who may share my wish always to know "why," and get completed ideas, I would refer to my father's Thirty Years' View,* the second volume, and the chapters that treat of the acquisition of California. Judge Black said to me lately that my father's work "had the privilege of standing uncontradicted." He was exact in facts, and had the habit of a good lawyer "to secure evidence when it presented itself;" and in that way from the best official and personal sources, he gives the exact record of that period. Since then there have been such great events that even important matters of that time have been overlaid and obscured, except to those who lived through them. And lately two works have been published by writers of distinction which show this, as they have just reversed some of the most prominent facts relating to the early history of California.†

Nothing could have been more complete than the arrangements which were to make

*Senator Benton.

+ Colonel Higginson's Child's History of America. General Sherman's Memoirs.

this journey delightful as well as comfortable. By waiting until March my father would be free to go with me after the session of Congress was ended. He looked forward with eagerness to this journey over the track of the early Spanish conquests. His large knowledge of Spanish history upon our continent, aided by his knowledge of the Spanish language, gave this part of the voyage a peculiar interest to him.

My father's French and Spanish clients from the later acquired Territories of Louisiana and Florida became his friends also. He not only comprehended, but strongly felt for, their bewilderment at finding themselves under new and strange laws. He knew that this condition must obtain in California also. He wished to know personally the newly acquired country, its people, and its needs. Should it remain a Territory, he, as Senator from Missouri, had the neighbor's right to look out for its interests; and from many causes, personal, political, and geographical, this friendly representation would have been for him, as a queen of Spain said of something akin to

this, mi privilegio, prerogativa, y derechomy privilege, my prerogative, and my right.

But not even my father foresaw how much they would need this, nor the shameful injustice of our government in disregarding its treaty stipulations, and despoiling them.

General Herran, then minister from New Granada, gave us letters to his friends in Panama, although it was not probable that we should be long enough there to use them. Mr. William Aspinwall, who was much in Washington on business connected with his new enterprises of mail steamers to the Pacific and the projected Panama Railroad, was a great favorite with my father, who gave him a standing invitation to dine with us whenever he could, and talk over at that leisure time the large interests opened by these new channels for Oriental

commerce.

Coming to us in this familiar way, Mr. Aspinwall entered into the family anxieties regarding my journey with all the sympathies of his kind nature. His experience taught him how to render these sympathies

efficient, and he made the most thorough arrangements for my comfort and security. In short, everything that foresight and friendship could do was planned: how events disposed of our well-laid plans was another thing.

I have been reading lately a reprint of the letters of the Hon. Miss Eden, who was with her brother, Lord Auckland, when he was Governor-General of India. She says that although only family letters, they will have more interest on that account, as giving the details of their two years' journey of inspection, and the contrast of that past time-when to seven persons belonged a retinue of twelve thousand people, with elephants, camels, and horses to match-with the present condition of India, where now railroads have reduced the Governor-General to a first-class passenger with a travelling-bag.

In the same way I look back to my preparations for that voyage into the unknown -all the planning and reading and grief and fears-in contrast with the seven days' pleasure trip of to-day. Mr. Aspinwall, who

had so large a part in making things smooth for me on that first journey, was near me at a morning wedding when, quite simply, and in the same tone with which he had been speaking of the bride and the flowers, he said, "Have you any messages for San Francisco? We leave for there to-night to be gone six weeks." Only twenty years had brought about this wonderful change.

It is easy to resume situations into a paragraph when they are ended; to live through them day by day and hour by hour is another thing.

I look up at the little water-color which is my résumé of that time of severance from all I held indispensable to happiness—it was made for me on the spot, and gives my tent under the tall cotton-woods, already browned and growing bare with the coming winter winds.

Mr. Fremont was to make a winter crossing of the mountains, and I went with him in October to his starting-point, the Delaware Indian reservation on the frontier of Missouri, to return when he left, and remain