Going Up
This Hill With Them, We Saw, Just Behind It, A Small, Low Building,
With One Room, Containing A Fire-Place, Cooking Apparatus, Etc., And
The Rest Of It Unfinished, And Used As A Place To Store Hides And
Goods.
This, they told us, was built by some traders in the Pueblo,
(a town about thirty miles in the interior, to which this was the
port,) and used by them as a storehouse, and also as a lodging place
when they came down to trade with the vessels.
These three men
were employed by them to keep the house in order, and to look out
for the things stored in it. They said that they had been there
nearly a year; had nothing to do most of the time, living upon beef,
hard bread, and frijoles (a peculiar kind of bean very abundant in
California). The nearest house, they told us, was a Rancho,
or cattle-farm, about three miles off; and one of them went up,
at the request of our officer, to order a horse to be sent down,
with which the agent, who was on board, might go up to the Pueblo.
From one of them, who was an intelligent English sailor, I learned
a good deal, in a few minutes' conversation, about the place, its
trade, and the news from the southern ports. San Diego, he said,
was about eighty miles to the leeward of San Pedro; that they had
heard from there, by a Mexican who came up on horseback, that
the California had sailed for Boston, and that the Lagoda, which
had been in San Pedro only a few weeks before, was taking in her
cargo for Boston.
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