In One Of The Parlors Of The Hotel, I Saw A Man Of About Sixty Years
Of Age, With His Feet Bandaged And Resting In A Chair, Whom Somebody
Addressed By The Name Of Lies.(1) Lies!
man who came across the country from Kentucky to Monterey while
we lay there in the Pilgrim in 1835, and made a passage in the
Alert, when he used to shoot with his rifle bottles hung from the
top-gallant studding-sail-boom-ends. He married the beautiful Doña
Rosalía Vallejo, sister of Don Guadalupe. There were the old high
features and sandy hair. I put my chair beside him, and began
conversation, as any one may do in California. Yes, he was the
Mr. Lies; and when I gave my name he professed at once to remember
me, and spoke of my book. I found that almost - I might perhaps say
quite - every American in California had read it; for when California
"broke out," as the phrase is, in 1848, and so large a portion of the
Anglo-Saxon race flocked to it, there was no book upon California
but mine. Many who were on the coast at the time the book refers
to, and afterwards read it, and remembered the Pilgrim and Alert,
thought they also remembered me. But perhaps more did remember
me than I was inclined at first to believe, for the novelty of a
collegian coming out before the mast had drawn more attention to
me than I was aware of at the time.
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