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304 Edward Fitzgerald Beale

the winning of the West and the development of
the Pacific Empire. The Cabinet and the Justices
of the Supreme Court, the scientists of the Smith
sonian and the political leaders were present at the
simple service of the interment. There came to the
bereaved family messages from crowned heads, from
the Courts of St. Petersburg, of Vienna, and of
Athens, which showed that those who ruled by
divine right could still recognize the rare quality
of this leader of men who had come to the front by
right of personal achievement.
Sympathetic words there came too from the
humble and the lowly, from the trapper and the
scout, from the small farmer and the herder who
had found life more spacious because of the rich
domain of Southern California which more than
any other one man General Beale had opened to
the crowded East.
Down on the Tejon Rancho in the San Joaquin
Valley there still lived two Indians who had fol
lowed General Beale across the plains when, in the
heyday of youth in 1847, with his San Pasqual
wounds still open, he had carried the news of the
conquest of California to Washington. These men
had long outlived their usefulness, they were crip
pled by the weight of years and the burden of
hardships undergone, but the Patron, as they
called the General, by the most adroit and long
sustained diplomacy had always succeeded in con
vincing them that they could still do a day s work
with the best and more than earned their rations.