The Forty-Niners

hose personal narrative is well worth reading. These men were bold, hardy, rough, energetic, with little patience for the refinements of life--in fact, diametrically opposed in character to the easy-going inhabitants of California. Contempt on the one side and distrust on the other were inevitable. The trappers and traders, together with the deserters from whalers and other ships, banded together in small communities of the rough type familiar to any observer of our frontier communities. They looked down upon and despised the "greasers," who in turn did everything in their power to harass them by political and other means.

At first isolated parties, such as those of Jedediah Smith, the Patties, and some others, had been imprisoned or banished eastward over the Rockies. The pressure of increasing numbers, combined with the rather idle carelessness into which all California-Spanish regulations seemed at length to fall, later nullified this drastic policy. Notorious among these men was one Isaac Graham, an Am