nt and his
subsequent demise, proceeded thus:

I found the patient weak, and suffering from loss of blood and
rest, and want of nourishment; occasionally sane, but for the
most part flighty and in a comatose condition. The wound was
an ordinary gunshot wound, produced most probably by the ball
of a navy revolver, fired at the distance of ten paces. It
entered the back near the left clavicle, beneath the scapula,
close to the vertebrae between the intercostal spaces of the
fifth and sixth ribs; grazing the pericardium it traversed the
mediastinum, barely touching the oesophagus, and vena azygos,
but completely severing the thoracic duct, and lodging in the
xiphoid portion of the sternum. Necessarily fatal, there was
no reason, however, why the patient could not linger for a
week or more; but it is no less certain that from the effect
of the wound he ultimately died. I witnessed the execution of
the paper shown to me--as the statement of deceased--at his
request; and at the time of signing the same he was in his
perfect senses. It was taken down in my presence by Jacobs,
the Assistant District Attorney of Placer County, and read
over to the deceased before he affixed his signature. I was
not present when he breathed his last, having been called away
by my patients in the town of Auburn, but I reached his
bedside shortly afterward. In my judgment, no amount of care
or medical attention could have prolonged his life more than a
few days.

(Signed) KARL LIEBNER, M. D.

The statement of the deceased was then introduced to the jury as
follows:

PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA }
_vs._ }
BARTHOLOMEW GRAHAM. }

_Statement and Dying Confession of Charles P. Gillson, taken
in articulo mortis by George Simpson, Notary Public._

On the morning of Sunday, the 14th day of May, 1871, I left
Auburn alone in search of the body of the late Gregory
Summerfield, who was reported to have been pushed from the
cars at Cape Horn, in this county, by one Leonidas Parker,
since deceased. It was not fully light when I reached the
track of the Central Pacific Railroad. Having mined at an
early day on Thompson's Flat, at the foot of the rocky
promontory now called Cape Horn, I was familiar with the
zig