The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, April 6, 1902, Page 7

HE last of the Castros is dead. 0ld Majin Castro, the only Te- maining son of the famous Califor- nia Governor, lles buried in the Potter's Field. He was killed by a passing train, crushed, mangled, carried to the Morgue. Nobody was left to bury him except the impersonal public. In the days of his youth Majin Castro had ridden the fieetest horses, had danoced et the gayest fandangos, had scattered or like crumbs to the birds, wined the wealthiest and egant of California’s Spanish The Americans, the ““worthless as he alwa led them, had g years ago to his n the vast estates of dew. Majin stiver to the py aia in rags. athetic death d we have to even if he did call us hard enterprising Americans. Castro wealth slip fingers of . fingers better t sp. He began hy man. with all ong with wealth and he spent his last years dependent upon the good nature of any- body who happened to show it. When he was killed his body lay for three days un- identified in the Morgue at Oakiand and was finally laid in the After burial his cane identified by two Oakian recognized also the phc P Morgue officials had taken of } d a greater sto: fornia stories than m These siories were seidom told, for people laughed at them. They made fun of him when he told of his exploits at killing—he, a crippled old man, how bear? And as why im. any though, with barely ers &= a begga: thized, and to talk lied hen his hands is cigarettes, be. rolled them as ¢ ve my black coffee and he alway Ne! his ciy \0\ wahille “ c2 ment. It was the ‘Sobrdnce, _eft Over” ranch, being composed _ of the land left after the other great grants were made; but it was left over y in form. It he choicest of them father owned great herds of cattle, he Infian vaqueros who herded them lived in & camp, which they would pitch In some remote part of the land. I tsed to go out and herd with them when 1 was & boy for the fun of the thing. “1 liked to live in the rough v that and ANECQDOTES IN THE LIFE OF ONE WRO LIVED RS Y A PRINCE - AND DISD A PAUPER. the Indians did. I thought it manly. So I was very proud to lie on the bare ground. One night I lay down in this way, with a sack of jerked meat under my head for a pillow. “In the night I awoke. I felt that some- thing or some one was near me. I turned over to look, and there, near by me, stood a great bear. “The woods and canyons around there were full of them, but I was not accus- tomed to their walking sociably into camp in the middle of the night. I was surprised. I could think of only ione thing to do; that was to turn over and keep still while the bear did whatever it might please him to'do. I was unarmed, you see. “Therefore, I turned over and lay still. The bear advanced and came close. I did not know what he could want of me, but seemed to be headed had toward I could hear him stealing closer and ., and at last I could feel h'm snif- about my head. He came so close I thought he was considering what kind of a meal I should make. ‘I felt him nosing my pillow. Then a tug—then a larger one, and he had pulled my pillow of jerked meat out from under my head and was making off with his prize. He took it to a comfortable our fire and sat down to eat rned wit back h my spot the the Indians was roused He looked and ble, isera beas 1kind You shall be your A »on Le 2d a long pole which lay near-him. The farther end of it was in the fire and was burning. It made a torch when he lifted it. “The Indian stealthlly and surely reached out and poked the bear in the ribs with the burning stick. The beast was so absorbed in his deliclous meal that he did not know what bad happened untll be felt himself very warm. > “Now, he had been out killing and eat- ing cattle all day, as is the way with bears when they have a chance, and his &fiE SUNDAY CALL. fur was full of the grease of his many feasts, and when the pole touched him 1t worked like a match. His hair ignited as if it had been dipped in ofl. He jumped away from the fire with a-tremendous roar, and the last that we saw of him was as he ran madly down the hill, & beautiful bonfire on legs. And he had left to us some of the jerked meat, for which we were thankful “But although that was the last seen of the bear it was not the last heard of him. As he ran fast through the country, with its flelds of dried grass, his burn- ing fur set fire to them as quickly as & torch, and the whole of Contra Costa County was ignited in the most gorgeous blaze it has ever seen—all because of tha theft of a sinful bear.” Majin was educated at the Mission San Jose, where he studied about as much as 2 boy can whose time is:largely taken up with the cares of riding and hunting and lassoing. He used to tell of a certain flesta at the mission, the most splendid flesta of them all, when he made a rec- ord for himself on horseback—a record which he proudly lived up to during the most of his life. “There was a bad horse at a ranch near the mission. Nobody