to Sidney Colvin

[Coast Line Mountains, California, September 1879.]

Here is another curious start in my life.  I am living at an Angora goat-ranche, in the Coast Line Mountains, eighteen miles from Monterey.  I was camping out, but got so sick that the two rancheros took me in and tended me.  One is an old bear-hunter, seventy-two years old, and a captain from the Mexican war; the other a pilgrim, and one who was out with the bear flag and under Fremont when California was taken by the States.  They are both true frontiersmen, and most kind and pleasant.  Captain Smith, the bear-hunter, is my physician, and I obey him like an oracle.

The business of my life stands pretty nigh still.  I work at my notes of the voyage.  It will not be very like a book of mine; but perhaps none the less successful for that.  I will not deny that I feel lonely to-day; but I do not fear to go on, for I am doing right.  I have not yet had a word from England, partly, I suppose, because I have not yet written for my letters to New York; do not blame me for this neglect; if you knew all I have been through, you would wonder I had done so much as I have.  I teach the ranche children reading in the morning, for the mother is from home sick.—Ever your affectionate friend,

R. L. S.