This Gabe Allen was really a notorious character, though not altogether bad. When sober, he was a peaceable man; but when on a spree, he was decidedly warlike and on such occasions always "shot up the town." While on one of these jamborees, for example, he was heard to say, "I'll shoot, if I only kill six of them!" In later life, however, Allen married a Mexican lady who seems to have had a mollifying influence; and thereafter he lived at peace with the world.
During the changing half-century or more of which I write, Los Angeles has witnessed many exciting street scenes, but it is doubtful if any exhibition here ever called to doors, windows and the dusty streets a greater percentage of the entire population than that of the Government camels driven through the town on January 8th, 1858, under the martial and spectacular command of Ned, otherwise Lieutenant, and later General and Ambassador E. F. Beale, and the forbear of the so-called hundred million dollar McLean baby; the same Lieutenant Beale who opened up Beale's Route from the Rio Grande to Fort Tejón. The camels had just come in from the fort, having traveled forty or more miles a day across the desert, to be loaded with military stores and provisions. As early as the beginning of the fifties, Jefferson Davis, then in Congress, had advocated, but without success, the appropriation of thirty thousand dollars for the purchase of such animals, believing that they could be used on the overland routes and would prove especially serviceable in desert regions; and when Davis, in 1854, as Secretary of War, secured the appropriation for which he had so long contended, he despatched American army officers to Egypt and Arabia to make the purchase. Some seventy or seventy-five camels were obtained and transported to Texas by the storeship _Supply_; and in the Lone Star State the herd was divided into two parts, half being sent to the Gadsden Purchase, afterward Arizona, and half to Albuquerque. In a short time, the second division was put in charge of Lieutenant Beale who was assisted by native camel-drivers brought from abroad. Among these was Philip Tedro, or Hi Jolly--who had been picked up by Commodore Dave Porter--and Greek George, years afterward host to bandit Vasquez; and camels and drivers made several trips back and forth across the Southwest country. Once headquartered at Fort Tejón, they came to Los Angeles every few weeks for provisions; each time creating no little excitement among the adult population and affording much amusement, as they passed along the streets, to the small boy.