Page:History of California, Volume 3 (Bancroft).djvu/433

Rh much to restore his health; but for some reason that the records fail to make apparent, the efforts in his favor were ineffectual.

On January 2, 1836, Castro transferred the gefatura to Gutierrez, as both announced to local authorities in letters of that date. The alleged motive of the transfer was an order of the supreme government, dated January 21, 1835, that for the national good the civil and military commands should be vested in one person. This order was probably in reply to some of Figueroa's past suggestions and the efforts of Californians in congress; but it is strange that it did not arrive sooner. The lawyers, Cosme Peña and Castillo Negrete, the diputacion, and the ayuntamiento of Monterey approved the union of the two commands, which Gutierrez himself affected to oppose at first. It is remarkable that the change should have been so quietly effected, and given rise to so little correspondence, that Castro and his Californian friends should have surrendered the power to a Mexican without at least a war of words. True, the rule of Gutierrez was accidental, prospectively brief, and hardly worth a contest; true also, that the current correspondence may possibly have disappeared in great part from the archives; yet enough of mystery remains to indicate an understanding between Castro and Gutierrez, and to give some plausibility to Juan Bandini's theory that the former surrendered the command to the latter in order to keep it from Estudillo — that personal and local prejudices were more potent than the popular feeling against Mexican rulers.