taken the fugitives undoubtedly would have made a
desperate resistance.
Yerba Buena cemetery could tell some strange tales if its dead could speak. Little dreamed the grave- diggers of those days that these dreary acres dotted with chaparral and sage-brush beneath, with here and there diminutive oaks and stunted laurel which hid the timid hare, while the howling coyote prowled not far off; that this uninviting wilderness should so soon be laid out in broad streets whose sides should be lined with beautiful residences, and that from the very spot where were then deposited the tired bones of the argonauts should so soon arise the magnificent city hall of this young, giant metropolis.
There was one solitary manzanita with blood-red stalk and ever-sfreen leaves which looked as if it had strayed from some happy valley of the Coast Range, hidden from the rude blasts of ocean. It seemed out of place here, this bloody red and green shrub, midst the ghastly white of dead humanity. It was a sor- rowful looking place, harboring the remains of sor- rowful men.
It was in February 1850 that the ayuntamiento set aside there shifting sands for burial purposes. In 1857 an old fence enclosed the sacred ground, entrance to which was made through a dilapidated gate. The place was sadly neglected, the paths in places entirely obliterated, and the grove approached only by wad- ing ankle deep in sand. There in a dismal pit, twenty-five by eighty feet, lay the bones of 800 pio- neers, piled side by side, and one above another, a strange medley, and whose flitting ghosts could each tell its own strange story.
Beside this mammoth sepulchre was the bone- bleaching ground of the Celestials, where the disin- terred bodies of dead Chinamen were whitened and dried by the bonfire made of their own redwood coffins. When properly cured, these precious relics were care- fully packed in strong boxes, and shipped to the angel-
