stated that he was one of the
most upright and honorable men in his dealings and general conduct that
he had ever known. These were the last that suffered death by sentence
of the Vigilance Committee.

It is now appropriate to relate some facts in relation to James King of
William. He had been a clerk in a banking house in Washington, and came
to California in the early years of the gold hunting. He established a
bank in San Francisco, corner of Montgomery and Commercial streets,
across from Davidson's. In a year or more Jacob R. Snyder became partner
in the bank; but withdrew after about a year. King afterwards merged his
bank in that of Adams & Co., of which J. C. Woods was manager. His name
was James King. He had suffixed the "of William" to be distinguished
from others of his name--as John Randolph used to sign himself "of
Roanoke."

Mr. King continued with Adams & Co. as manager of the bank until the
failure of that Company, He then became involved in trouble with the
Company. The bank failed one afternoon. Up to noon that day King had
received deposits. It was known to other banking houses in the city that
the bank would be obliged to close as it did. The word had got out, and
some of the depositors became alarmed, and a number withdrew their
deposits, notwithstanding Mr. King's assurance that the bank was solvent
and solid. Others took his word for it, allowed their deposits to
remain, and lost all they had in the bank. There was some mysterious
handling of the large amount of money known to be in the bank at the
time of the failure. The parties in charge refused to allow Mr. King any
part in their transactions as to the disposition of this money--reported
to be considerably more than $100,000 in gold coin. He demanded
$20,000 as his share. This was refused. He then published a statement
reflecting upon the persons in charge. This was responded to by a
scathing statement, published in the Alta, in which Mr. King was held up
for public condemnation as a dishonest man, guilty of faithlessness and
fraud. He was also accused of having swindled Page, Bacon & Co. of
$400,000, by the sale of bogus gold dust as genuine.

The popular sentiment at the time was that the charges were sustained,
and the feeling was strong against him. He was without means and out of
business. He conceived the project of going into the newspaper business,
of starting a daily evening paper, and obtained a loan of $250 for that
purpose from