from the seas, we have had no news these five years from Europe here in California. But what has the sale of Louisiana to do with this man's presence here?"
"He says that the president of his country sent out an expedition to explore the new territory, through and beyond the Stony Mountains to the Pacific, Oregon already being part of the new republic's domain, as you know. This man was one of the party of surveyors or explorers, attached to the expedition as hunter. The party reached the Pacific, he declares, crossing the snowy mountains and passing in boats down the great Oregon river, which he declares has been named the Columbia. Midway of the mountains, on the return home, this man was lost in a snow storm which continued many days. His wanderings led him into a maze of mountain and desert, so far from his comrades that he gave up all hope of finding them. He made a course to the south, hoping to find Sante Fé, in Spanish territory, in which place he might meet hunters, or a caravan of French traders with whom he could return to the Mississippi.
"But no; he was too far to the west. Nothing remained to him in that misadventure, he declares, but to point his way like a mariner at sea, over desert and mountain toward California. A ship, he believed, might come some day to a port of that land and carry him to his own country. So he breaks out of his exile in mountain and wild waterless desert, and comes in the night like a moth led by a
