he had the gold dust about him to that amount.
He said yes. I said let me have it and I will
take up my note. He said there was no place to
weigh it. I said yes, here there was a place
where I was acquainted. It was weighed and handed
to me. I told him I would see him at dinner,
which I did. I then opened on him, and told him
how despicably he had acted when I so generously trusted
to his honor. He made no reply; he virtually
admitted the truth of my statement. I never saw
him afterward. That was the only time I ever
played the confidence game in my life, and my conscience
has approved of it ever since.
My friend, Mr.
R., had got his brewery well under
way in Happy Valley, as they called that part of the
city, had used up his $8,000 and commenced borrowing
money on my indorsement, at ten per cent a month,
the regular interest at that time. He had a friend,
Lieutenant S., who resigned from the regular army,
a graduate from West Point, who had been up in the
country, and came back with a flaming account of a
place on the Toulama river, which empties into the
San Joaquin, which was the head of navigation on that
river, and was the place to start a town, and if we
would furnish him with $1,500 to do it with, we would
each own a third of it. I did not take to it,
but Mr. R. was so earnest about it, and had such confidence
in his friend, that I finally let him have the money.
There was quite a spirit of speculation of that kind
at that time. Colonel Stevenson had laid out
one on Suisan bay, at the mouth of the San Joaquin
river, named New York of the Pacific. Marysville,
on the Sacramento river, was laid out a short time
previous, and proved a great success, making the fortunes
of the projectors. Of course, a few were successful,
and many failed. It seemed to have been a legitimate
thing to do to make a fortune in a new country.
I became acquainted with Broderick. It was Koyler
& Broderick. They had an office in the same building
with Colonel Stevenson. Broderick, who was afterward
United States Senator from California, and I became
very intimate. He was not intellectually a very
brilliant man, but a solid, able and strictly honest
man, and a thoroughly posted politician of his day.
He had run as a Democratic candidate for Congress
from the city of New York, but was not elected.
In California he was first elected to the State Senate
from the city. It was he who conceived the project
of laying out the water lots on the bay, and got the
bill through the Legislature. He advised me to
buy one or more. I looked at where he suggested
to me to buy, and found them six feet under water.
Although they could be bought very cheap then, their
prospective value seemed so remote to me I thought
they were not worth the trouble of bothering with.
It shows how easy it is to be mistaken in apprehending
the future. I understand they are now the most
valuable part of the city.
