THE PEOPLE OF MONTEREY.—THE GUITAR AND RUNAWAY WIFE.—MOTHER ORDERED TO
FLOG HER SON.—WORK OF THE PRISONERS.—CATCHING SAILORS.—COURT OF
ADMIRALTY.—GAMBLERS CAUGHT AND FINED.—LIFTING LAND BOUNDARIES.
SATURDAY, MARCH 6. I have never been in a community that rivals Monterey
in its spirit of hospitality and generous regard. Such is the welcome to
the privileges of the private hearth, that a public hotel has never been
able to maintain itself. You are not expected to wait for a particular
invitation, but to come without the slightest ceremony, make yourself
entirely at home, and tarry as long as it suits your inclination, be it
for a day or for a month. You create no flutter in the family, awaken no
apologies, and are greeted every morning with the same bright smile. It
is not a smile which flits over the countenance, and passes away like a
flake of moonlight over a marble tablet. It is the steady sunshine of
the soul within.
If a stranger, you are not expected to bring a formal letter of
introduction. No one here thinks any the better of a man who carries the
credentials of his character and standing in his pocket. A word or an
allusion to recognized persons or places is sufficient. If you turn out
to be different from what your first impressions and fair speech
promised, still you meet with no frowning looks, no impatience for your
departure. You still enjoy in full that charity which suffereth long,
and is kind. The children are never told that you are a burden; you
enjoy their glad greetings and unsuspecting confidence to the last. And
when you finally depart, it will not be without a benison; not perhaps
that you are worthy of it; but you belong to the great human family,
where faults often spring from misfortune, and the force of untoward
circumstances. Generous, forbearing people of Monterey! there is more
true hospitality in one throb of your heart, than circulates for years
through the courts and capitals of kings.
TUESDAY, MARCH 16. Met Com. Biddle and Gen. Kearny to-day by
appointment, and gave them a history of California affairs from the time
the flag was raised. Both expressed a little surprise at some of the
events that had occurred, but neither called in question the wisdom of
the policy which had been pursued. The report of a disposition on the
part of these distinguished officers to cast reproach on events in
California, are without a shadow of foundation. Com. Biddle has not
come, it is true, to prosecute the measures of his predecessors, nor has
he come to repudiate them. He desires, so far as his instructions will
permit, to let them remain as he found them, and leave to time, that
moral touchstone of wisdom and folly, the tests of their expediency.
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 17. I met a Californian to-day with a guitar, from
which he was reeling off a merry strain, and asked him how it was
possible he could be so light-hearted while the flag of his country was
passing to the hands of the stranger. Oh, said the Californian, give us
the guitar and a fandango, and the devil take the flag. This reveals a
fact deeper than what meets the eye. The Californians as a community
never had any profound reverence for their nominal flag. They have
regarded it only as an evidence of their colonial relation to Mexico; a
relation for which they have felt neither affection nor pride.
THURSDAY, MARCH 18. A poor fellow came to me to-day, and complained that
his wife had run away with another man, and wanted I should advise him
what to do. I asked him if he desired her to come back; he said he did,
for he had five children who required her care. I told him he must then
keep still: the harder he chased a deer, the faster it would run; that
if he kept quiet she would soon circle back again to him.
He hardly seemed to understand the philosophy of inaction: I told him
there was hardly an animal in the world that might not be won by doing
nothing; that the hare ran from us simply because we had chased it; that
a woman ran for the same reason, though generally with a different
motive: the one ran to escape, the other to be overtaken. He consented
to try the do-nothing plan, and in the mean time I shal try to catch the
villain who has covered an humble family with disaster.
