When Captain Seeley was killed in the _Ada Hancock_ disaster, in 1863, First Mate Butters was made Captain and continued for some time in command. Just what his real fitness was, I cannot say; but it seemed to me that he did not know the Coast any too well. This impression also existed in the minds of others; and once, when we were supposed to be making our way to San Francisco, the heavy fog lifted and revealed the shore thirty miles north of our destination; whereupon a fellow-passenger exclaimed: "Why, Captain, this isn't at all the part of the Coast where we should be!" The remark stung the sensitive Butters, who probably was conscious enough of his shortcomings; and straightway he threatened to put the offending passenger in irons! George F. Lamson was an auctioneer who arrived in Los Angeles in 1855. Aside from the sale of live stock, there was not much business in his line; although, as I have said, Dr. Osburn, the Postmaster, also had an auction room. Sales of household effects were held on a Tuesday or a Wednesday; while horses were offered for sale on Saturdays. Lamson had the typical auctioneer's personality; and many good stories were long related, illustrating his humor, wit and amusing impudence by which he often disposed, even to his friends, of almost worthless objects at high prices. A daughter Gertrude, widely known as Lillian Nance O'Neill, never married; another daughter, Lillian, is the wife of William Desmond, the actor. In 1854, Congress made an appropriation of fifty thousand dollars which went far toward opening up the trade that later flourished between Los Angeles and Salt Lake City. This money was for the survey and location of a wagon-road between San Bernardino and the Utah capital; and on the first of May, 1855, Gilbert & Company established their Great Salt Lake Express over that Government route. It was at first a pony express, making monthly trips, carrying letters and stopping at such stations as Coal Creek, Fillmore City, Summit Creek and American Fork, and finally reaching Great Salt Lake; and early having good Los Angeles connections, it prospered sufficiently to substitute a wagon-service for the pony express. Although this was at first intended only as a means of connecting the Mormon capital with the more recently-founded Mormon settlement at San Bernardino, the extension of the service to Los Angeles eventually made this city the terminus. Considerable excitement was caused by the landing at San Pedro, in 1855, of a shipload of Mormons from Honolulu. Though I do not recall that any more recruits came subsequently from that quarter, the arrival of these adherents of Brigham Young added color to his explanation that he had established a Mormon colony in California, as a base of operations and supplies for converts from the Sandwich Islands.