San Francisco seemed deserted, dusty and desolate to Clarence after his return from the Yosemite and the society of Mercedes. It was the step from the sublime to the ridiculous; so he ran off to his Alameda farm and remained there until the day before the steamer would leave for San Diego. He then came back late to the dusty city and went in search of Hubert to take him to dinner.

“Come for pity's sake to dine with me and talk to me. I can't eat alone, I am too blue,” said he, going to Hubert's desk.

“All right, my boy. You are the very man I wanted to see, for I have been slashing into your stocks like all possessed;” and he made cuts and thrusts in the air illustrative of a terrible havoc.

“What have you done?” Clarence asked, laughing.

“Well, in the first place, I have sold all your Yellow Jacket, all your Savage and half of your Ophir, and I bought you some Consolidated Virginia and California. What do you say to that?”

“Not one word, for I suppose you know what you are about.”

“I think I do, and, as a proof of it, I made for you twenty thousand dollars clear profit by the operation, besides buying your Consolidated Virginia. So if that last venture is a failure, I shall not feel I have swamped all your cash.”

“I should say not. You are the prince of brokers, Berty. You have not made a single mistake in managing my stock.”

“Yes I have. I sold your Crown Point too soon.”

“But that was my mistake, not yours.”

“Yes it was. I ought to have sold half to fool you, and kept the other half ten days longer to make a million with it. I was stupidly honest that time.”

“I forgive you.”

“But I don't forgive myself, nor you either.”

“I know that. You are only piling coals of fire on my head. Now I have to bear twenty thousand more fresh coals, and I forbearingly say: ‘Pile on Macduff,’ et cetera. Where shall we go to dinner—the Poodle Dog or California?”

“Let us go to the California House. John keeps the best.”

To the California House they went, and had a most excellent dinner with Chateau Yquem and a bottle of Roderer.

“Don't you know I like some of our California wines quite as well as the imported, if not better? I suppose I ought to be ashamed to admit it, thus showing that my taste is not cultivated. But that is the simple truth. There is that flavor of the real genuine grape which our California wines have that is different from the imported. I think sooner or later our wines will be better liked, better appreciated,” Clarence said.

“I think so too, but for the present it is the fashion to cry down our native wines and extol the imported. When foreigners come to California to tell us that we can make good wines, that we have soils in which to grow the best grapes, then we will believe it, not before.”

The two friends went after dinner to Clarence's rooms, where they spent the evening together. Twelve o'clock found them still busy talking of a thousand things. Next morning Hubert came to breakfast with Clarence and accompanied him to the steamer.

“Good-by, old fellow; take care of yourself.”

“Good-by, my boy; good luck to you,” said they, with a lingering grip of the hands.

“I hope Fred has had a safe journey,” Clarence added.

“I think so, and I hope soon to get his telegram—about his ‘first impression’—which I shall transmit to you.”

Once more Clarence was crossing San Francisco Bay—on to the Golden Gate, on to the broad Pacific.

The surrounding scenery recalled Mercedes' image so vividly to his mind that it made his heart long to see her, and the entire voyage was painful to him with the keen regret of her absence.

But now, again, on the fourth morning—a lovely one in the sunlit July—he was once more making his way between Ballast Point and the sandy peninsula, facing La Playa and then turning to the right towards San Diego City.

San Diego at that time—in July, 1873—be it remembered, was fresh and rosy with bright hopes, like a healthy child just trying to stand up, with no sickness or ill-usage to sap its vitality and weaken its limbs. Only ten months before Col. Scott had come to say that the Texas Pacific Railroad would be built through the shortest, most practicable route, making San Diego the western terminus of the shortest transcontinental railway. It was true that on the following winter Congress had done nothing further to help the Texas Pacific. But many reasons were given for this singular lack of interest in so important a matter on the part of Congress. Among the many reasons, the true one was not mentioned, hardly suspected; it would have seemed too monstrous to have been believed all at once; incredible if revealed without preparing the mind for its reception. Yes, the mind had to be prepared—slowly educated first. Now it has been. The process began about that time and it has continued up to this day, this very moment in which I write this page. Mr. Huntington's letters have taught us how San Diego was robbed, tricked, and cheated out of its inheritance. We will look at these letters further on.

When the steamer arrived near enough to the wharf for persons to be recognized, Clarence's heart leaped with pleasure, for he saw the well known, tall form of Don Mariano sitting in his buggy leaning back, looking at the approaching steamer. A minute after, he saw Victoriano and Everett standing together near the edge of the wharf ready to receive him.

