"On the evening previous I received a note from Mr. M. Bache whom I had sent to San Francisco two weeks before to purchase stores and make arrangements for getting a vessel to move us, informing me that he could get no conveyance to camp and desired to be sent for at Santa Barbara: wishing to see the effects if any produced by this earthquake I availed myself of the occasion & accordingly left camp shortly after the last shock for San Buenaventura 30 miles distant: in going there we ford the Santa Clara River six miles from its mouth. The stream in itself is insignificant its bed however is from a half to three quarters of a mile wide from bank to bank and it was here I met with the first evidence of the terrible power exerted by the awe-inspiring convulsion of nature as recently felt: long cracks were visible in the bed of the river many of them being six or eight inches across and extending in a direction SE and NW. These openings must at one time have been considerably wider for many of them had evidently been filled with water from the River and when the earth closed was thrown up with sand to the surface for on either side of the crack lay a mound of wet sand: these appearances were visible as far as I could see up and down the bed of the River. In crossing I tried to avoid those places as much as possible but finally a wheel got into one and down went the wagon to the axletree. This crack I was satisfied was at least two feet deep but did not stop to investigate it further nor was I ambitious to sound another in the same way.
"Near the mouth of the River the cracks are much longer & wider. Several persons residing on its banks within a mile of the mouth tell me they saw the water thrown up as high as six feet and that large blocks of earth sunk several feet below their former level & there remained. Others say they distinctly saw Anacapa and Santa Cruz Islands sink. In this last assertion I place no confidence for on that evening I saw through the 'Arch Rock' at the east end of Anacapa as distinctly as I ever did."
