in the beautiful Californian
town when I first went there. Women as well as men carried "hardware"
strapped outside, and scarcely one who had not at some time found this
precaution useful. The city abounded with footpads and ruffians of every
nationality and description, whose prices for cutting a throat or
"rolling a stiff" depended on the cupidity of the moment or on the
quantity of liquor their capacious stomachs held. Scores of killings
occurred and excited little comment.

Thousands of men were daily passing in and out of the city, drawn by the
lure of the Sierra gold-fields; some of these came back with the joy of
dreams come true and full pokes hung around their necks, some came with
the misery of utter failure in their hearts, and some--alas, they were
many, returned not at all.

The Barbary Coast was fast gaining for itself an unenviable reputation
throughout the world. Every time one walked on Pacific street with any
money in pocket he took his life in his hand. _"Guard Your Own!"_
was the accepted creed of the time and woe to him who could not do so.
Gold was thrown about like water. The dancing girls made fabulous sums
as commissions on drinks their consorts could be persuaded to buy.
Hundreds of thousands of dollars were spent nightly in the great temples
devoted to gambling, and there men risked on the luck of a moment or the
turn of a painted wheel fortunes wrung from the soil by months and
sometimes years of terrific work in the diggings. The most famous
gamblers of the West at that time made their headquarters in San
Francisco, and they came from all countries. England contributed not a
few of these gentlemen traders in the caprices of fortune, France her
quota, Germany very few and China many; but these last possessed the
dives, the lowest kind of gambling places, where men went only when they
were desperate and did not care.

We were not at this time, however, to be given an opportunity to see as
much of San Francisco as most of us would have liked. After a short stay
at the Presidio we were sent to Wilmington, then a small port in the
southern part of the State but now incorporated in the great city of Los
Angeles. Here we drew our horses for the long trek across the desert to
our future home in the Territory of Arizona. There was no railroad at
that time in California, the line not even having been surveyed as far
as San Jose, which was already a city but, instead of being, as now, the
market-pl