In 1864, F. Bachman & Company sold out. Their retirement was ascribed in a measure to the series of bad years, but the influence of their wives was a powerful factor in inducing them to withdraw. The firm had been compelled to accept large parcels of real estate in payment of accounts; and now, while preparing to leave, Bachman & Co. sacrificed their fine holdings at prices considered ridiculous even then. The only one of these sales that I remember was that of a lot with a frontage of one hundred and twenty feet on Fort Street, and a one-story adobe house, which they disposed of for four hundred dollars. I have told of Don Juan Forster's possessions--the Santa Margarita _rancho_, where he lived until his death, and also the Las Flores. These he obtained in 1864, when land was worth but the merest song, buying the same from Pio Pico, his brother-in-law. The two ranches included over a hundred and forty thousand acres, and pastured some twenty-five thousand cattle, three thousand horses and six or seven thousand sheep; yet the transaction, on account of the season, was a fiscal operation of but minor importance. The hard times strikingly conduced to criminality and, since there were then probably not more than three or four policemen in Los Angeles, some of the desperadoes, here in large numbers and not confined to any particular nationality or color, took advantage of the conditions, even making several peculiar nocturnal assaults upon the guardians of the peace. The methods occasionally adopted satisfied the community that Mexican _bandidos_ were at work. Two of these worthies on horseback, while approaching a policeman, would suddenly dash in opposite directions, bringing a _reata_ (in the use of which they were always most proficient) taut to the level of their saddles; and striking the policeman with the hide or hair rope, they would throw him to the ground with such force as to disable him. Then the ingenious robbers would carry out their well-planned depredations in the neighborhood and disappear with their booty. J. Ross Browne, one of the active Forty-niners in San Francisco and author of _Crusoe's Island_ and various other volumes dealing with early life in California and along the Coast, was on and off a visitor to Los Angeles, first passing through here in 1859, _en route_ to the Washoe Gold fields, and stopping again in 1864. Politics enlivened the situation somewhat in the fall of this year of depression. In September, the troops were withdrawn from Catalina Island, and the following month most of the guard was brought in from Fort Tejón; and this, creating possibly a feeling of security, paved the way for still larger Union meetings in October and November. Toward the end of October, Francisco P. Ramirez, formerly editor of _El Clamor Público_, was made Postmaster, succeeding William G. Still, upon whose life an attempt had been made while he was in office.