me to back him any more, however valuable it might be, if completed, and
I had no doubt there was a fortune in it, but neither he nor I had the
capital to do it.

I had some other financial entangling matters, and I was afraid if I
kept on with them I might get broke, and the only way I saw of getting
out with them was to announce that I was going to leave, and going down
to Relago, Central America.

There was an English steamer advertised to sail for that port and
Panama. I thought I would go for sixty days and then return and commence
again and manage my affairs in a more conservative way, and what I could
control. Well I closed my matters out the best I could and engaged my
passage on the steamer for Relago. There was considerable excitement at
this time about the Nicaragua route. The above place would be the
terminus on the Pacific coast, and, consequently, a place of importance.
As I had missed it in trading six of my houses for lots in San
Francisco, there might be a chance to get some there in advance of any
rise on them. Any way, I wanted to get out of my entangling alliances
and take a fresh start. The night before I sailed Mr. Brady (Colonel
Stevenson's son-in-law) came to me and said the colonel did not like to
have me go. I told him I had paid my passage, $200. He said the colonel
understood that. He put his hand in his vest pocket and pulled out a
roll of bills. He said, here is the $200, which he told me to give you,
so you will not lose any thing by not going. There was once a lady, the
wife of one of the officers of his regiment, who arrived there,
expecting to meet her husband, but he was up in the country. The colonel
asked me to go down to the steamer and meet her, and escort her to a
boarding-house to stay until her husband arrived, which I did. I told
him that she was short of funds, having expected to meet her husband. He