“Well, Mr. Runaway, welcome back!” Victoriano said, clasping Clarence's hand as soon as he was upon the wharf. He gave the other hand to Everett, who said:

“We will have to lazo you to keep you home.”

“I think we will have to put a yoke on him,” added Victoriano.

“Exactly; only let me select my yokefellow,” Clarence said, laughing.

As Don Mariano intended returning home that day, Clarence proposed that Victoriano should drive with Everett, and he go with Don Mariano, an arrangement which was very satisfactory to all parties. He was very anxious to unburden his mind, and Don Mariano's inquiries about his daughters and their voyage to San Francisco soon gave him the desired opportunity. He told Don Mariano what George had said, and how firmly and sincerely Mercedes wished to abide by her mother's wishes. Don Mariano listened very attentively, then said:

“I had intended suggesting to you the same thing. Gabriel has spoken to me about the matter several times, insisting that all the ladies of our family ought to know that you paid for your land. Since we cannot divest them of the resentment they have towards squatters, let them know the truth. Let them see that Congress, if it does not always follow moral principles, can certainly subvert them most arbitrarily and disastrously. Do you still wish to keep the matter from your father?”

Clarence thought for a moment, then answered:

“Yes, but only for a short time. I suppose we will have to define our position as soon as the appeal is dismissed. Before that comes, I shall explain all to him.”

They rode on in silence for a few moments; then Don Mariano said:

“Very well, I shall tell my wife that, for the present, the matter must not be mentioned outside the family or in the hearing of servants.”

“I thank you,” Clarence said: “it is very painful to me to find my father adhering so tenaciously to his old conviction that all Mexican grants not finally confirmed to their owners are public land, and being so, they are open for settlement to all American citizens. Thus, he still insists that, being an American citizen, he has the right to locate on your land or any other unconfirmed grant. This idea has been the bane of his life for many years, but for the very reason that in maintaining it he has caused so much trouble to himself and to others, he seems to cling to it most pertinaciously. He believes your land was rejected, and that the rejection will be sustained.”

“Yes, my land was reported rejected, but it was by some mistake of the clerks, because at that time the title had not been either finally rejected or confirmed. It had been before the Land Commission, and that (of course) decided adversely, as it generally did. Then I appealed to the United States District Court. This said that there was not sufficient testimony to confirm my title, but did not affirm the opinion of the Land Commission, nor reverse their decision, nor enter a decree of rejection. It simply left the case in that uncertain condition until 1870, when I discharged my lawyer and engaged another to attend to the suit. Then the case was reopened, and a decree of confirmation was entered. In the meantime, squatters had been coming, and they now have carried their appeal to Washington, to the United States Supreme Court, against me.”

“I see it all now,” Clarence said, thoughtfully.

“And don't you know,” Don Mariano continued, “that I don't find it in my heart to blame those people for taking my land as much as I blame the legislators who turned them loose upon me? And least of all I blame your father, for he has not killed my cattle, as the others have.”

“Of course, he couldn't, he wouldn't, he shouldn't do that. That would be worse than the lowest theft.”

“That is true, but there is a law to protect him if he did; in fact, to authorize him to do so. Thus, you see, here again come our legislators to encourage again wrong-doing—to offer a premium to one class of citizens to go and prey upon another class. All this is wrong. I hold that the legislators of a nation are the guardians of public morality, the teachers of what is right and just. They should never enact laws that are not founded upon rectitude, as Herbert Spencer says, no matter if expedience or adventitious circumstances might seem to demand it. But I need not tell you this, for you hold the same opinion.”

“Indeed I do, and understanding your rights better than I did, I think you were too generous in making the offer you made to the settlers at the meeting with them last year.”

“It was rather generous, but not as much so as you perhaps think. I was looking out for myself, too.”

“I heard them talk about an appeal that was pending, and I thought it was your appeal, not theirs.”

“The position then was this: In the first place, I was willing to give them a chance of getting good homes for their families, for I shall always consider that the law has deluded and misled them, and helped them to develop their natural inclination to appropriate what belonged to some one else; so they should bear only half the blame for being squatters—Congress must bear the other half. Then, in the second place, about the time I had that meeting, I had just received a letter from George, written at Washington, telling me how the Solicitor General had disobeyed the order of the Attorney General, instructing him to dismiss the appeal against the confirmation of my title. As I did not know that the Solicitor General was acting thus out of pique or personal animosity against the Attorney General, I naturally feared that he was going to make me suffer other worse outrages, judging by his arbitrary, irresponsible conduct. I thought that there might be many more years of delay while waiting for the dismissal of the appeal, and while thus waiting all my cattle would be killed. Reasoning thus, I concluded that it would be less ruinous to me to make the concessions I offered than to wait for tardy justice to restore my land to me—restore it when all my cattle shall have been destroyed.”

