In 1849, the Salinas Valley was the Wild West.

It was the summer of 1849 when J. Ross Browne – an Irish-born writer, illustrator and U.S. government agent – traveled down the Salinas Valley by mule. Or at least, partly by mule.

Browne wrote about his trip in two stories for Harper’s Monthly in 1862, which were compiled into a 1950 book titled A Dangerous Journey. The adventure he describes is epic, and was dangerous indeed.

Browne’s mission, when he set out from San Francisco, was to establish a line of post offices on his way to San Luis Obispo, where he would also secure payment of duties on foreign cargo from a ship that had wrecked nearby.

The way to get there was the El Camino Real, and from Soledad to San Miguel, it was “infested” (his word) with bandits. All people cared about at the time was gold, Browne writes, and they weren’t too concerned with hunting down criminals.

Everything went swimmingly for Browne until he was about 30 miles south of Soledad, when his mule suddenly threw him, then ran off. On the mule were Browne’s blankets, coat, pistol and papers.

At the Soledad Mission, Browne had been told about a watering hole about five miles further south from where he was, so he continued on, hoping to find his mule there.

After getting about two miles, “with considerable toil,” a distant herd of cattle began to approach his path, with a “fierce-looking bull” leading the way.

“Their gestures were quite hostile enough to inspire a solitary and unarmed footman with uneasiness,” he writes.

The 200 cattle charged, and Browne scrambled to get to a tree a half-mile away, on the bank of a dry creek; he made it up the tree as the cattle were within 100 yards, he writes.

With Browne out of their reach, a “fine young bull” went down to the creek, and was suddenly attacked by a grizzly bear. The bushes began to “sway violently to and fro.”

The bull broke from the bushes about two minutes later, and “his head was covered with blood, and great flakes of flesh hung from his fore shoulders,” yet he still had a “glow of defiant rage.”

The bear then emerged in pursuit, and “a trial of brute force that baffles description now ensued,” Browne writes.

The two animals – which Browne estimated to be of about equal weight – became enthralled in a wrestling match, with the bear biting the bull’s nose and clawing his back. They eventually both tired out, but stayed in that fighting position motionless for five minutes.

The herd had closed in to watch, “moaning and bellowing,” and then the bull freed itself from the embrace. The two animals faced off, and the bull charged relentlessly, eventually sinking a horn under the bear’s belly, and giving it a “rip that brought out a clotted mass of entrails.”

A death-struggle ensued as the bear’s guts were strewn upon the earth and the bull’s eyes were “torn completely from their sockets, and his whole face stripped to the bone.” The bull was the last animal standing, but both perished.

When the cattle scattered, Browne forged ahead south as day turned to night. In a distant oak grove, he spotted a campfire. He saw three men around it, dressed like ordinary Americans in the West, but had an “irresistible conviction” that “sin brooded” over the camp.

Browne sat with the men around the fire and grew wary of two of them – more so when he saw the butt of his pistol hanging from one of the men’s belts.

They had a plot to rob Browne on his return trip. An hour before sunrise, the one man he trusted, Griff, woke him conspiratorily and led him out of the camp. There, Griff presented him with all the belongings he’d lost, including his mule, and urged to him ride south without stopping.

At around 10pm that night, about five miles north of San Miguel, the sound of approaching horses froze his mule with fear, forcing Browne to dismount and run for an abandoned house. He braced the door with a wooden post and waited.

“It’s all up with you!” said one of the men, adding that they killed Griff earlier in the day (a lie; Griff escaped). The men were unable to bust down the door, and Browne succeeded in shooting both men, wounding them, and waited out the night for a second attack.

Hours passed, and Browne finally sat in a corner to rest, where he brushed against a dead child. Horrified, Browne discovered four more bodies – including a woman who was slit across her throat – and almost “denuded of flesh” by coyotes.

Browne finally made it to San Luis Obispo, completed his business, and set off to San Francisco – by boat.