Travelers to Europe have often suffered much annoyance through safe-conduct regulations, but seldom have Americans had their liberty thus restricted by their own authorities. Toward the middle of June, word was received in Los Angeles that, owing to the suspicion lest disloyalists were embarking for Aspinwall, all passengers for California _via_ the Isthmus would be required to take out passports. Anticipating, by forty years or more, Luther Burbank's work, attention was directed, as early as 1862, to the possibility of eating the cactus and thus finding, in this half-despised plant of the desert, relief from both hunger and thirst. Half a century later, in 1913, Los Angeles established the cactus candy industry through which the boiled pulp of the _bisnaga_, often spoken of as the fishhook, barrel and nigger-head variety, is made deliciously palatable when siruped from ten to thirty days. Ygnácio Sepúlveda, declared by the Los Angeles _Star_ "a young gentleman of liberal education, and good, natural endowments, already versed in legal studies," on September 6th was admitted to the District Court Bar. On January 18th, 1860, the first number of the _Semi-Weekly Southern News_ appeared, containing advertisements in both English and Spanish. It was issued by C. R. Conway and Alonzo Waite, who charged twenty-five cents a copy, or seven dollars a year. On October 8th, 1862, the title was changed to the _Los Angeles Semi-Weekly News_. In 1860, the Bella Union, as I have said, was under the management of John King, who came here in 1856; while in 1861 J. B. Winston & Company, who were represented by Henry Reed, controlled the hotel. In 1862 or 1863, John King and Henry Hammel were the managers. I have told of the purchase of the San Pasqual _rancho_ by Dr. J. S. Griffin. On December 11th, Dr. and Mrs. Griffin for five hundred dollars sold to B. D. Wilson and wife some six hundred and forty acres of that property; and a few hours afterward the Wilsons disposed of two hundred and sixty-two acres for one thousand dollars. The purchaser was Mrs. Eliza G. Johnston, wife of General Albert Sidney Johnston. Mrs. Johnston at once built a neat residence on the tract and called it _Fair Oaks_, after the plantation in Virginia on which she had been born; and from this circumstance the name of the now well-known Fair Oaks Avenue in Pasadena is derived. At the time of her purchase Mrs. Johnston had hoped to reside there permanently; but the tragic fate of her son in the _Ada Hancock_ disaster, following the untimely death of her husband at Shiloh, and the apparent uselessness of the land, led her to sell to Judge B. S. Eaton what to-day would be worth far more than thousands of acres in many parts of the Southern States. A curious coincidence in the relations of General Sumner, who superseded General Johnston, to the hero of Shiloh is that, later in the War, Sumner led a corps of Union troops at Fair Oaks, Virginia!