leans. The next day he
fought again, resisting three furious charges of the enemy. On the
10th he entered Los Angeles unopposed, and on the 15th he was joined
there by Fremont and his corps. These seaports in California were not
seriously harassed during the remainder of the war, but they needed to
be garrisoned, while the whole coast required watching. A part of the
squadron was sent south and also into the Bay of California. Before
the end of 1847 every Mexican gun on the western coast, save those at
Acapulco, had been silenced. Loreto, La Paz, Mazatlan, San Blas,
Manzanilla, San Antonio, Guaymas, and Mulye fell to the squadron.
Sometimes it only needed for a ship or two to appear before a town and
it would surrender, but generally an assault or the appearance of a
storming party on land was necessary. But the seamen and marines were
always invincible in this part of the war, where they were entirely
without aid from the army.

The most serious predicament in which the Americans found themselves
in this Pacific Coast campaign was when Lieutenant Heywood, of the
"Dale," with four midshipmen and twenty marines, were shut up in the
Mission House at San Jose, a small village near San Lucas. He was
surrounded by a large force before he knew it, and two of his
midshipmen were taken unawares and captured by an enemy not known to
be near. Lieutenant Heywood maintained himself from the 19th of
November, 1847, till the 17th of February, 1848, when Commander Du
Pont, in the "Cyane," came to his rescue. A party of ninety-four
seamen and marines, under Lieutenant Rowan, went ashore and fought its
way against six hundred Mexicans until they were defeated and Heywood
and his men rescued. There was nothing after this on the western coast
more serious than guerrilla forays.

The operations on the western coast were probably, in result, much
more important than those of the home squadron in the Mexican Gulf and
the Rio Grande River. But the latter squadron was the larger, and as
it was in constant co-operation with the conquering armies which
finally captured the capital of the country, much more has been heard
of the doings of the fleet in the east, which was at first commanded
by Commodore David Conner and then by Commodore Matthew C. Perry. The
operations on this coast also came in for much criticism, for the
various ships were filled with young men overflowing with valor and
mad with desire of glory. They were also comparatively