From "Sea and Shore"
WALTER COLTON
Alcalde of Monterey in 1846. The position combined administrative, judicial and even legislative duties.
After nearly six months as Alcalde, Colton writes:
"Of the women I have had to deal with here the washerwomen are the most unmanageable. Two of them entered my office today as full of fight as the feline antagonists of Kilkenny. It seems they had been washing in one of the pools created by the recent showers, when one had taken that part of the margin previously occupied by the other. War offensive and defensive immediately commenced. One drew a knife which had a blade two mortal inches in length, and the other a sharp ivory bodkin. But what their weapons wanted in terror, their ungentle anger supplied.
"At last one cried out: 'The Alcalde'; the other echoed it, and both rushed to the office to have their difficulties settled. Their stories ran together like two conflicting rivulets forced into the same channel. When the tumult and bubble had a little subsided, I began cautiously to angle for the truth—a difficult trout to catch in such waters. But one darter after another was captured, till I had enough to form some opinion of those that had escaped. These we discussed till bitter feeling, like biting hunger, became appeased. Both went away declaring either margin of the pool good enough, and each urging on the other the first choice."
One deficiency which Colton had to supply was the absence of a penitentiary system. To quote:
"There are no workhouses here, no buildings adapted to the purpose, no tools and no trades. The custom has been to fine Spaniards and whip Indians. The discrimination is unjust, and the punishment ill-suited to the ends proposed. I have substituted labor, and now have eight Indians, three Californians, and one Englishman at work making adobes [sun-dried bricks]. They have all been sentenced for stealing horses or bullocks. I have given them their task; each is to make fifty adobes a day, and for all over this they are paid. They make seventy-five, and for the additional twenty-five each one gets as many cents. This is paid to them every Saturday night, and they are allowed to get with it anything but rum. They are comfortably lodged and fed by the government. I have appointed one of their number captain. They work in the field; require no other guard; not one of them has attempted to run away."
Later, Colton had to deal with runaways; two Mexicans each telling him that the devil incited their flight, while one fellow who stayed behind in a jail delivery explained that he would not be seen running from Tophet in such company.
Of a convict who escaped and was brought back Colton says:
"If he will only stop stealing he may run to earth's utmost verge. He is rather a hardened character, but if he has a good vein in him I will try to find it. I always like to see a fellow get out of trouble, and sometimes I half forget his crimes in his misfortunes. This is not right, perhaps, in one situated as I am; but I cannot help it."
