“No cocks do them to rustic labor call,
From village on to village sounding clear;
To tardy swain no shrill-voiced matron’s squall,
Nor hammer’s thump disturbs the vacant ear.”
Friday, Nov. 13. Two fellows of Mexican origin were brought before me to-day, charged with breaking open the money-chest of the eating-house where they had transiently stopped, and taking from it about five hundred dollars. The owner having immediate occasion to go to his chest, discovered his loss, and suspected at once the persons concerned in it. They were apprehended, and soon after the money was found in the back yard, where it had been hastily buried after having been tied up in a handkerchief, which was identified as the neck-cloth of one of the accused. One discovery led to another, till the evidences of guilt, involving both, were fully established.
One of them then said there was no use in trying to get rid of the business any longer, and he would now tell the whole story straight as an arrow. He said that he and Antonio had talked over the matter the night before, and that he then attempted to reach the chest, but that the person in whose room it lay, and who had been asleep, suddenly stopped snoring, and getting alarmed he ran down stairs. But this morning, while Antonio was entertaining the rest, and treating them to cocktails, he slipped up to the chamber, broke the lock, and filled his pockets with the coin. He had no time, he said, to pick out the gold, which would have been a great convenience, but scraped up silver and gold as they came, leaving in the chest about as much as he took. It was very vexatious, he said, to leave so much, but his pockets would hold no more: he was really afraid they would fetch away with what they had got. But he buoyed them up with his hands, reached the back yard, where he delivered the money over to Antonio, who received it in his handkerchief and buried it; but buried it in exactly the wrong spot, for he went off into a corner instead of sinking it where everybody must step over it.
He told this story with a countenance which played between a tragic and comic expression. Antonio, who had been both diverted and alarmed by the narrative of his accomplice, when it came his turn to speak, said his companion was the funniest fellow alive; he believed he would joke on the scaffold, if he could shake a kink out of the rope, and get breathing time for it. They were both a strange compound of wit and villany. They were sentenced to the public works for three years.
Saturday, Nov. 14. The Savannah arrived here to-day from the leeward, and reports the Congress on her way to San Diego, where she had gone to reinforce the garrison. This important post had been recaptured by the Americans, under the command of Capt. Merrit, an emigrant officer of undaunted courage. He had been obliged to evacuate it a few weeks before, and was fortunate in being able to get his men on board a whale ship lying in the offing at the time. But a portion of the force opposed to him having been withdrawn to support the Mexican flag at los Angeles, he landed again in the night, and took the garrison by surprise. This being the most southern post in California, Com. Stockton deemed it of the first importance to make its possession secure. To effect this object, he was obliged to postpone his purpose of recapturing at once the capital of the province. The best way to fight the Californians is to hem them in. They never turn upon you as lions at bay. The possibility of an escape is an element in their courage. They never borrow resolution from despair. They are so accustomed to range at freedom, to make their homes wherever adventure or caprice may carry them, that the idea of being cooped up to one place has almost as much privation and misery in it as the slave-ship inflicts upon its captives.
They still might deem their scope too pent,
Though each had leave to pitch his tent