I still remain here, with no advices from New York for a fortnight. Work has entirely ceased on the Estate, but there has been no [315]violence, and a good many of the more dangerous men have sold their claims on the Company at 50 prct, and cleared out. Mary has borne up very well, has kept her horse and rides every day, enjoying the fine spring weather. The Bank of California has obtained judgment and execution has been issued. The Sheriff may proceed to sell, but I hope not yet. I do not think the Company can possibly recover, however, and it is only a question how long the catastrophe may be temporized with. I need not say that this uncertainty and my helplessness is very uncomfortable but I don’t think it oppresses me as much as the anxiety I have had during the whole year past to avoid a failure of the enterprise I had undertaken to manage. It is a great satisfaction that no one thinks of attributing the failure in any way to me. The creditors here universally consider my part of the business to have been well done and give me every possible favor and mark of confidence. Since the suspension, considering the doings or non-doings of the Company too, we have got on remarkably well. My business has been to temporize—to allow the Company time, to recover the ground lost, if disposed to make the effort—and I have succeeded much better than it was reasonable to expect that I should. I have also done this in a way which has exasperated no one, but the contrary. The Company can still obtain every favor here which it would be reasonable to ask. So you may consider that I am doing as well and am as cheerful as possible under the circumstances.

There has been a great deal of petroleum prospecting lately starting from Bear Valley, the field of exploration being North and West of Tulare lake, about 100 miles S.W. of Mariposa. Several large springs have been found and a dozen companies formed for selling them. I am a stockholder in three or four and a Director of two; was elected President of one but declined. The unfavorable circumstance connected with all of them is their distance from market, the land carriage which would be required being never less than forty miles. The quality and abundance of oil is all that could be desired. There is nothing like it in Pennsylvania. At Pennsylvania prices of oil lands my stock is worth millions but I have been unable to get anyone here to look at it and don’t suppose I could sell out for as much as a hundred dollars. It has cost me nothing as yet. We want to sell in the East, and the stock is now held at from one to five hundred thousand dollars for each claim—generally covering several hundred acres of land in which there are several spots where the oil oozes from the surface, bubbling with gas, which flashes when a lighted match is applied.

I went a few days ago with a party of engineers and scientific men to examine a fine oil property near the coast. This is so situated that I think it will be easy to make a fine thing of it and I shall be glad if the capitalists at whose request I examined it will let me in to buy a share [316]or two at what it will cost them. $250,000 for the claim on which there are 7000 acres of land held under Spanish Grants—the best title.

I have an engineer at work putting my Cemetery plan upon the ground at Oakland, and as soon as this is done shall employ him in making a topographical survey of lands belonging to the University of California, with a view to laying them out in a park.