It was rumored, at the time, that there was a jealousy
between him and Colonel Freemont. It was not
on the part of Stevenson. I boarded at the same
hotel with Freemont.
See illustration for bill which I received while at
the hotel with Colonel Freemont:
[Illustration: HOTEL BILL.]
The colonel asked me one day to speak to Freemont
at dinner, and request him, if convenient, to stop
in his office as he came from dinner, which I did.
Stevenson’s office was on the plaza, but Freemont
never called.
There was great difficulty about the title to lots
at that time. There were contentions set up,
and claims of property from different Mexican grants,
as it became valuable. It was guaranteed by the
United States, at the treaty of Hidalgo, when California
was ceded to us, that all titles that were good under
the Mexican government should be recognized by us.
L., the chaplain of Stevenson’s regiment, seems
to have been the butt of the boys before the gold
was discovered.
They, as a farce, elected him alcalde of San Francisco,
which position is a combination of mayor and judge,
as we would understand it, and his election was declared
illegal. Then they elected him for spite.
He served one year. There was a Mexican law that
in any village in that country a person had a right
to settle on one hundred veras of land so many feet,
about three hundred, and if he put up any kind of a
building on it, and held undisputed possession for
one year, he could go to the alcalde, and by paying
$16, get a good and valid title. When the lots
became so valuable in San Francisco, after the gold
was discovered, many lots based on those kinds of
grants became very valuable two or three years after
the discovery of gold. L. became quite wealthy,
it was said, by advances in real estate. There
were rumors of bogus titles in the names of dead soldiers
and others who had left the country, but could be
traced to no authentic source. He was estimated
to be worth several hundred thousand dollars, made
in the rise of real estate. I met him but once
and I sold him some lumber.
My shipping merchant who negotiated freight for my
brig got a legal title of that kind.
He said he was a book-keeper for a firm in Newport,
Rhode Island, at a small salary. He made up his
mind that if they would not raise his pay $100 per
year on the 1st of January he would leave them.
They refused, so he lost his situation, and it was
dull times, and he could not get another one, so he
shipped on a whaling vessel as a sailor. His health
was poor, and he found he could not stand the hardships
of that life. The vessel put in the harbor of
San Francisco for water and fresh meat on their way
to the Arctic ocean, so he deserted the ship and secreted
himself until it left. Then he had to do something
there for a living, so he squatted on one hundred
veras of land on the beach, and put up a shanty and
