d "The Hounds." There was
a vigilance committee organized against them, which public sentiment, at
that time, fully indorsed. They had seized a number of them and were
about to hang them. Colonel Stevenson faced the excited crowd and asked
to have them give the men a trial and punish the guilty. He said that
when he returned to New York and their mothers asked him what had become
of their sons, how could he face them if they were put to death in that
way; but if he could say to them that they had a fair trial, were found
guilty of crime, and had been punished according to law, it would be
different. I think they were not executed, but banished; but it set up a
cry against the colonel that he had taken the part of "The Hounds," so
unjust is often, for a time, public sentiment. That was the first
vigilance committee; the great one came afterward, but I am confined to
the days of the "Forty-niners."

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
beca