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Updated: June 29, 2025
Clipper ships of the largest size lay at anchor in the stream, or were girt to the wharves; and capacious high-pressure steamers, as large and showy as those of the Hudson or Mississippi, bodies of dazzling light, awaited the delivery of our mails to take their courses up the Bay, stopping at Benicia and the United States Naval Station, and then up the great tributaries the Sacramento, San Joaquin, and Feather Rivers to the far inland cities of Sacramento, Stockton, and Marysville.
Captains and crews deserted for the gold-mines, and now half the city in front of Montgomery Street is built over the hulks thus abandoned. But Dr. Semple, at that time, was all there was of Benicia; he was captain and crew of his ferry boat, and managed to pass our party to the south side of Carquinez Straits in about two days.
"Look here!" he cried, "how many of those Benicia muskets are there?" "About a hundred and fifty stand, sir," Howard told him. "Now they can't help us a whole lot," propounded Ware. "They are too few. But why can't we use them for bait, to get those people on the wrong side of the fence?" "What do you mean?" asked Terry, who knew Ware intimately.
As I sally forth upon Benicia Street, the whole suburb of Charlesbridge stretches about me, a vast space upon which I can embroider any fancy I like as I saunter along. I have no associations with it, or memories of it, and, at some seasons, I might wander for days in the most frequented parts of it, and meet hardly any one I know.
Doña Eustaquia and Benicia Ortega are not the only ones to wed Americans. Listen! La Tulita is mad for this man, who is no more handsome than the palm of my hand when it has all day been in the water. Yesterday morning came Don Ramon. I am in the back garden of the Casa Rivera with Ana, and La Tulita is in the front garden sitting under the wall.
Our own boat was pretty fast, and we were not afraid to have a brush with any other that happened along. Sunday came. The challenge had been bruited abroad, and the fishermen and seafaring folk of Benicia turned out to a man, crowding Steamboat Wharf till it looked like the grand stand at a football match.
Vallejo, viz., "Benicia;" and Benicia it has remained to this day. I am convinced that this little circumstance was big with consequences. That Benicia has the best natural site for a commercial city, I am, satisfied; and had half the money and half the labor since bestowed upon San Francisco been expended at Benicia, we should have at this day a city of palaces on the Carquinez Straits.
The name of "San Francisco," however, fixed the city where it now is; for every ship in 1848-'49, which cleared from any part of the world, knew the name of San Francisco, but not Yerba Buena or Benicia; and, accordingly, ships consigned to California came pouring in with their contents, and were anchored in front of Yerba Buena, the first town.
French Frank, they said, was lurking up river, afraid to come down because of something he had done. Others were wearing the stripes in San Quentin or Folsom. Big Alec, the King of the Greeks, whom I had known well in the old Benicia days, and with whom I had drunk whole nights through, had killed two men and fled to foreign parts.
When the carriage was announced, which would take us to Benicia in time to catch the Sacramento steamer to San Francisco, I tied on grandma's bonnet, pinned her shawl around her shoulders, and told her that we would take her home before proceeding on our way, but she crossed her hands in front and artlessly whispered: "No; I'd like to stay in town a while to talk with friends; but I thank you just the same, and shall not forget that I am to go to you, after you be settled in the new home, and his little daughter has learned to call you 'mother."
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