The Days of a Man 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 menu- " Peralta-Reavis " will long be remembered as 

 mental t j le au thor of the most gigantic, as well as the most 



romancer . . . - r , _ 



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 



n 472 3 



