cotton sheets, in the corner of a canvas store. The ground was for a while the floor; yet I paid in advance the monthly rent of two ounces of gold, and never had occasion to regret the outlay. The heavy winter rains at length compelled my landlord to lay a floor of rough boards, which cost him seven hundred dollars for a thousand feet.
Before the establishment of the state government, there was a judiciary created by an autocratical edict of General Riley; and a pamphlet, extracted and translated from the Mexican Constitutional laws of 1836, constituted the Corpus Juris Civilis of the Territory of California. The remainder of the law was made up of the judge's ideas of equity, and of the law he had read before leaving home. Inartificial and rude as was this system, still it was wonderfully efficient; and it was well for the people of California that it was so, for an unparalleled immigration had brought with it an unparalleled amount of litigation.
With the daily occurring causes of litigation, crowds assembled at the school-house on the Plaza, where from morning to night sat a judge dispensing off-hand justice. In front of him sat three or four clerks conducting the business. The crowds of lawyers, litigants, and witnesses that surrounded the court were not idle spectators, but represented the ordinary accumulation of business for the day, which was to be disposed of before the adjournment of the court. Speedy justice was more desirable than exact justice, where labor was valued at a gold ounce a day; and none were more desirous of speed than the lawyers, whose prospects of compensation depended much upon the promptitude with which judgment was rendered.
The moving spirit of the whole scene, Judge A——, watched from behind the desk all that was said or done, seldom withdrawing his attention unless to administer an oath for the consideration of one dollar, or to sign an order for the consideration of two dollars.