ouble with the Sydney Ducks that
roosted on his land. He sent the town authorities to dispossess them,
but without result. There were too many squatters and too few police.
Next he sent an agent to collect rents, but the man returned with a sore
head and bruised body, minus coin. Shillaber was on the verge of
insanity. He appealed to everyone from the prefect to the governor. In
Sydney Town his antics were the sport of a gay and homogeneous
population and at the public houses one might hear the flouted landlord
rave through the impersonations of half a dozen clever mimics. At The
Broken Bottle a new boniface held forth. Bruiser Jake had mysteriously
disappeared on the evening of election. And with him had vanished Alec
McTurpin, though a sly-eyed little man now and then brought messages
from the absent leader.

In the end Shillaber triumphed, for he persuaded Captain Keyes,
commander at the Presidio, that the squatters were defying Federal law.
Thus, one evening, a squad of cavalry descended upon the Rincon
squatters, scattering them like chaff and demolishing their flimsy
habitations in the twinkling of an eye. But this did not end
squatterism. Some of the evicted took up claims on lots closer in. A
woman's house was burned and she, herself, was driven off. Another woman
was shot while defending her husband's home during his absence.

Meanwhile, San Francisco's streets had been graded and planked. The old
City Hall, proving inadequate, was succeeded by a converted hotel. The
Graham House, a four-story wooden affair of many balconies, at Kearny
and Pacific streets, was now the seat of local government.

For it the council paid the extraordinary sum of $150,000, thereby
provoking a storm of newspaper discussion. Three destructive fires had
ravaged through the cloth and paper districts, and on their ashes more
substantial structures stood.

There was neither law nor order worthy of the name. Only feverish
activity. A newsboy who peddled Altas on the streets made $40,000 from
his operations; another vendor of the Sacramento Union, boasted $30,000
for his pains. A washerwoman left her hut on the lagoon and built a
"mansion." Laundering, enhanced by real estate investments, had given
her a fortune of $100,000.

Social strata were not yet established. Caste was practically unknown.
Former convicts married, settled down, became respected citizens.
Carpenters, bartenders, laborers, mechanics from the East and Middle
West,