On the counter of the bar-room lay Lieut. Browning; two or three persons were seated at his feet, and on stools around the room lounged, or sat, our little band, our saddles, blankets, etc., filling a corner of the room. General Porter was there listening to the close of a chorus. One of the party pushed a saddle over for me to sit on, and I began my little address: "How strange it is that the thought of home should, in one short day, so change your spirits; who would have thought that fifty such men would be turned back by the first difficulties? What will you say to your friends? Forget your homes for a time and go on like men." But the old answer came, "We won't go on under the present management," and "We won't go on with Col. Webb." I told them it was not possible for them to go on with Col. Webb, as an hour before I had received a communication from him saying his health would not permit him to go on with us, and appointing a time to have a business interview with him before he left on his return home. A silence followed this announcement, and then Lieut. Browning said "Let's go on with Mr. Audubon." Three cheers gave their answer, but I told the men not to decide then in a moment of excitement, to wait until morning and make up their minds in cool blood, as I wanted no more change, and this would be their last resolve. At ten next morning we met, and all but six agreed to go on, and we at once moved to a camping ground five miles back from the Rio Grande, out of the way of cholera, to feed up our weak, and make our arrangements to leave. I at once ordered from Alexander sixty mules, thirty to be first-class saddle mules, and thirty good, average pack mules.
It took nearly a month to make all our preparations, wind up our business with Col. Webb and others, and to put our sick men in good travelling condition. When we had removed our provisions from Camp Ringgold, where we had stored them, our heaviest work was done, and we started for Mier, but found we had not mules enough and stopped at —— to get more, and here we also repaired the miserable wagons that had been bought at Cincinnati, arranging our guard and other matters. Henry Mallory and I counted our money, and allowed a hundred days as the time requisite for our journey, and our financial calculations gave sixty-six dollars and four cents for each man.
How the responsibility of taking forty-eight men, most of them wholly ignorant of the life before us, through so strange and wild a country, weighed upon me, I cannot express, but we were too busy to have much time to think, and moved on twenty miles to Mier. Luckily our wagons broke down again, so we concluded to leave them, and lost another week disposing of them, and selling goods we were unable to take. At Mier I saw Col. Webb off, with his proportion of money and provisions.
Mier is like every other Mexican town I have seen, it is composed of one square only, and all the rest suburbs, the houses built of adobe. To the southwest, hills, parched and arid, give an unpleasing foreground of the superb view of the mountains of Cerralvo, all the blue of Italy was again before me, with the exception of the blues of the Mediterranean Sea.
Two more of our company returned to us here, one of whom, Ulysses Doubleday, was so weak and reduced that I left him in charge of his friends Bachman and Elmslie, and gave him what money he needed to carry him home. I certainly thought him a dying man, but it was otherwise ordained, and he reached his friends safely and well. Bachman and Elmslie were true to me throughout all.
CHAPTER III
MEXICO FROM THE RIO GRANDE TO THE MOUNTAINS
April 28th, 1849. The company started today, and I expect to follow early tomorrow, and join the men who are now fifteen miles ahead of me. I am compelled to remain to attend to the property of the ten men who have died of cholera in this accursed place; it goes to New Orleans by boat in the morning. Why Col. Webb, who had been in this country before, selected this route instead of a more northerly one, I cannot understand, but it is now too late to change, and we must go forward with courage.
April 29th. Canales Run. We are all on our way, having come to Ceralvo, [Cerralvo][14] beautiful for its old mission, and curious in its irrigating canals, bridges and old church, still it has the apathetic lassitude of everything Mexican. We rode on to Robber's Rancho, over undulating wastes of hard, unprofitable soil. The palmettos are here by the thousand, and their fantastic shapes gave the appearance of horsemen of gigantic size, riding through grass almost as tall.
May 1st. Robber's Rancho, once a fine hacienda, was burned by the Americans, in the last war, for the rascality of its owners; it is on a beautiful plain, but brush has grown up in the now neglected fields, and all is in ruins. Here we came near losing Lieut. Browning from cholera, but he was saved by Dr. Trask's indefatigable exertions.
May 12th. Near Monterey. We have been here four days having horses and mules shod, and I will take my pencil notes and write up my journal to date.