These old-time stages remind me again of the few varieties of vehicles then in use. John Goller had met with much skepticism and ridicule, as I have said, when he was planning an improvement on the old and clumsy _carreta_; and when his new ideas did begin to prevail, he suffered from competition. E. L. Scott & Company came as blacksmiths and carriage-makers in 1855; and George Boorham was another who arrived about the same time. Ben McLoughlin was also an early wheelwright. Among Goller's assistants who afterward opened shops for themselves, were the three Louis's--Roeder, Lichtenberger and Breer; Roeder and Lichtenberger[14] having a place on the west side of Spring Street just south of First. Thomas W. Seeley, Captain of the _Senator_, was very fond of Los Angeles diversions, as will appear from the following anecdote of the late fifties. After bringing his ship to anchor off the coast, he would hasten to Los Angeles, leaving his vessel in command of First Mate Butters to complete the voyage to San Diego and return, which consumed forty-eight hours; and during this interval, the old Captain regularly made his headquarters at the Bella Union. There he would spend practically all of his time playing poker, then considered the gentleman's game of chance, and which, since the mania for Chemical Purity had not yet possessed Los Angeles, was looked upon without criticism. When the steamer returned from San Diego, Captain Seeley, if neither his own interest in the game nor his fellow-players' interest in his pocketbook had ebbed, would postpone the departure of his ship, frequently for even as much as twenty-four hours, thus adding to the irregularity of sailings which I have already mentioned. Many, in fact, were the inconveniences to which early travelers were subjected from this infrequency of trips and failure to sail at the stated hour; and to aggravate the trouble, the vessels were all too small, especially when a sudden excitement--due, perhaps, to some new report of the discovery of gold--increased the number of intending travelers. It even happened, sometimes, that persons were compelled to postpone their trip until the departure of another boat. Speaking of anchoring vessels off the coast, I may add that high seas frequently made it impossible to reach the steamers announced to leave at a certain time; in which case the officers used to advertise in the newspapers that the time of departure had been changed. [Illustration: Louis Sainsevain] [Illustration: Manuel Dominguez] [Illustration: El Aliso, the Sainsevain Winery] [Illustration: Jacob Elias] [Illustration: John T. Lanfranco] [Illustration: J. Frank Burns] [Illustration: Henry D. Barrows From an old lithograph]