could break it. I was asked to. I sald I would and I daid. Then I was asked to ride it at the flesta and to try some feats on its back. “I knev that any feats would be difi- cult from the back of such a horse as this. It had been as much as I could do to get it under my control. But I was not to be daunted, especlally when I was offered the six-sided slug if I could pick it up while riding. “This slug was the fifty-dollar plece of old California. It was to be placed on the ground and I was to snatch it while riding by at full gallop. “As I dashed by I reached for the coin. I seemed to be flying past it when I felt 1t beneath my fingers. It almost slipped— =2 & g | no—T had it firm- v within my grasp. “Along with it I picked up a handful of :arth. I tossed this in the air and rode on. The people watching me thought that I bad failed to snatch the coin. “They gathered to look for it. It aia not lie where it had been placed. It must have been driven into the ground by my horse’s hoofs, they thought. They hunted in vain. i “For as much as a week following there were hundreds of Indians from all the country round hunting every daw for that fifty-dollar coin, which to them was easier than earning the same amount. They never found it. And 1? I will tell you what became of that coin. “There was a saloon near by. A place where one coyld buy everything to drink and to make one merry. That coin had disappeared from my fingers within five minutes. I could spare it. But could I spare the memory of the glorfous intoxi- cation it bought for me? Never!” It was at the same flesta that Pico made the dishes fly. “I was on my horse and was standing in front of the old women’s booths,” re- lated Castro. “The old women always set up little booths with tamales for sale and baked squashes filled with milk. They were standing around as thick as seeds in a pumpkin when up dashed Pico behind me. He was a boy then just as I was. He jumped upon the horse behind me. ‘Get up,’ he cried, and lashed the horse. It gave a trem n- dous leap and dashed straight through the booths, scattering tamales and stuffed sqpashes and dishes and old wo- men on the ground, while shrieks rose all around. There was a mass of women and hes in every direction that we looked. Never mind, I'll pay for everything, shouted Pico, and on we rode.” Old Majin’s storfes of early day hunt- ing make to-day’s sportsmen yellow with envy. Throughout Contra Costa County the canyons were full of elk, and Contra Costa County included what |is now Alameda County as well as its namesake. These elk could be seen run- ning through the great mustard flelds, their horns reaching above the yallow tops of the flowers. They would make tremendous dashes for the oaks of what is now Oakland and hide among them when the lasso was in pursuit of their horns among the mustard. Old Majin was a famous roper and rider, as his father was before him, and his daring led him into risky adventures plenty of timés. There was one occa- sion when he was still a schoolboy at San Jose. He was returning to San Pablo, where the old Castro ranch .was, accompanied by some schoolmates. “We saw a bear in a canyon. The beast was eating a beef which it had stolen, as fs always the way with bears when they get*a chance. I have little opinion of bears. We said, ‘Let us lasso it.’ “I was always headstrong and headlong and I rode on ahead of the other boys 2nd dashed straight into the canyon, making for the bear. He sat calmly eating his beef until I was almost upon him. He evidently did not think I was worth being disturbed over. “T thpught his capture that was be a very easy one—it looked like mere play to advance and throw the rope over his big neck. But he gave me a surprise, T can assure v f “Just as T threw the rope h ' €nbugh to dodge the loop e turned and cause Me to miss him. Then he looked me over ctitically for the fraction of a second and made one great spring. He landed "PON. my horse right behind me; he drove his strong claws far into the anqueros vhich hung as proteetors at each side of my saddle, and it looked for the mo. ment as If his company was ‘o be thrust vpon me willy-nilly. I aiq the cnly possible thing and it chanced to save me. I struck my horse flercsly, causing him to jump o quickly that the bear lost his hold and fell off, leaving my poor horse dreadfully scratched. You may think that T had enough of bear- Toping then, but I never did. It had a fascinatioh which drew me as long as T was able to ride and rope at all." The 19,000 acres that constituted the beautiful Sobrante ranch had all slipped Gway from him long before his death but he kept up the fancy that 1t was suli his. He had sold parts of it when he Wwas drunk and claimed it back In vain when he was sober. The rest had been deliberately taken possession of by the Americans, whom he regarded as his per- sonal enemies to his dying day. He used to Insist that the land was still his and claim that the varlous squatters owed him rent for vears