He Promised To Take His Medicines
Regularly Until We Returned, And Insisted Upon It That He Was
Doing Better.
We got under weigh on the 10th, bound up to San Pedro, and had
three days of calm and head winds, making but little progress.
On the fourth, we took a stiff south-easter, which obliged us
to reef our topsails.
While on the yard, we saw a sail on the
weather bow, and in about half an hour, passed the Ayacucho,
under double-reefed topsails, beating down to San Diego.
Arrived at San Pedro on the fourth day, and came-to in the old
place, a league from shore, with no other vessel in port, and the
prospect of three weeks, or more, of dull life, rolling goods up
a slippery hill, carrying hides on our heads over sharp stones,
and, perhaps, slipping for a south-easter.
There was but one man in the only house here, and him I shall
always remember as a good specimen of a California ranger.
He had been a tailor in Philadelphia, and getting intemperate
and in debt, he joined a trapping party and went to the Columbia
river, and thence down to Monterey, where he spent everything,
left his party, and came to the Pueblo de los Angelos, to work
at his trade. Here he went dead to leeward among the pulperias,
gambling rooms, etc., and came down to San Pedro, to be moral by
being out of temptation. He had been in the house several weeks,
working hard at his trade, upon orders which he had brought with him,
and talked much of his resolution, and opened his heart to us about
his past life.
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