nd the next morning we left
him there to continue the search for his horse, and I afterward
heard that he had found his saddle-bags all right, but never
recovered the horse. The next day toward night we approached the
Mission of San Francisco, and the village of Yerba Buena, tired and
weary--the wind as usual blowing a perfect hurricane, and a more
desolate region it was impossible to conceive of. Leaving Barnes
to work his way into the town as best he could with the tired
animals, I took the freshest horse and rode forward. I fell in
with Lieutenant Fabius Stanley, United States Navy, and we rode
into Yerba Buena together about an hour before sundown, there being
nothing but a path from the Mission into the town, deep and heavy
with drift-sand. My horse could hardly drag one foot after the
other when we reached the old Hudson Bay Company's house, which was
then the store of Howard and Mellus. There I learned where Captain
Folsom, the quartermaster, was to be found. He was staying with a
family of the name of Grimes, who had a small horse back of
Howard's store, which must have been near where Sacramento Street
now crosses Kearney. Folsom was a classmate of mine, had come out
with Stevenson's regiment as quartermaster, and was at the time the
chief-quartermaster of the department. His office was in the old
custom-horse standing at the northwest corner of the Plaza. He had
hired two warehouses, the only ones there at the time, of one
Liedsdorff, the principal man of Yerba Buena, who also owned the
only public-house, or tavern, called the City Hotel, on Kearney
Street, at the southeast corner of the Plaza. I stopped with
Folsom at Mrs. Grimes's, and he sent my horse, as also the other
three when Barnes had got in after dark, to a coral where he had a
little barley, but no hay. At that time nobody fed a horse, but he
was usually turned out to pick such scanty grass as he could find
on the side-hills. The few government horses used in town were
usually sent out to the Presidio, where the grass was somewhat
better. At that time (July, 1847), what is now called San
Francisco was called Yerba Buena. A naval officer, Lieutenant
Washington A. Bartlett, its first alcalde, had caused it to be
surveyed and laid out into blocks and lots, which were being sold
at sixteen dollars a lot of fifty vuras square; the understanding
being that no single person could purchase of the alcalde more than
one in-lot of fifty varas,