Page:History of California, Volume 3 (Bancroft).djvu/476

458 of all Mexican 'varmint,' who had opened a distillery not far from San Juan. His place was a favorite loafing-place for foreigners; and having agreed to aid Alvarado, he had no difficulty, by a free use of aguardiente and eloquence, in raising a company of twenty-five or thirty men of various nationalities, most of them sailors, with perhaps half a dozen American hunters. Graham was aided in his work of recruiting by William R. Garner, and John Coppinger was made his lieutenant, both Englishmen; while Louis Pombert, a Frenchman, as a kind of sergeant was next in command. There is no list of names extant. A good deal of admiration has been expressed by different writers following in the lead of Farnham, for the brave and noble Graham, cavalier of the wilderness, and his gallant band of Kentuckian riflemen, taking up arms for Californian independence, not without a hope of bringing their adopted home under the stars and stripes! Their motives and their services have been greatly exaggerated; yet the presence of a few real hunters, and the superiority of the guns carried by the rest, made this company the most formidable part of the revolutionary force. If the sailors were not very expert marksmen, it was all the same to the Mexicans, to whom all were rifleros Americanos. Doubtless the leaders were promised recompense in lands and privileges; and it is not unlikely that a few of the foreigners looked at the whole enterprise from a political point of view; yet we may be very sure that the Californian leaders were inclined to use their allies rather than be used by them. It must be