One deficiency which Colton had to supply was the absence of a penitentiary system. To quote: "There are no workhouses here, no buildings adapted to the purpose, no tools and no trades. The custom has been to fine Spaniards and whip Indians. The discrimination is unjust, and the punishment ill-suited to the ends proposed. I have substituted labor, and now have eight Indians, three Californians, and one Englishman at work making adobes [sun-dried bricks]. They have all been sentenced for stealing horses or bullocks. I have given them their task; each is to make fifty adobes a day, and for all over this they are paid. They make seventy-five, and for the additional twenty-five each one gets as many cents. This is paid to them every Saturday night, and they are allowed to get with it anything but rum. They are comfortably lodged and fed by the government. I have appointed one of their number captain. They work in the field; require no other guard; not one of them has attempted to run away." Later, Colton had to deal with runaways; two Mexicans each telling him that the devil incited their flight, while one fellow who stayed behind in a jail delivery explained that he would not be seen running from Tophet in such company. Of a convict who escaped and was brought back Colton says: "If he will only stop stealing he may run to earth's utmost verge. He is rather a hardened character, but if he has a good vein in him I will try to find it. I always like to see a fellow get out of trouble, and sometimes I half forget his crimes in his misfortunes. This is not right, perhaps, in one situated as I am; but I cannot help it." [Illustration: THE FIRST PAPER PUBLISHED IN CALIFORNIA It measured only about 8x12 inches. The paper was established by Walter Colton who had had journalistic experience as editor of the Philadelphia _North American_. This issue was published scarcely a month after the American occupation.] Colton decided that a new school house was necessary--"to be sixty feet by thirty, two stories, with a handsome portico. The labor of the convicts, the taxes on rum, and the banks of the gamblers must put it up," he writes. "Some think my project impracticable; we shall see,"--and he gives the following account of how some gamblers were made to contribute to this enterprise: "A nest of gamblers arrived in town yesterday, and last evening, opened a Monte at the hotel." After stationing a file of soldiers at the outer doors, Colton entered to find no one, "save one Sonoranian, composedly smoking his cigarito. I desired the honor of an introduction to his companions. At this moment a feigned snore broke on my ear from a bed in the corner of the apartment."