rlly with knives and iron bars, resulting in the slaying and maiming of most of them. How they distinguished friend from foe is a mystery; but to do so was part of the performance. Bloodless barbarians as they are, these people are not wanting in that reckless disregard for life which more civilized nations soberly term heroism.
During the first week in September 1851 George McDougal and E. C. Kemble, editor of the Alta California, met twice, Kemble being the challenger. The law, jealous perhaps of the ancient form of trial by combat, interfered at both meetings, and meanwhile the blood of the belligerents cooled.
Out among the bushes in the suburbs of San Francisco, on the 10th of September, 1851, Joseph L. Folsom, graduate of West Point, captain in the United States army, chief of the quartermaster's department on the northwestern coast, first American collector in California, and operator in Leidesdorff estate and Yerba Buena sand hills, met A. C. Russell, both bent upon offering on the altar of their vengeance the life of the other, that honor—without which Mexican wars and advance in San Francisco real estate brought no solace—now smeared and sulky, might be appeased. It was just becoming dark on the evening of that day, when these men met to kill each other. The rabbits and quails paused before retiring, to witness the singular spectacle. None of them had ever before seen a duel fought, as the custom did not obtain among any species of beast known to them. After two shots each, the fiery combatants embraced and went home. The rabbits and quails were disgusted.
A conundrum was the cause of it; it takes but little stirrinof to set effervescino; bad blood mixed with bad whiskey. Wine they called it this time; wme, conviviality, and conundrums. In October 1851 at Nevada, George M. Dibble, a whilom midshipman,
