Page:California Inter Pocula.djvu/762

 xpressed fears

that the public administrator and probate judge had pickled rather than preserved a certain estate. The administrator took exceptions to such personalities and threatened to cowhide the editor. W. H. Graham, a friend of the probate judge, then wrote an insulting letter to the editor which provoked a challenge. They fought with pistols and Walker was wounded. Captain Folsom assisted in loading the pistols, which the seconds seemed unacquainted with, and witnessed the fight. Graham was arrested and held to bail in the sum of $5,000.

The same year W. H. Graham and H. Lemon exchanged several shots with revolvers, one of which wounded the lattejr in the shoulder.

A difficulty arose between Hopkins, deputy collector and Taylor, inspector at San Francisco in 1851. They agreed to meet at Benicia, but Taylor was arrested and placed under bonds to keep the peace.

E. Stanley and S. W. Inge, representatives in congress at Washington in 1851, one from North Carolina and the other from Alabama, after a foolish and empty jangle of words upon the floor of the house, withdrew with pistols in order to kill each other. After the exchange of one shot, fearing if continued some one might be hurt, an aperture of escape was found, and the farce ended. These men both figured subsequently in California.

S. Wethered and one Schaffer exchanged shots with guns in 1851 and were stopped by the authorities.

If Christians fight, may not heathen ? Meek in manner and peaceful in action as the Chinese ordinarily are, they are yet, on occasions, capable of the most cold-blooded savagery, and will slash each other to pieces with diabolical zest. Their ideas of the code are particularly murderous. A dispute occurring among a number of them on the Mokelumne river in the spring of 1851, relative to certain money matters, the interested parties locked themselves in a r^ark room, and proceeded to arbitrate the matter sumnia