Cock-fights were also a very common form of popular entertainment, and sports were frequently seen going around the streets with fighting cocks under each arm. The fights generally took place in Sonora Town, though now and then they were held in San Gabriel. Mexicans carried on quite a trade in game roosters among the patrons of this pastime, of whom M. G. Santa Cruz was one of the best known. Sometimes, too, roosters contributed to still another brutal diversion known as _correr el gallo_: their necks having been well greased, they would be partially buried in the earth alongside a public highway, when riders on fleet horses dashed by at full speed, and tried to seize the fowls and pull them out! This reminds me of another game in which horsemen, speeding madly by a succession of suspended, small rings, would try, by the skillful handling of a long spear, to collect as many of the rings as they could--a sport illustrated in one of the features of the modern merry-go-round.
The easy-going temperament of the native gave rise to many an amusing incident. I once asked a woman, as we were discussing the coming marriage of her daughter, whom the dark-eyed _señorita_ was to marry; whereupon she replied, "I forget;" and turning to her daughter, she asked: "_¿Como se llama?_" (What did you say was his name?)
George Dalton bought a tract of land on Washington, east of San Pedro Street, in 1855, and set out a vineyard and orchard which he continued to cultivate until 1887, when he moved to Walnut Avenue. Dalton was a Londoner who sailed from Liverpool on the day of Queen Victoria's coronation, to spend some years wandering through Pennsylvania and Ohio. About 1851, he followed to the Azusa district his brother, Henry Dalton, who had previously been a merchant in Peru; but, preferring the embryo city to the country, he returned to Los Angeles to live. Two sons, E. H. Dalton, City Water Overseer, in 1886-87, and Winnall Travelly Dalton, the vineyardist, were offspring of Dalton's first marriage. Elizabeth M., a daughter, married William H. Perry. Dalton Avenue is named after the Dalton family.
In another place I have spoken of the dearth of trees in the town when I came, though the editor of the _Star_ and others had advocated tree-planting. This was not due to mere neglect; there was prejudice against such street improvement. The School Trustees had bought a dozen or more black locust-trees, "at eight bits each," and planted them on the school lot at Second and Spring streets. Drought and squirrels in 1855 attacked the trees, and while the pedagogue went after the "varmints" with a shot-gun, he watered the trees from the school barrel. The carrier, however, complained that drinking-water was being wasted; and only after several rhetorical bouts was the schoolmaster allowed to save what was already invested. The locust-trees flourished until 1884, when they were hewn down to make way for the City Hall.