Ricardo Vejar, another magnate, had an interest in a wide area of rich territory known as the San José Ranch. Not less than twenty-two thousand acres made up this _rancho_ which, as early as 1837, had been granted by Governor Alvarado to Vejar and Ygnácio Palomares who died on November 25th, 1864. Two or three years later, Luis Arenas joined the two, and Alvarado renewed his grant, tacking on a league or two of San José land lying to the West and nearer the San Gabriel mountains. Arenas, in time, disposed of his interest to Henry Dalton; and Dalton joined Vejar in applying to the courts for a partitioning of the estate. This division was ordered by the Spanish _Alcalde_ six or seven years before my arrival; but Palomares still objected to the decision, and the matter dragged along in the tribunals many years, the decree finally being set aside by the Court. Vejar, who had been assessed in 1851 for thirty-four thousand dollars' worth of personal property, sold his share of the estate for twenty-nine thousand dollars, in the spring of 1874. It is a curious fact that not until the San José _rancho_ had been so cut up that it was not easy to trace it back to the original grantees, did the authorities at Washington finally issue a patent to Dalton, Palomares and Vejar for the twenty-two thousand acres which originally made up the ranch. The Machados, of whom there were several brothers--Don Agustin, who died on May 17th, 1865, being the head of the family--had title to nearly fourteen thousand acres. Their ranch, originally granted to Don Ygnácio Machado in 1839 and patented in 1873, was known as La Ballona and extended from the city limits to the ocean; and there, among other stock, in 1860, were more than two thousand head of cattle.