me 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.

HIS STORY.

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 sold fruit and probably some liquor, etc., to make a living.
No one disturbed him for one year. He applied to the alcalde and paid
his $16 and got a good, valid title. After the gold was discovered it
became the most valuable property in the city. When I was doing
business with him he had a three-story brick store, which he owned. The
whaling ship had been gone to the Arctic ocean two or three years and
had heard nothing of the discovery of the gold, and wonderful changes in
San Francisco, and the captain thought he would put in that port on his
return and hunt up his runaway sailor, and behold, his absconding sailor
was rich enough when he found him to buy his ship and his whole cargo of
whale oil. I was introduced by him to his captain and shook hands with
him, and we had a good talk over it. Wherein does our stories of
fiction, of our boyhood, of Arabian Nights, surpass the actual events of
life, of the wonderful fluctuations of fortunes in California in the
days of the Forty-niners?

[Illustration: THE CAPTAIN AND THE RUNAWAY SAILOR.]

On the death of President Taylor, a meeting was cal