OCR Text |
Show 2 PERSONAL ADVENTURES some decisive rr1oment, in short, when the mind, abandonincr itself to extremes, rashly compro- o mises the future in the exaggerations of a heated imagination, and embraces at a grasp its chances of good or evil. Such was the day on which I joined the band of hardy adventurers who had resolved to stake their lives on the conquest and settletnent of a region so distant, that even to reach it involved no ordinary amount of peril. I had wound up all my affairs in New York the previous evening, and severed, as I then thought for ever, the many ties that bound me to a place in which I had passed some of the happiest, though, at the same time, some of the 1nost anxious moments of my life. There were few amongst us who cared n1uch as to the chances of our revisiting the scenes \Ve were then quitting; for "·e were, for the most part, thoroughly sick of the life of large cities, and exaggerated to ourselves the delights of a pastoral existence in a new settlement in which both climate and soil were supposed' to render the allotted duties of man more of a pastime IN CALIFORNIA. than a toil. So wisely ordained is it that the imagination should exert a powerful infl nence over our actions ; for were we to be swayed solely by the dictates of what is called common sense, those who are tempted to constitute themselves the pioneers of civilization \vould never have resolution enough to face the dangers of the forest or wilderness. I arrived at Fort Hamilton in the beginning of ~nne, 1847, and found assembled ·there nearly the full complement of persons deemed necessary for the expedition. They were, for the most part, composed of intelligent and, in so1ne instances, well-educated young men, dashed, as in all such enterprises, with a sprinkling of the ·wild and reckless spirits to be found in all the Atlantic cities. This diversity of habits and character was to be expected, from the nature of the service on which ·we had volunteered; the military portion of it, as in the case of the old Roman colonists, being regarded merely as a period B2 |