were just and true to friends, and to real
enemies, terribly bitter and uncompromising. Money was borrowed and
loaned without a note or written obligation, and there was no mention
made of statute laws as a rule of action. When a real murderer or
horsethief was caught no lawyers were needed nor employed, but if the
community was satisfied as to the guilt and identity of the prisoner,
the punishment was speedily meted out, and the nearest tree was soon
ornamented with his swinging carcass.

Many of these worthy men broke the trail on the rough way that led to
the Pacific Coast, drove away all dangers, and made it safer for those
who dared not at first risk life and fortune in the journey, but,
encouraged by the success of the earliest pioneers, ventured later on
the eventful trip to the new gold fields. I cannot praise these noble
men too much; they deserve all I can say, and much more, too; and if a
word I can say shall teach our new citizens to regard with reverent
respect the early pioneers who laid the foundations of the glory,
prosperity and beauty of the California of to-day, I shall have done all
I hope to, and the historian of another half century may do them
justice, and give to them their full need of praise.

As long as I have lived in California I have never carried a weapon of
defense, and never could see much danger. I tried to follow the right
trail so as to shun bad men, and never found much difficulty in doing
so. We hear much of the Vigilance Committee of early days. It was an
actual necessity of former times. The gold fields not only attracted the
good and brave, but also the worst and most lawless desperadoes of the
world at large. England's banished convicts came here from the penal
colonies of Australia and Van Diemen's Land. They had wonderful ideas of
freedom. In their own land the stern laws and numerous constabulary had
not been able to keep them from crime. A colony of criminals did not
improve in moral tone, and when the most reckless and daring of all
these were turned loose in a country like California, where the
machinery of laws and officers to execute them was not yet in order,
these lawless "Sidney Ducks," as they were called, felt free to rob and
murder, and human life or blood was not allowed to stand between them
and their desires. Others of the same general stripe came from Mexico
and Chili, and Texas and Western Missouri furnished another class almost
as bad.

The Vigilance Comm