It was an hour beyond noon when we were in readiness to start.  We took two of the baggage-horses with us, to carry the tent-poles and covering, and a few utensils.  Our personal baggage was packed on the horses we rode.  Bradley and Don Luis rode in advance, Jose followed with the baggage-horses, and McPhail and myself brought up the rear.  We had not proceeded more than four miles on the trail when we saw a couple of horsemen some distance ahead; advancing towards us.  As soon as we were within a couple of hundred yards of each other, we at once recognised them to be Lacosse and the old trapper.  Urging our horses into a smart trot, we soon arrived alongside of them; and, on inquiring what it was that had caused them to remain so long at Sutter’s, and also how it was that they had neither the baggage-horses nor, apparently, any provisions with them, Lacosse gave us this explanation.

He stated that after leaving the camp, they struck the Sacramento River that night, and succeeded in reaching the upper settlements towards evening on the following day.  The next morning they pursued their journey and arrived at Sutter’s Fort about sundown; they encamped near here for the night.  Flour was as much as eighty-five dollars a-barrel, and everything in the way of provisions was in the same proportion.  They purchased a stock of flour, and, packing their horses, moved off the same day.  In the evening they encamped some fifteen miles up the Sacramento, near the mouth of the Feather River, and within a hundred yards of the spot where the Indian village existed which Captain Sutter had destroyed; the whole circumstances connected with which we had already heard from the old trapper.  They resumed the journey early on the following morning, and by the evening had made about twenty-five miles, when they rested for the night near one of the little camps of miners, which they found scattered about the valley every few miles along the route.  The next day they pushed forward, and found those encampments much less numerous—­only one or two were passed throughout the entire day.  Just after sundown, however, they saw by the fires up the hills quite a little colony of gold-washers, which they moved towards; and, after purchasing some provisions at a store recently opened there, for which they paid a most exorbitant price, they securely tethered their horses to stakes they had driven in the ground, and encamped for the night.  They did not think it necessary to keep watch, but when they awoke in the morning they found the baggage-horses had been driven off, and their packs stolen.  The horses they had been riding on were just as they had left them over night.  The trail-marks around the camp were too numerous to make anything out of them.