large ideas. In the rapid growth of
California he saw a threat to Mexico and proposed to that government, as
a "buffer" state between the two republics, to form a French colony
in the Mexican State of Sonora. Sonora is that part of Mexico which
directly joins on the south with our State of Arizona. The President of
Mexico gave Boulbon permission to attempt this, and in 1852 he landed at
Guaymas in the Gulf of California with two hundred and sixty well-armed
Frenchmen. The ostensible excuse of Boulbon for thus invading foreign
soil was his contract with the President under which his "emigrants"
were hired to protect other foreigners working in the "Restauradora"
mines from the attacks of Apache Indians from our own Arizona. But there
is evidence that back of Boulbon was the French Government, and that
he was attempting, in his small way, what later was attempted by
Maximilian, backed by a French army corps and Louis Napoleon, to
establish in Mexico an empire under French protection. For both the
filibuster and the emperor the end was the same; to be shot by the
fusillade against a church wall.

In 1852, two years before Boulbon's death, which was the finale to his
second filibustering expedition into Sonora, he wrote to a friend in
Paris: "Europeans are disturbed by the growth of the United States. And
rightly so. Unless she be dismembered; unless a powerful rival be built
up beside her (_i.e._, France in Mexico), America will become, through
her commerce, her trade, her population, her geographical position upon
two oceans, the inevitable mistress of the world. In ten years Europe
dare not fire a shot without her permission. As I write fifty Americans
prepare to sail for Mexico and go perhaps to victory. _Voila les
Etats-Unis_."

These fifty Americans who, in the eyes of Boulbon, threatened the peace
of Europe, were led by the ex-doctor, ex-lawyer, ex-editor, William
Walker, _aged twenty-eight years_. Walker had attempted but had failed
to obtain from the Mexican Government such a contract as the one it had
granted De Boulbon. He accordingly sailed without it, announcing that,
whether the Mexican Government asked him to do so or not, he would see
that the women and children on the border of Mexico and Arizona were
protected from massacre by the Indians. It will be remembered that when
Dr. Jameson raided the Transvaal he also went to protect "women and
children" from massacre by the Boers. Walker's explanation of his
e