there only once, but at that time we protestants present being as hostile to Judas as anybody, joined heartily in. We cavorted about, and threw rocks at the unhappy J., joining with hot wrath in abuse and execration and whooping loudly as any, at his final destruction. It was thought—and said, too—that the betrayer would long remember the drubbing he got that day. One sometimes wishes time might reverse his flight, and as a boy again he might take another whack at Judas.

In 1856 came the Fremont election. My family were all enthusiastic Republicans, as we still are, barring some of the enthusiasm, since political holy rollers, long-haired Progressive cranks and reformers for job, have so nearly ruined the party. Time has shown that Fremont was unfit, and his defeat was best all around.

I think it was in 1858 that the completion of the Atlantic cable was celebrated in San Francisco, which city lay from us across the bay and some thirty-five miles away. I had then never been in San Francisco. Our town was San Jose, lying in the next county, about fifteen miles. I was not allowed to go to the celebration, so I loaned my horse Bronco to Omar Lynch, and stood in the gray dawn to see Omar and my brothers start for the trip. In the start Bronco threw Omar fairly hard, but the horse was caught. Omar, although the fall had done him no good, remounted, and to the jingling of their spurs and merry shout, they galloped away, while I stood sad. I feel sad yet, when I think of that disappointment.

On our cattle range there stood as remotest bound of stock wandering, an oak tree, at the side of what had been the old Spanish trail to the Calaveras. I once found a saddle and bridle that had been hidden near the trail and that tree, as I suppose by some horsethief. I annexed them. We for some romantic reason called that tree "the blasted cypress." I tell this because that tree and the trace of the old trail lie on the rancho (our summer home) owned by the family these many years. I have known that tree fifty-eight years, and it does not appear to have grown. I know another solitary oak by the road between Niles and Decoto for the same time, which does not grow. There was, too, a large sycamore by the roadside at crossing of Dry Creek. Eckert and I have rested under it. I think the young tree there now has grown from the stump.

About game and fish. When I was a boy, geese and most kinds of ducks were in myriads all over the valley of the bay, but bear and deer were scarce in the adjacent hills by reason that from 1849 to 1852 market hunters for the San Francisco market had shot the country out. The hills from Berkeley to San Jose had been about the best bear country in the State, if we except Paso Robles, where the brother of my wife as late as 1854, when fifteen years old, killed seven grizzly bears in one season. Deer are more plentiful in our Mission hills now than they were in 1857. Before the Americans came, though, the whole country had fairly teemed with game and fish.

This picture, taken in the garden, shows the family entire as it then was. Reading from left to right, standing: Stanley, Ethel, Jacqueline, Jno. J. Valentine, Walter Starr, Margaret, young Jacqueline Valentine. Seated, left to right: Mrs. Stanley Moore with her baby, Mary Belle. Standing next her is Albert Arthur. Sitting on ground, Jack Valentine. Seated next is Mrs. Moore, holding Stanley Valentine. Next is A. A. Moore, then W. A. Starr, Jr., Carmen holding her son Allen, Florence Moore and A A. Man

The aborigines here when the Spanish came had no suitable weapons. They were not expert bowmen and relied on snaring mainly. The native population was so sparse as to affect the supply little if at all. In the region about our bay they seem to have lived on the seeds of oats and grasses, with grasshoppers, in season clams, some oysters, with geese and ducks aplenty. They left, here and there, large mounds of kitchen midden which tell the story. Judge Henshaw and I once made excavation in a large mound near the Coyote Hills in which we found the mass of material to be of shells and the bones of water fowl, together with some bones of deer, elk and wolves. We found there, too, several of the old inhabitants permanently located.

There is on our rancho the traces of an old Indian village-mortars, pestles, burned fireplaces and the like. Doubtless it was a summer camp resorted to for game and berries.

The Indians snared ducks by nets of wood fibre. I have heard that when the Americans came the few Indians left were still netting at the lagoon near Irvington. One of the lasting memories of my boyhood is of hearing in the evenings the rush of wings and calls of the ducks as in millions they flew from the bay to the fields. I have seen many times geese feeding on the fields so numerous that maybe twenty acres would seem entirely covered. When I lived in the valley neither we nor the neighbors shot much, and we did not fish at all. It was quite a trip to good trout fishing. I have done a good deal of both hunt