similar group began to appear at the end of another and converging
street. The columns came steadily forward, as the people gave way. The
men wore no uniforms, and the glittering steel of their bayonets
furnished the only military touch. The two columns reached the
convergence of the street at the same time and as they entered the
square before the jail a third and a fourth column debouched from other
directions, while still others deployed into view on the hills behind.
They all took their places in rank around the square.

Among the well-known characters of the times was a certain Colonel Gift.
Mr. Hubert H. Bancroft, the chronicler of these events, describes him as
"a tall, lank, empty-boweled, tobacco-spurting Southerner, with eyes
like burning black balls, who could talk a company of listeners into an
insane asylum quicker than any man in California, and whose blasphemy
could not be equaled, either in quantity or quality, by the most profane
of any age or nation." He remarked to a friend nearby, as he watched the
spectacle below: "When you see these damned psalm-singing Yankees turn
out of their churches, shoulder their guns, and march away of a Sunday,
you may know that hell is going to crack shortly."

For some time the armed men stood rigid, four deep all around the
square. Behind them the masses of the people watched. Then at a command
the ranks fell apart and from the side-streets marched the sixty men
chosen by Olney, dragging a field gun at the end of a rope. This they
wheeled into position in the square and pointed it at the door of the
jail. Quite deliberately, the cannon was loaded with powder and balls. A
man lit a slow match, blew it to a glow, and took his position at the
breech. Nothing then happened for a full ten minutes. The six men stood
rigid by the gun in the middle of the square. The sunlight gleamed from
the ranks of bayonets. The vast multitude held its breath. The wall of