DIVISION TWO — COI.ONIAL. 121 



few weeks she left the ranch never to return. [Note. — Mrs. Johnston's 

 husband was killed in the battle of Shiloh or Pittsburg Landing in April, 

 1862. Her brother Dr. Griffin's wife was sister to Judge Eaton's first wife ; 

 and her son, Hancock M. Johnston, married Judge Eaton's daughter Mary. 

 When Mrs. Johnston sold the Fair Oaks ranch and gave a deed of it, she 

 made special reservation of the space occupied by the grave of her son, 

 Albert Sidney Johnston, who had been buried there. — Ed.] 



About two years after she left I entered into a contract (1865) to bring 

 the waters of Eaton Canyon out, and moved with my family into the 

 Johnston house. The terrible drouth of 1864-65 had swept away my stock 

 and I turned my attention to agricultural pursuits. Cleaning off the sage- 

 brush and cactus, I planted 5,000 grape vines as an experiment — for no one 

 in Southern California had ever tried to carry a vineyard through the sum- 

 mer without flooding it with water from three to five times, and I knew 

 from the small supply of water that I had I could not give my vines a drop. 

 In fact, for the first two years of my residence there, I had to haul all m}^ 

 watei for stock and domestic use from Wilson's and Rose's, a distance of 

 three miles and a half. When the Savans and older inhabitants heard of 

 my reckless undertaking, they unanimously voted me a leather medal for 

 being the greatest fool that ever struck this country. But my vines did so 

 well that the year following I planted 30,000 more, and in two years (it had 

 always taken four years before this) produced a wine that made old manu- 

 facturers open their eyes, for it brought prices that they had never before 

 heard of. 



During these first years my greatest anxiety was where the next sack 

 of flour was coming from to feed the hearty kids that were constantly put- 

 ting in an appearance in the family circle. 



The ranch abounded in jack-rabbits, cotton-tails, quail, and some deer. 

 Of wild fruits there were none except a few cherries that grew on a brilliant 

 green shrub near the base of the mountains. This production hardly de- 

 served the name of fruit, as it consisted principally of a pit about the size of 

 a cherr}^ with a very light veneering of flesh. [See foot-note, p. 23.] 



Bears were frequent visitors in early days ; not grizzlys, perhaps, but 

 the brown bear, very much like them but not so large. One of these 

 "varmints " had the audacity to enter Mrs. Johnston's door yard in the day- 

 time, tip over a bee-hive and help himself to honey. He was discovered by 

 Sid Johnston, then a lad of seventeen, who in the absence of fire arms, drove 

 him off with rocks, at the same time denouncing him as a "dog-gon thief." 

 The first visit I received from the gentry was in the spring of 1865, when a 

 big fellow whose tracks measured eleven inches, came within fifty yards of 

 the house in the night, and slaughtered a calf. Being disturbed by my 

 dogs and men before he had finished his feast he beat a retreat. I tracked 

 him into Rubio Canyon, where I set a big trap, hanging a part of the calf 

 on a tree above. He sprung the trap, but escaped only to find his death b)^ 

 eating another piece of the slaughtered calf, which I had loaded with strych- 

 nine. The following summer I was engaged most of the time building a 

 dam up in the canyon. In going up mornings I frequently saw the tracks 

 of a large California Lion, or puma, and on one occasion he waded through 

 my mortar bed and left the impress of his great foot-prints upon many a 

 boulder, from which I concluded he was a big fellow. One morning later I 

 went to the creek to get a bucket of water. A Mexican boy accompanied 

 me. It was very warm and we sat on the edge of the stream close to a big 



