of San Francisco, and on August 13th Fremont and Stockton captured Los Angeles, The first news of actual war between Mexico and the United States reached this isolated band of Americans on the 7th of July, when they also learned that Commodore Sloat had raised our flag at Monterey.
Kearney, with his small band of troopers, entered California in December, worn and wasted by their long and fatiguing march. They were soon attacked by the native Californian cavalry, and he lost twenty or thirty men at a place called San Pascual; but they succeeded in reaching the American camp by the middle of the month.
By the last of December, 1846, the American party, after enduring privations and trials of great magnitude, had obtained possession of the greater portion of Upper California, and by the middle of January, 1847, had subjugated this valuable Mexican province, which, a year or two later, opened to the world its subterranean treasure of gold.
The Navajo Indians, who threatened an outbreak, were quelled by a force of Missourians under Colonel Doniphan, who subsequently marched southward into the State of Chihuahua, where, after several engagements, he entered the capital, the large and substantial city of the same name. Then, after a rest of several weeks, he set his troop in motion for the headquarters of General Taylor, which he reached in the spring of 1847, having accomplished a toilsome journey of over five hundred miles, and traversed nearly all the frontier states of Mexico.
In the latter months of 1846 an expedition was planned by the War Department of the United States that was destined to strike at the very heart of the Mexican nation. Under General Scott (whose valuable services are too well-known to need recapitulation here) proceedings went actively forward for an invasion of Mexico by the port of