back. “I can’t collect what they owe me,” he would complain, *“but they will be pun- ished when I dle. I am going to will all the land to the railroad, and the railroad people will send all the squatters off the land fn short order.” All the northern part of Contra Costa County from Grizzly Peak to Martines was his in fancy. Sobrante had contalned its own graveyard, as was customary with the old ranches. When the squat- ters came there was one woman from Missouri who settled on that spot most sacred to old Majin. “I couldn’t make her get off,” he used to mourn. “She wouldn't move, although I offercd her anything she wanted for that one spot. It was my grandmother's grave that she built on.” During the last years of his life he lived around in cheap lodging-houses in Oak- land, and was dependent upon what little he could earn as a veterinary surgeon who was old and feeble and not always sober enough to attend to business. Be- sides this, he broke wild colts for hire. Nobody in all California knew more about horses than did he. But his Spanish blood rose when he was called a vaquero. He would have it understood that he was no workingman. He was a don, the son of a don. The early miners, men of for- tune, had been his chums in old 8an Francisco. He had e worn $75 calsoneras, llned with blasing silk, al- though he dled in 76 cent overalls that he had with difficul- onc ¢y pald for. He had woen a pair of ataderas, a sort of garter, to fasten his botas de alla, the flapping tops of his boots. These ataderas had been made of braided gold and ver wire and they had been worth $100 a girl had given them to him, although he was a lonesome old bachelor now, with nobody fo care whether he was clothed or fed. He had worn a hat worth as much, with its band, its toqu of silver and gold twisted about the crown. Once when it was old and he was poor he had worn the rem- na it into a saloon, “That hat isn’t the style any more,” a man had said, and laughed roughly st him “No, for it cost $100, It is the style now to wear those like yours, costing a dollar and a half,” replied Majin. His elegant clothes had long ago disap- peered: The one mark of aristocracy which he clung to, besides his courtly man- ner, was the wearing of long whiskers brushed out at each side, in what had once been known as the “style of the king.” He was dressed in rags, but he sat his horse like a king as long as he was able to. ride. He was paralysed after- ward: but for years Oakland knew the old man as the rider of Ploneer, the great white horse that he clung to as his only friend. MIf T ever lose him I shall begin to go down hiil,” he sald, and, true enough, his worst fortune dated from the death of the horse. Majin Castro never married, but he sald that there were three things on which he was authority. They were wine, women and horses. He had the tastes of a thor- oughbred sport. “I am 66 years oid In the day, but at night I am 33,” he sald once. He refused over and over again to go to the poorhouse and he never did. He was satisfled to live with his black coffes, his cigarettes and Pioneer. The horse's man- ger was full of crumbled French bread, which the baker furnished him after It bad become stale. ““What better food could Plonesr have? Castro sald. “TIt is the finest of wheat”™ He never gave up his hope of going teo Mexico. “I shall have money some day and then I shall go,” he kept saying. He never went. He never had money. Poor old Majin Castro, the last of the fa- mous line, is buried In the Potter's Fleld. - Indian Rtiguette. HE Red Man and Helper, published by the students at the Carlisie E (Pa.) Indian school, has this to say on Indlan etiquette: *“It was an actual desire for information and no at- tempt to be funny that a boy in looking up from reading about ‘squaw men’ ssked if the white women who marry Indlan men were called ‘buck women." 'We could not answer why they were not. Such a name would be no more Insulting to = woman than the first appellation i to & man. All Indlan women are ne more squaws than white women are wemches, The name squaw emanated frem ‘Squa,’” an Indian word of a Massachusetts tribe meaning woman. but it has since come to be used commonly by iliterate peo; for Indian women of any tribe. No edu- cated or reflned geopll use the words ‘squaw’ and ‘buck,’ and we advise our students when they hear them not to pay any attention to the speaker, but to mark him or her down in their minds as & per- son of low breeding.” % . PECULIAR CASES OF ENSATIONALISM {s responsible,” says the chaplain of Reading Jail, the most famous prison prilest in England, “for the sad fact that the worse some men are the more they attract some women. % “Bad women attract many men, but it is not simply because they are bad. They must -be beautiful or clever as well. “But bad men seem to attract certain hysterical types of women, who come from every class, merely because they are bad. Some of the filthiest, stupidest, stolidest, most uninteresting brutes I have ever