The Days of a Man 1:1892 



Addison Reavis of Missouri, a prosperous and 

 plausible gentleman, exploiter of the famous Peralta 

 Claim to lands in the Southwest. Him I did not 

 meet, however, until 1905, just after his release 

 from the prison to which he had been consigned 

 by a relentless Fate. He was then still tall, erect, 

 of military bearing, with the general appearance of 

 a somewhat battered soldier or perhaps of a stranded 

 journalist. A soft, persuasive voice, at once plain- 

 tive and enthusiastic, lent to his manner a friendly 

 and confidential tone. With him was a son, a good- 

 looking, half-Mexican lad somewhere in the teens. 

 Reavis said they were both present on the opening 

 day at Stanford, on which occasion "the Governor" 

 took up the child, remarking: "You shall go to 

 Stanford University." "And so he shall," declared 

 the father; but to my knowledge the youth never 

 came. 



A monu- " Peralta-Reavis " will long be remembered as 

 mental tne au thor of the most gigantic, as well as the most 



romancer iiri i /N 'i i 



artistic, land fraud ever attempted. On the basis 

 of alleged old Spanish grants, he laid claim to 

 12,500,000 acres (a tract five times as large as the 

 state of Connecticut) lying in a rectangle extending 

 from beyond Phoenix, Arizona, to Silver City, New 

 Mexico. The contention was supported by a wealth 

 of false details of registration in Madrid and Guada- 

 lajara, and bolstered by a variety of circumstantial 

 evidence. In the latter nothing had been over- 

 looked, ancestral portraits and high adventure play- 

 ing their part along with violated documents and 

 forged deeds. 



Some time before, a dubious "Peralta Claim" 

 had been put forward by Don Miguel Peralta of 



