* * * * *

“Look, Roberto,” exclaimed Senora Windham as they cantered into San Francisco one morning.  “A ship all gay with banners!  See the townsfolk are excited.  They rush to the Embarcadero.  The band plays.  It must be the festival of some Americano patron saint.”

“It is the long expected New York volunteers,” replied her husband.  “They’ve been recruited for the past year for service in California.  Colonel Stevenson, the commander, is a most distinguished man.  The president himself made him an offer of command if he could raise a regiment of California volunteers.”  Windham smiled.  “I believe it is for colonization rather than actual military duty that they’ve been sent out here ... three shiploads of them with two doctors and a chaplain.”

As they picked their way along a narrow footpath toward the beach, the portly Leidesdorff advanced to greet them.  “Would that I had a cloak of velvet,” he said gallantly, “so that I might lay it in the mire at your feet, fair lady.”  Anita Windham flashed a smile at him.  “Like the chivalrous Don Walter Raleigh,” she responded.  “Ah, but I am not a Queen Elizabeth.  Nor is this London.”  She regarded with a shrug of distaste the stretch of mud-flats reaching to the tide-line, rubbish—­littered and unfragrant.  Knee-deep in its mire, bare-legged Indians and booted men drove piles for the superstructure of a new pier.

Lieutenant Bryant joined them, brisk and natty in his naval garb.  He was the new alcalde, Bartlett having been displaced and ordered to rejoin his ship.

“No, it’s not London,” he took up Anita’s statement, “but it’s going to be a better San Francisco if I have my way.  We’ll fill that bog with sand and lay out streets between Fort Montgomery and the Rincon, if the governor’ll cede the tide-flats to the town.  Jasper O’Farrell is making a map.”

“See, they are landing,” cried the Dona Windham, clapping her hands.

A boat put off amid hails from the shore.  Soon four officers and a boat’s crew stood upon the landing pier and gazed about them curiously.

“That’s Colonel Stevenson,” said Bryant, nodding toward the leader.  On the verge of fifty, statesmanlike of mien and manner, stood the man who had recruited the first volunteer company which came around The Horn.  He fingered his sword a bit awkwardly, as though unused to military dress formalities.  But his eyes were keen and eager and commanding.

More boats put off from the anchored vessel.  By and by the parade began, led by Captain Stevenson.  It was a straggling military formation that toiled up-hill through the sand toward Portsmouth Square.  These men were from the byways and hedges of life.  Some of them had shifty eyes and some bold, predatory glances which forebode nothing good for San Francisco’s peace.  Adventurers for the most part, lured to this new land, some by the wander spirit, others by a wish to free themselves from the restraints of law.  Certain of them were to die upon the gallows; others were to be the proud and honored citizens of a raw, potential metropolis.  They talked loudly, vehemently, to one another as they marched like school boys seeing strange sights, pointing eagerly at all that aroused their interest.  The officers marched more stiffly as though conscious of official noblesse oblige.