“I think your reasoning was correct—it did seem as if the Solicitor meant mischief. It was fortunate that he dropped the matter.”

“Yes, for which I am devoutly thankful. I hope the mischief he has done may soon be corrected by the Attorney General. Of course, the additional eighteen months of depredations on my cattle which I have had to endure, must go unredressed together with all else I have had to suffer at the hands of those vandals.”

“At the hands of our law-givers.”

“Exactly. I shall always lay it at the door of our legislators—that they have not only caused me to suffer many outrages, but, with those same laws, they are sapping the very life essence of public morality. They are teaching the people to lose all respect for the rights of others—to lose all respect for their national honor. Because we, the natives of California, the Spano-Americans, were, at the close of the war with Mexico, left in the lap of the American nation, or, rather, huddled at her feet like motherless, helpless children, Congress thought we might as well be kicked and cuffed as treated kindly. There was no one to be our champion, no one to take our part and object to our being robbed. It ought to have been sufficient that by the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo the national faith, the nation's honor was pledged to respect our property. They never thought of that. With very unbecoming haste, Congress hurried to pass laws to legalize their despoliation of the conquered Californians, forgetting the nation's pledge to protect us. Of course, for opening our land to squatters and then establishing a land commission to sanction and corroborate that outrage, our California delegation then in Washington, must bear the bulk of the blame. They should have opposed the passage of such laws instead of favoring their enactment.”

“Why did they favor such legislation?”

“Because California was expected to be filled with a population of farmers, of industrious settlers who would have votes and would want their one hundred and sixty acres each of the best land to be had. As our legislators thought that we, the Spano-American natives, had the best lands, and but few votes, there was nothing else to be done but to despoil us, to take our lands and give them to the coming population.”

“But that was outrageous. Their motive was a political object.”

“Certainly. The motive was that our politicians wanted votes. The squatters were in increasing majority; the Spanish natives, in diminishing minority. Then the cry was raised that our land grants were too large; that a few lazy, thriftless, ignorant natives, holding such large tracts of land, would be a hindrance to the prosperity of the State, because such lazy people would never cultivate their lands, and were even too sluggish to sell them. The cry was taken up and became popular. It was so easy to upbraid, to deride, to despise the conquered race! Then to despoil them, to make them beggars, seemed to be, if not absolutely righteous, certainly highly justifiable. Any one not acquainted with the real facts might have supposed that there was no more land to be had in California but that which belonged to the natives. Everybody seemed to have forgotten that for each acre that was owned by them, there were thousands vacant, belonging to the Government, and which any one can have at one dollar and twenty-five cents per acre. No, they didn't want Government land. The settlers want the lands of the lazy, the thriftless Spaniards. Such good-for-nothing, helpless wretches are not fit to own such lordly tracts of land. It was wicked to tolerate the waste, the extravagance of the Mexican Government, in giving such large tracts of land to a few individuals. The American Government never could have been, or ever could be, guilty of such thing. No, never! But, behold! Hardly a dozen years had passed, when this same economical, far-seeing Congress, which was so ready to snatch away from the Spanish people their lands (which rightfully belonged to them) on the plea that such large tracts of land ought not to belong to a few individuals, this same Congress, mind you, goes to work and gives to railroad companies millions upon millions of acres of land. It is true that such gifts were for the purpose of aiding enterprises for the good of the people. Yes, but that was exactly the same motive which guided the Spanish and the Mexican governments—to give large tracts of land as an inducement to those citizens who would utilize the wilderness of the government domain—utilize it by starting ranchos which afterwards would originate ‘pueblos’ or villages, and so on. The fact that these land-owners who established large ranchos were very efficient and faithful collaborators in the foundation of missions, was also taken into consideration by the Spanish Government or the viceroys of Mexico. The land-owners were useful in many ways, though to a limited extent they attracted population by employing white labor. They also employed Indians, who thus began to be less wild. Then in times of Indian outbreaks, the land-owners with their servants would turn out as in feudal times in Europe, to assist in the defense of the missions and the sparsely settled country threatened by the savages. Thus, you see, that it was not a foolish extravagance, but a judicious policy which induced the viceroys and Spanish governors to begin the system of giving large land grants.”

