by sea were, at the rate of almost a thousand a day, reaching the Golden Gate, and that the little hide and tallow trading-post of Yerba Buena had in three months' time become a seaport of twenty thousand people, who were actively busy laying the foundation of a commercial emporium, and of future metropolitan importance. His intelligent prescience foresaw that the wealth which hard labor in the mines was creating must of necessity stimulate a much larger future immigration, and build up at the only good port on the Pacific one of the great cities of the continent. San Francisco was therefore the field for his effort and for his ambition.

Actuated by these reflections, he pushed on without delay to Sacramento, and arrived there in August 1849. It contained at that time about five thousand inhabitants, and was the distributing point to all the then known mining placers. It was a town of canvas and tents, lumber for building purposes costing about six hundred dollars per thousand feet, and obtainable only in very limited quantity.

Population was pouring in in a ceaseless stream by day and by night, and the streets were alive with groups of men and trains of pack-mules fitting out expeditions to the mines. The American fever of real estate speculation had broken out, and lots conveniently situated for business were increasing in value at the rate of a hundred per cent a month.

Sharon and Fry quickly sold at good prices their overland animals and outfit, and with the proceeds purchased a lot upon which they constructed a tent house for residence and business.

The goods shipped via Cape Horn having reached San Francisco, Sharon made his first visit to this city to receive and dispose of them. He returned temporarily to Sacramento with a stock of merchandise suited to the local demand, and for a few months carried on an active, prosperous business in merchandising and real estate operations. The floods of

winter and the unprotected situation of Sacramento determined him to establish himself without further delay in San Francisco, and to devote his means and abilities to real estate operations there.

San Francisco then was all comprised within the north half of Yerba Buena cove, to wit, from Telegraph hill on the north to California street on the south, and extending westward from the beach at Montgomery and Sansome streets up the sloping ground as far as Powell street. At California street, and far to the southward, long, high ridges of sand hills, covered with scrub-oak and manzanita, stretched at right angles to and across the projected lines of Dupont, Kearny, Montgomery, and Sansome streets, and terminated at the beach on the bay. Market street, where the Palace and Grand hotels are now standing, was the most southerly of those ridges, and beyond it was the narrow, feverish swale, which under some inspiration of irony had been designated Happy valley. The Plaza, as it was then called-now known as Portsmouth square-was the centre of the populous part of the city, and upon it stood the old adobe Mexican custom-house, which was being used in a like service by Colonel Collier, collector of customs under the United States. A few relics of the former residents under Mexican rule, consisting of about a dozen adobe dwellings, were standing upon Montgomery, Washington, and Dupont streets. In every

direction within the limits above mentioned, an improvised town, built of every conceivable and available material-of boards brought from Boston and New York, of deck-cabins from the ships that brought the boards, of brush-wood cut from the adjacent hills, of canvas sails and tarpaulins stretched upon skeleton frame-work, and of tents of all shapes and sizes-furnished shelter and business conveniences for about twenty thousand busy, thriving people. Two hundred vessels lay at anchor along and within the line of what is now the water-front, and a few had been

run inland and sunk close to the beach, where they were doing service as lodging-houses or for storage of merchandise.

A form of municipal government, patterned after the Mexican system, including the offices of prefect, acalde, justice of the peace, town council, and surveyor, had been organized, and exercised authority over public affairs. The demand for lots upon which to erect habitations, as well as the universal desire to acquire ownership of real estate that gave promise of great future advancement in value, led to the extension of the surveyed limits of the town, by the projection on paper of the existing streets and the sale at auction of the lots mapped out.

Sharon, for the first time in his life, found himself upon a field of action to which his nervous, energetic temperament was well adapted. Here was a community, ninety-five per cent of whom were young men in the very prime of life, who had cut adrift from the fogyism and extreme conservatism of the careful wiseheads of home, and burning their bridges behind them, had brought hither brawn and brain, and the will and courage to put them to good service. It was a picture of vital force, unalloyed with weakness, unfettered with the shackles of poverty. The weak had remained behind or had died by the way. Strength and activity were the twin founders of the new city.

Sharon was an acute observer, quick in judgment and prompt in action. He was impressed by the manifest energy and power that were exhibited in every direction. He declared his conviction of the future greatness of California, not alone as a mining but also as an agricultural state. He prophesied that, within the lifetime of many of those then here, San Francisco would become one of the most important manufacturing and commercial cities of the world, and would number its population at a million, and that before many years a railroad would span the continent.

He at once opened an office and entered actively into real estate operations, buying property judiciously, and always selling when he could realize a good profit. In 1850 he began to speculate in this business in partnership with Beverly Miller. In 1851 he became associated with Henry S. Fitch in the auction and real estate business, their copartnership continuing for about a year. After that Mr Sharon carried on his operations alone. He soon became one of the largest and most daring operators, and about 1862, when he began speculating in mining stocks, he had accumulated a fortune of $150,000. He erected the first building at North Beach, where it was thought the chief shipping interests of San Francisco would be concentrated.

California having in November 1849 adopted a state constitution and elected officers of state government, and the state legislature having established a charter for the city of San Francisco, under which a mayor and legislative body were to be chosen by the people in 1850, Sharon, who had become influential in the community, and had taken prominent part in all its public affairs, was elected a member of the city council, and there performed his first official duties. He was not nominated by either one of the old parties, and made no effort to secure the office, but was placed on the independent ticket by friends, and elected by an overwhelming majority.

He was one of the ablest members of the city council, upon which body rested the labor and responsibility of organizing and putting into practical operation all the departments of the new municipal government. The work was of an arduous nature, and required the skill and judgment of a superior mind. Sharon was well fitted for the task. He distinguished himself by exhibiting a clear insight into the needs of the new city government, and maintained such a high ideal of the rights of the community that he was urged to stand for reëlection, but his business

affairs pressed so heavily upon his attention that he declined to permit his name to be again put before the people.

His operations in real estate had drawn his attention to the fact that the source of titles to property was uncertain, and liable to lead to confusion, dispute, and possibly to serious trouble. It was uncertain whether San Francisco was, by right and title derived from the Mexican government, vested with ownership of lands, or whether under general laws of the United States she had the right to a specified area, or whether, by reason of the fact that California had not been admitted into the union, all the municipal area was public land, to which the peaceable possessor might have paramount right. More than a thousand grants of lots had been made by local officials, and even between them disputes of authority to grant were rife.

As a means of gaining light upon the subject, Sharon prepared and secured the passage of an ordinance appointing a commission to ascertain what lands and property belonged to the city, to examine the archives of the former authorities and all other available records and laws relating to land titles, and to report to the council of the city the result of such investigation, with a history and synopsis of all grants of lots within the city limits, whether made by Mexican or American officials. After several months' investigation the commission made a full and valuable report. This was the first official proceeding relating to that subject, and the data thus obtained have been the basis of the subsequent legislative and judicial determination of San Francisco titles.

Sharon was of that class of intelligent Californians who, although drawn hither by the common desire to accumulate wealth, appreciated the importance and advantage of systematic government, of good order, and of judicious public policy. Hence he