orsement, 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.

THE MAN IN HIS TENT.

The man in his tent, who had squatted on Rincon Point, an elevated
locality, that commanded a grand view of the bay, informed me that when
he squatted there with his tent, that he could find no person who
claimed the land. He had been there but a few days, when some parties
came to him and offered to give him so mu