In the fall of 1860 I returned to San Francisco, as I thought for a brief trip. Just to show myself, in fact. Among other things, I brought a few tons of ore that sold for $3,000 a ton, the sight of which made the town delirious. I found that my fame, or rather various romances, had preceded me. I wasn’t quite twenty, couldn’t vote, couldn’t make a legal contract, yet I had over a quarter of a million in hard cash to my credit in bank, and my mine in Mexico was worth a million more. These were the actual facts, which were exaggerated and distorted beyond all resemblance to the truth. My wealth was at least quadrupled, and I was dragged through a series of bloodcurdling experiences in Mexico without a parallel in fiction. Thus, you can see how the orange and banana sale incident set the wheels of fate revolving. If I had come to California with sufficient money. I would have made some kind of a blind stagger at luck, thrown up the sponge in disgust after a few months, and written to my father for a remittance to come home. As it was, I quietly took rank with the great figures of the State before I had reached my majority, and became a leading actor in an unwritten page of history, when the destinies of California hung by the veriest thread. CHAPTER III. STORY OF SOUTHERN PLAN TO MAKE CALIFORNIA SECEDE FROM THE UNION IS TOLD FOR FIRST TIME. _Narrator Describes His Invitation Into Band of 30, Which Planned to Organize Republic of Pacific._ I had barely reached San Francisco when the election of 1860 took place, resulting in the choice of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States. All through the South this was accepted as the signal for a civil contest. The work of organization went ahead with feverish haste and long before the inauguration of the new President the authority of the Federal Government was paralyzed in most of the slave States. The attitude of California was a matter of supreme moment, not understood, however, at the time. Had this isolated State on the Pacific joined the Confederate States, it would have complicated the problems of war profoundly. With the city of San Francisco and its then impregnable fortifications in Confederate hands the outward flow of gold, on which the Union cause depended in a large measure, would have ceased, as a stream of water is shut off by turning a faucet. It was the easiest thing in the world to open and maintain connection through savage Arizona into Texas, one of the strongholds of the South. It does not need a military expert to figure out what a vital advantage to the Confederacy the control of the Pacific would have proved.