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Updated: June 16, 2025


"I am here, senor, and I wrote the note. That is all. We two, senor. I wrote and my father ran. He was stronger, that day, than even my younger bones." The commandante compressed his lips. He turned to the sergeant and said: "At sunset have these two men shot." The two men merely spat upon the ground. For them death evidently had no terrors.

I am not one to balk the honest ambition of any man, particularly when he does me the honor to take me into his confidence. I like this suggested measure. I like it much. I believe it would redound to our mutual benefit and reputation. Is it not so, Jose?" The Commandante nodded vigorously. "I am sure of it! I am sure of it! I like it much, much."

Once the Commandante took twenty of his guests, a gay cavalcade, to his rancho, El Pilar, thirty miles to the south: a long valley flanked by the bay and the eastern mountains on the one hand, and a high range dense with forests of tall thin trees on the other. But the valley itself was less Californian than any part of the country Rezanov had seen.

It did not take me long to resolve that, to be honourable, I must myself bear the consequences of my own folly; and in a very short time afterward I was interviewing the Commandante.

He bowed and scraped before the irate commander. "Pardon, Senor Commandante," he said, quaveringly, "the flag of Mexico reposes in a trunk with the official papers of the port. I, myself, have seen the receiver of customs, Don Rafael Pinto, place it there." "And where is Don Rafael?" "Some days ago he joined the Castro forces in the South, Senor." "Well, well!"

He reminded me of a remark I made to him once, when pulling him ashore in the boat, when he was commandante at the Presidio. I learned that the two Vallejos, Guadalupe and Salvador, owned, at an early time, nearly all Napa and Sonoma, having princely estates. But they have not much left.

Beyond were a chapel and a dozen outbuildings. Dinner was served in patriarchal style in the hall, the Commandante or El padrone as he was known here and his guests at the upper end of the table; below the salt, the vaqueros, their wives and children, and the humble friar who drove them to prayer night and morning.

Finding the colony there in almost destitute condition, he had embarked on the first voyage of a Russian vessel to the port of San Francisco, California. There being no commercial treaty between the two ports, Rezanoff made personal appeal for help to Governor Arrillago, and later to Commandante Arguello. After many difficulties and delays, he succeeded in obtaining the sorely needed supplies.

The Spaniards were properly impressed as the priest translated with the glibness of the original; but Arguello, who announced himself as Commandante ad interim of the Presidio of San Francisco during the absence of his father at Monterey, nodded sagely several times, and then held a short conference in Spanish with the interpreter.

The fat American in his shirt-sleeves was listening to what the Commandante was saying, and apparently with great dissatisfaction. As he listened he scowled at me, chewing savagely on an unlit cigar, and rocking himself to and fro on his heels and toes. His thumbs were stuck in his suspenders, so that it looked as though, with great indecision he was pulling himself forward and back.

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