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Rh from all directions; and at Monterey a meeting was held in May to pass formal resolutions and appoint a committee to wait on the gefe político, and urge the importance of sending the convicts back on the same ship that brought them. The diputacion passed resolutions of similar purport in August, as has been noted in the legislative records; but meanwhile, in July, there had arrived the Leonor, Captain Fitch, with fifty more convicts, about whom we have less information than in the case of the first company. With few exceptions, no attempt was made to confine the criminals; but they were distributed through the territory to earn their living under a surveillance of the local authorities, more nominal than real. A few escaped across the frontier; and of those who served out their time, a large part remained permanently in California, where some were the founders of respectable families.

The sending of the convicts and the resulting discussions doubtless had an effect to embitter the feeling that was beginning to exist between Californians and Mexicans, particularly at Monterey, where the quarrel between Gonzalez and Estrada had originated a sentiment of hostility which outlasted the Mexican power in California. At the celebration of the independence on September 16, 1830, a free fight is said to