Wednesday, March 28. A young friend of mine had been several months in Monterey, confined to his room, and nearly helpless, from an ugly sore on one of his limbs. The skill of the whole medical profession here, in the army and navy, and out of them, had been exerted in this case, and baffled. At last, the discouraged patient sent for an old Indian woman, who has some reputation among the natives for medical sagacity in roots and herbs. She examined the sore, and the next day brought to the patient a poultice and pot of tea. The application was made and the beverage drank as directed. These were renewed two or three times, and the young man is now running about the streets, or hunting his game, sound as a nut.
This same Indian woman is the only physician I had when attacked with the disease which carried off Lieut. Miner and several others attached to the public service. In a half-delirious state, which followed close upon the attack, I looked up and saw bending over me the kind Mrs. Hartnell—one of the noblest among the native ladies of California—and at her side stood this Indian woman feeling my pulse. Mrs. H. remained, while her medical attendant went away, but returned soon with the Indian medicaments which were to arrest, or remedy this rapid and critical disease. I resigned myself to all her drinks and baths; she did with me just what she pleased. She broke the fever without breaking me; restored my strength, and in a week I was in my office, attending to my duties. What she gave me I know not, but I believe her roots and herbs saved my life, as well as the leg of my friend.
Saturday, April 7. The quail, or tufted partridge, abounds in California, and is a delicious bird. A walk of ten minutes in any direction from Monterey, will bring you into their favorite haunts. But they are extremely shy; it is no easy matter to strike them on the wing: they are out of one bush and into another before you can level your piece, unless, like the Irishman hitting his weasel, you fire first and take aim afterwards. I must attribute my success frequently to hits of this kind; for a deliberate aim was sure to come too late,—just like an old bachelor’s proposal of marriage, which, as his vanity whispers him, might have been accepted had it been made a little sooner, but now the dulcinia has changed her mind, and the fat is all in the fire. What a pity that such a pelican should be left alone in this world’s wilderness, and the community be deprived of all the little pelicans that might have been! But I was speaking of quail, and not of pelicans, and of the difficulty of hitting them. Gen. Mason is the best shot here; a quail, to fly his fire, must be as quick on the wing as a message, in its sightless career, over one of Morse’s magnetic wires. To me one of the most enticing features in California life is presented in her game. It comes in every variety of form, from the elk and buck that rove her forests and prairies, to the rabbit that undermines the garden-hedge; and from the wild goose and duck, which sweep in clouds her ruffled waters, to the little beca that feeds on her figs. A good sportsman might live the year round, amid these meadows and mounds, on the trophies of his fowling-piece and rifle, and as independent of civilized life as any savage that ever bent the bow or steadied his bark canoe over the rushing verge of the cascade.
Tuesday, April 17. That spirit of prophecy which sometimes trembles in an adieu, occurred forcibly to me on receiving the intelligence of the death of Com. Biddle. His last words were omens, if such a thing may be. He had ordered the Columbus to be ready for sea the next morning, and had come ashore for a walk in the woods which skirt Monterey. We had ascended the summit of a hill which commands a wide range of waving woods, gleaming meadows, and ocean’s blue expanse. The great orb of day was on the horizon, and the eye of the commodore was fastened upon it as it sunk in solemn majesty from sight. He had not spoken for several minutes; when, turning to me, he said—“This is my last walk among these hills, and something whispers me that all my walks end here.” This was said with that look and manner in which the undertone of a man’s thoughts will sometimes find words without his will. It was utterly at variance with the cool, philosophical habits which were eminently characteristic of the commodore, and which he seldom relinquished, except in some sally of humor and wit. This remark woke like a slumber of the shroud, on the sudden intelligence of his death. It may be a superstition, but I shall never resign, to a skeptical philosophy, the omen and its seeming fulfilment. The future is often prefigured in an incident or sentiment of the present.
“An undefined and sudden thrill,
That makes the heart a moment still—
Then beat with quicker pulse, ashamed
Of that strange sense itself had framed.”
The hill-top and the waving forest remain, but the commodore—where is he? Gone, like a star from its darkened watch-tower on high! But the night which quenched the beam is still fringed with light. To this surviving ray we turn in bereavement and grief. His genius lighted the objects of thought on which it touched, and glanced, with an intuitive force, through the subtle problems of the mind. His mental horizon was broad, and yet every object within its wide circle was distinctly seen, and seen in its true position and relative importance. The trifling never rose into the great, and the majestic never became tame. Each stood, in his clear vision, as truth and reason had stamped it. He was cool and collected without being stoical, and immovably firm without being arbitrary. He had that courage which could never be shaken by surprise, made giddy with success, or quelled by disaster. Whatever subject he assayed, he mastered. He has left but few behind him, out of the legal profession, more thoroughly versed in questions of international law and maritime jurisprudence. Had not his early impulses taken him to the deck, he might have been eminent at the bar, in the cabinet, or hall of legislation. He had all the clearness and comprehensiveness of a great statesman. Gratitude twines this leaf of remembrance and respect into that chaplet which the bereavement of the service has woven on his grave.