My horse could hardly drag one foot after the
other when we reached the old Hudson Bay Company's house, which was
then the store of Howard and Mellus. There I learned where Captain
Folsom, the quartermaster, was to be found. He was staying with a
family of the name of Grimes, who had a small horse back of
Howard's store, which must have been near where Sacramento Street
now crosses Kearney. Folsom was a classmate of mine, had come out
with Stevenson's regiment as quartermaster, and was at the time the
chief-quartermaster of the department. His office was in the old
custom-horse standing at the northwest corner of the Plaza. He had
hired two warehouses, the only ones there at the time, of one
Liedsdorff, the principal man of Yerba Buena, who also owned the
only public-house, or tavern, called the City Hotel, on Kearney
Street, at the southeast corner of the Plaza. I stopped with
Folsom at Mrs. Grimes's, and he sent my horse, as also the other
three when Barnes had got in after dark, to a coral where he had a
little barley, but no hay. At that time nobody fed a horse, but he
was usually turned out to pick such scanty grass as he could find
on the side-hills. The few government horses used in town were
usually sent out to the Presidio, where the grass was somewhat
better.
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