ide awake politicians caused the uneducated
Spaniards to vote for their favorite lawyer instead of the redoubtable
general, and they did this with a good will for they thought the famous
avocado was the best man, and thus the manipulators lost many votes to
the real candidate. Scott was afterward retained by many of the
Spaniards to present their claims for their land to the U.S. Government
and was considered a very able man.

Mr. Stockton related that when he left his family here to go to the
mines he rented one half a house of Michael Blanco who had a Spanish
wife and children, and these and his own were of course constant
playmates. When he returned in the fall he found his children had
learned to speak Spanish and nearly forgotten English, so that he had to
coax them a great deal to get them to talk to him at all, and he could
not understand a word they said.

I now tried to learn the language myself. I had money to loan, and the
borrowers were Spanish who gave good security and paid from 5 to 25 per
cent interest per month, on short time. Mrs. Stockton assisted me very
much as an interpreter.

I bought young steers for $8. each and gradually added to my herd. I got
along well until next spring when the beef eating population began to
steal my fat cattle, and seemed determined I should get no richer. The
country was over-stocked with desperate and lawless renegades in Los
Angeles and from one to four dead men was about the number picked up in
the streets each morning. They were of low class, and there was no
investigation, simply a burial at public expense.

The permanent Spanish population seemed honest and benevolent, but there
were many bad ones from Chili, Sonora, Mexico, Texas, Utah and Europe,
who seemed always on an errand of mischief a murder, thieving or
robbery.

Three or four suspicious looking men came on horseback and made their
camp near the Mission under an oak tree, where they staid sometime. They
always left someone in camp while the others went away every day on
their horses, and acted so strangely that the report soon became current
that they were stealing horses and running them off to some safe place
in the mountains till a quantity could be accumulated to take to the
mines to sell. On this information the Vigilance Committee arrested the
man in camp and brought him to a private room, where he was tried by
twelve men, who found him guilty of horse stealing, and sentenced to be
hung at once