THURSDAY, MARCH 25. A California mother complained to me to-day, that
her son, a full-grown youth, had struck her. Usage here allows a mother
to chastise her son as long as he remains unmarried and lives at home,
whatever may be his age, and regards a blow inflicted on a parent as a
high offence. I sent for the culprit; laid his crime before him, for
which he seemed to care but little; and ordered him to take off his
jacket, which was done. Then putting a riata into the hands of his
mother, whom nature had endowed with strong arms, directed her to flog
him. Every cut of the riata made the fellow jump from the floor. Twelve
lashes were enough; the mother did her duty, and as I had done mine, the
parties were dismissed. No further complaint from that quarter.
MONDAY, APRIL 12. The old prison being too confined and frail for the
safe custody of convicts, I have given orders for the erection of a new
one. The work is to be done by the prisoners themselves; they render the
building necessary, and it is but right they should put it up. Every
bird builds its own nest. The old one will hold an uninventive Indian,
but a veteran from Sidney or Sing Sing would work his way out like a
badger from his hole, which the school urchin had obstructed. I had an
experiment with one a few nights since, and he went through the roof
with ball and chain. How he ever reached the rafters, unless the man in
the moon magnetized him, I cannot conjecture. But out he got, and it
cost me a California chase to catch him.
THURSDAY, APRIL 16. Six of the crew of the Columbus ran from one of her
boats this morning. They cleared the town in a few minutes, and plunged
into a forest which shadows a mountain gorge. The officer of the boat
came with a request from Capt. Wyman that I would have them caught and
brought back. My constables were both absent, and I ordered three
Californians who were well mounted to go in pursuit. The native people
are always inclined to aid a sailor in his attempt to escape; they seem
to think he is of course running from oppression or wrong, when in nine
cases out of ten he is running upon some sudden impulse, and continues
the race because he has begun it.
In this instance an order was given and it was obeyed; the sailors were
promptly apprehended and brought back. But had I offered a reward of
fifty dollars each for them, and left the Californians to pursue or not
as they preferred, not one of them would have been apprehended. I have
never known a Californian to molest a runaway sailor or soldier to
secure the reward offered. He will obey my order to arrest him, and he
would do the same if ordered to arrest his own brother, but he will not
do it to secure any pecuniary consideration. He seems to look upon it as
a breach of national hospitality. Were the De’il himself to call for a
night’s lodging, the Californian would hardly find it in his heart to
bolt the door. He would think they could manage against his horn hoof
and tail in some way.
SATURDAY, APRIL 18. The Pacific squadron having captured several prizes
not in a condition to be sent round the cape for adjudication in the
United States, the necessity of a court of admiralty here to determine
upon them, has induced Com. Biddle and Gen. Kearny to take the
responsibility of its organization. They have installed me in this new
office, invested with the authority which emanates through them from the
national executive, and the still higher sanctions derived _ex
necessitate rei_. And now comes the task of looking up those legal
authorities which may serve as guiding lights and safe precedents. But
even here, on this dim confine of civilization, loom to light all the
bright particular stars which have shed their rays on the intricacies of
national law and admiralty jurisprudence. We have the eloquent
commentaries of Kent, the able dissertations of Wheaton, the lucid
expositions of Chitty, and the authoritative decisions of Sir William
Scott. These, with half a dozen young lawyers ready to throw in their
own effulgent beam, as the glow-worm turns the sparkle in its tail to
the sun, will enable us perhaps to escape the breakers, where much
richer argosies than ours have been wrecked. But one thing is pretty
certain, my journal in the midst of all these perplexing duties will
find some breaks in it. I must hunt my rabbits, quail, and curlew, or
stagnate on beef; a sirloin may regale the hungry for a time, but even
that, if confined to it, palls on the appetite worse than a one-stringed
fiddle on the ear, or the low, wordless, monotonous grumble of a
discontented wife.
WEDNESDAY, MAY 12. A nest of gamblers arrived in town yesterday, and
last evening opened a monté at the hotel honored with the name of the
Astor House. I took a file of soldiers, and under cover of night reached
the hotel unsuspected, where I stationed them at the two doors which
afforded the only egresses from the building. In a moment I was on the
stairs which lead to the apartment where the gamesters were congregated.
