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or an office.”
Such, in substance, is the picture of Don Mariano, presented thirty years ago, to President Polk.
Unable to make him a marquis, Polk made him a general; then, in spite of his priests and bishops, Don Mariano staked his fortunes on the Stars and Stripes.
In punishment for his sin, he has been badly used by the United States.
Wishing to see the capital of California built on his estate, he founded a new city on San Pablo Bay, which he called Vallejo, and offered not only to give the State his finest sites, but to defray the cost of building a court-house and laying out a public square.
These offers were accepted by the State; yet after he had spent three hundred thousand dollars on public works in Vallejo, the capital was removed to Sacramento, and Don hMariano was left a ruined man.
Since then he has been swimming up a stream, in which the floods are high and swift.
“ No Mexican of note,” he says to me in one of our drives, “has been able to keep his lands.
My case is hard, but not so hard as that of others; twenty years hence no Spanish don will be a citizen of the United States,”
1875.
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