known in here,” and the chap- iain pointed at the soiled four walls of the extensive yard, ‘“have been simply in- undated with offers of marriage from un- known sympathizers and admirers. In fact, such is the curious fascination of crime to persons of a certain class that it is almost safe to say- that the more brutal and heartless the criminal the bet- ter are his matrimonial chances. “Neill Cream, the famous, or rather in- famous, poisoner; Deming, the Australian wite killer; Fauntleroy and many others of the greatest scoundrels of our time, might have been married over and over again if justice had not substituted the halter for the altar; and for a woman to commit a crime, if she be at all good- looking, is to awaken tender emotions in many a manly breast. “A-few years ago, wihen a certain young man of rank was charged with a particularly heartless crime, at least a scorg of silly women promptly fell head over heels in love with him, and inun- dated his solicitor with messages of syg- pathy, offers of financial help and of mar- riage. Every day of his trial some of them attended the court and exhausted every stratagem to get a word with him, and when he was sentenced. to five years’ penal servitude one woman, an absclute stranger to him, fainted in court. “So infatuated was one of his admirers that she went to live in the neighborhood of the prison where he served his sen- tence, and was happy if she caught a glimpse of him on his way to the quar- ries. Whether she married him or nat ul- timately I cannot say, but it was cer- tainly not her fault if she didn't. “In another case, which occurred at about the same time, a young and pretty girl was charged with the manslaughter of her child under peculiarly sad condi- tions, Her case excited wide sympathy, and to my certain knowledge at least a dozen men wrote to make her offers of marriage. After a long trial she was ac- quitted, and one of her numerous suitors, a man of some wealth and soclal positjon, found a home for her and at the end of months Jed her to the aitar. This SlakY INEAT strangely united couple are now living on the Continent, and, as 1 hear from a friend of mine who is an English chap- lain there, are happy together. - “It is comparatively seldom that this infatuation fer a criminal leads to matri- mony as promptly as in the case of a clever and notorious French swindler, who was recently brought before a French court on a serious charge. Among his many admirers was a young woman, who fell so violently in love with the prisoner that she declared she would marry him in prison. “She applled to a magistrate for the requisite permission. ‘Is it true that you wouid like to marry this man? the n:ag- istrate asked. ‘Yes, si she answered, ‘I love him very much, and it would make us both happy forever.” Permission was given, and the prisoner and his de- voted bride were married at the local Mayor's office, with four policemen as witnesses. It will probably be some time, however, before they are in a position to enjoy their honeymoon. “A still more remarkable story comes from America,” said the English clergy- man. “Some years ago a young and at- tractive_ woman A was charged with a grave offense, and although it was found that the crime was committed under in- fluence which the girl was powerless to resist, she was sentenced to a long im- prisonment. The Judge whose painful duty it was to inflict this sentence was so- moved by pity for the girl that he fre- quently visited her in prison, and was so struck by her natural charm, intelligence —— URTION. and modesty that he fell in love her. “When her sentence had ex; he met her at the prison gates and drove her away in his own carriage to a home he had provided for her, and a few weeks later she became the wife of a man who a few years earlier had been her Judge and punisher. This case, which is well known in America. proves that it {s mot only the young and foolish in whom & criminal can inspire love and loyalty. ‘“‘Another case which is within my own knowledge is that of a bank clerk who was charged about three years zgo with embezzlement. It was proved in evidence that he had committed the crime in or- der to help a brother who was in finan- clal straits. and fully hoping-and intend- ing to replace the money before it was missed. His case excited considerable sympathy at the time, and in none mare than in the daughter of the barrister who defended him. “The young man was sentenced to a merely nominal term of imprisonment, and on his release called at the house of the counsel who had defended him_ to thank him again for his kind offices. Hare he met the girl, who was able to_express her deep sympathy with him in his mis- fortune, and thus commenced an ae- {\m\inlance which quickl™ -ripened fnto ove. “A year ago the young people were married with the father’s approval, and I understand they are _now leading an ideally happy life in Melbourne, where & ood opening was found for the young ridegroom.”—Chicago Tribune.