I heard a whistle and then footsteps flying into every part of the
edifice. On entering the great chamber, not a being was visible save one
Sonoranian reclining against a large table, and composedly smoking his
cigarito. I passed the compliments of the evening with him, and desired
the honor of an introduction to his companions.
At this moment a feigned snore broke on my ear from a bed in the corner
of the apartment.—“Ha! Dutre, is that you? Come, tumble up, and aid me
in stirring out the rest.” He pointed under the bed, where I discovered,
just within the drop of the valance a multitude of feet and legs
radiating as from a common centre. “Hallo there, friends—turn out!” and
out came some half-dozen or more, covered with dust and feathers, and
odorous as the nameless furniture left behind. Their plight and
discovery threw them into a laugh at each other. From this apartment,
accompanied by my secretary, I proceeded to others, where I found the
slopers stowed away in every imaginable position—some in the beds, some
under them, several in closets, two in a hogshead, and one up a chimney.
Mr. R——, from Missouri—known here under the soubriquet of “the
prairie-wolf”—I found between two bed-ticks, with his coat and boots on,
and half smothered with the feathers. He was the ringleader, and raises
a monté table wherever he goes as regularly as a whale comes to the
surface to blow. All shouted as he tumbled out from his ticks. Among the
rest I found the alcalde of San Francisco, a gentleman of education and
refinement, who never plays himself, but who, on this occasion, had come
to witness the excitement. I gathered them all, some fifty in number,
into the large saloon, and told them the only speech I had to make was
in the shape of a fine of twenty dollars each. The more astute began to
demur on the plea of not guilty, as no cards and no money had been
discovered; and as for the beds, a man had as good a right to sleep
under one as in it. I told them that was a matter of taste, misfortune
often made strange bedfellows, and the only way to get out of the scrape
was to pay up. Dr. S—— was the first to plank down. “Come, my good
fellows,” said the doctor, “pay up, and no grumbling; this money goes to
build a school-house, where I hope our children will be taught better
principles than they gather from the example of their fathers.” The
“prairie-wolf” planked down next, and in ten minutes the whole,
Chillanos, Sonoranians, Oregonians, Californians, Englices, Americanos,
delivered in their fines. These, with the hundred dollar fine of the
keeper of the hotel, filled quite a bag. With this I bade them good
night, and took my departure. I hope the doctor’s prediction will prove
true; certainly it shall not be my fault if it turns out a failure. In
all this there was not an angry look or petulant remark; they knew I was
doing my duty, and they felt that they atoned in part for a violation of
theirs through their fines. If you must hold office be an alcalde, be
absolute, but be upright, impartial, and humane.
THURSDAY, MAY 27. A ranchero, living some forty miles distant, not
liking his own land, had lifted his boundary line, and projected it some
six miles over that of his neighbor. Quite a lap this would be among
farmers in the United States, but a small slice here. I was called upon
to decide the difficulty. Taking with me from the public archives a
certified copy of the original grant to each of the rancheros, I
proceeded to the spot, where I found some twenty men under the shadow of
a great oak-tree, and each ready to locate the boundaries agreeably to
the interests of the party that had summoned him. I listened to the
stories of each, and then asked the ranchero, who had lifted his line,
to show me his grant. He drew it from his pocket—a document signed,
sealed, and delivered with all the formalities of law. I then drew out
the original, and found their topographical lines as much alike as the
here and there of an unresting squatter. The fact was, the man had two
grants; but the last one being a palpable invasion of his neighbor’s
domain, as secured to him under the seal of the state, he must of course
retreat within the limits of the first. A township of land being thus
judicially and justly disposed of, I started on my return; fell in with
a grizzly bear—levelled and fired—but without waiting to see if the ball
took effect, dashed on. A loadless rifle, with an enraged bear at your
heels, makes you value a fleet horse in California.