Temple Street had not then been opened by Beaudry and Potts, although there was a little _cul-de-sac_ extending west from Spring Street; and at the junction of what is now Spring and Temple streets, there was a two-story adobe building in which D. W. Alexander and Francis Mellus conducted a general merchandise business, and at one time acted as agents for Mellus & Howard of San Francisco. Mellus, who was born in Salem, Massachusetts, February 3d, 1824, came to the Coast in 1839, first landing at Santa Bárbara; and when I first met him he had married Adelaida, daughter of Don Santiago Johnson, and our fellow-townsman, James J. Mellus--familiarly known as plain Jim--was a baby. Alexander & Mellus had rather an extensive business in the early days, bringing goods by sailing vessel around Cape Horn, and exchanging them for hides and tallow which were carried back East by the returning merchantmen. They had operated more or less extensively even some years before California was ceded to the United States; but competition from a new source forced these well-established merchants to retire. With the advent of more frequent, although still irregular service between San Francisco and the South, and the influx of more white people, a number of new stores started here bringing merchandise from the Northern market, while San Francisco buyers began to outbid Alexander & Mellus for the local supply of hides and tallow. This so revolutionized the methods under which this tradition-bound old concern operated that, by 1858, it had succumbed to the inevitable, and the business passed into the hands of Johnson & Allanson, a firm made up of Charles R. Johnson, soon to be elected County Clerk, and Horace S. Allanson. Most of the commercial activity in this period was carried on north of First Street. The native population inhabited Sonora Town, for the most part a collection of adobes, named after the Mexican state whence came many of our people; there was a contingent from other parts of Mexico; and a small sprinkling of South Americans from Chile and Peru. Among this Spanish-speaking people quite a business was done by Latin-American storekeepers. It followed, naturally enough, that they dealt in all kinds of Mexican goods.