and political conditions he knew no more than a sailor had opportunity of learning, which was very limited, indeed. This slight knowledge he had not been given any opportunity to enlarge during his enforced service with Don Abrahan. He had not talked with any of the Americans in the pueblo Los Angeles on his visits there in Don Roberto's company. A child of today knows more of California than Gabriel Henderson, graduate of a venerable New England university, knew in that summer time of the year 1846.
There had been talk of war breaking out between the United States and Mexico long before Henderson deserted his ship. News came so slowly, over such great distances to that seques-