“I never knew that this was the object of the Spanish and Mexican governments in granting large tracts of land, but it seems to me a very wise plan when there was so much land and so few settlers.”

“Precisely. It was a good policy. In fact, the only one in those days of a patriarchal sort of life, when raising cattle was the principal occupation of the Californians.”

“I must say that to establish the Land Commission seems to me rather a small subterfuge for the Congress of a great nation to resort to.”

“What makes this subterfuge a cold-blooded wrong, of premeditated gravity, is the fact that at the time when we were forced to submit our titles for revision, and pending these legal proceedings, we, the land-owners, began to pay taxes, and the squatters were told that they have the right to take our lands and keep them until we should prove that we had good titles to them. If the law had obliged us to submit our titles to the inspection of the Land Commission, but had not opened our ranchos to settlers until it had been proved that our titles were not good, and if, too, taxes were paid by those who derived the benefit from the land, then there would be some color of equity in such laws. But is not this a subversion of all fundamental principles of justice? Here we are, living where we have lived for fifty or eighty years; the squatters are turned loose upon us to take our lands, and we must pay taxes for them, and we must go to work to prove that our lands are ours before the squatter goes. Why doesn't the squatter prove first that the land is his, and why doesn't he pay his own taxes? We, as plaintiffs, have to bear heavy expenses, and as the delays and evasions of the law are endless, the squatter has generally managed to keep the land he took, for we have been impoverished by heavy taxation while trying to prove our rights, and the squatter has been making money out of our lands to fight us with. Generally the Californians have had nothing but land to pay their taxes, besides paying their lawyers to defend their titles. Thus, often the lawyer has taken all that was left out of the cost of litigation and taxes.

“It makes me heartsick to think how unjustly the native Californians have been treated. I assure you, sir, that not one American in a million knows of this outrage. If they did, they would denounce it in the bitterest language; they would not tolerate it.”

“They would denounce it perhaps, but they would tolerate it. I used to think as you do, that the American people had a very direct influence upon the legislation of the country. It seems so to hear public speakers in election times, but half of all their fire goes up in smoke, and Congress is left coolly to do as it pleases. And the worst of it is, that this very arbitrary Congress, so impervious to appeals of sufferers, is also led by a few persistent men who with determination do all things, spoil or kill good bills, and doctor up sick ones; and then they half-fool and half-weary the nation into acquiescence, for what can we do? The next batch that is sent to the Capitol will have the same elements in it, and repeat history.”

“It seems to me there ought to be some way to punish men for being bad or ineffectual legislators, when sense of honor or dread of criticism fail to make them do their duty.”

Don Mariano sighed and shook his head, then in a very sad voice said:

“That should be so, but it is not the case. No, I don't see any remedy in my life-time. I am afraid there is no help for us native Californians. We must sadly fade and pass away. The weak and the helpless are always trampled in the throng. We must sink, go under, never to rise. If the Americans had been friendly to us, and helped us with good, protective laws, our fate would have been different. But to legislate us into poverty is to legislate us into our graves. Their very contact is deadly to us.”

“And yet you do not seem to hate us.”

“Hate you? No, indeed! Never! The majority of my best friends are Americans. Instead of hate, I feel great attraction toward the American people. Their sentiments, their ways of thinking suit me, with but few exceptions. I am fond of the Americans. I know that, as a matter of fact, only the very mean and narrow-minded have harsh feelings against my race. The trouble, the misfortune has been that the American people felt perfect indifference towards the conquered few. We were not in sufficient numbers to command attention. We were left to the tender mercies of Congress, and the American nation never gave us a thought after the treaty of peace with Mexico was signed. Probably any other nation would have done the same. Why should I then hate them? No, indeed. But I confess my heart collapses when I think what might be the fate of my family if I am not able to avert the ruin which has overtaken the majority of Californians. We have not been millionaires, but we have never known want. We are all ill prepared for poverty; and yet this long-delayed justice, and the squatters crowding me so relentlessly—” he stopped short, then added: “I am not giving you a cheerful welcome with my gloomy conversation.”

“But I want you to talk to me frankly and give me your views. You have told me much that I had never heard before, and which I am glad to learn. But as for feeling gloomy about the future of the family, I think a plan that Mr. George Mechlin and myself have been forming will make things rather better for the future, and we trust you will approve it.”

“What is the plan?”