Letter from a California judge who presided over the Third Judicial District, which included Contra Costa, Santa Clara, Santa Cruz and Monterey Counties, during the period when San Jose was the state capital. A lawyer who with his wife came from Indiana overland in 1849, no mean feat for a couple in their fifties, Craven P. Hester writes to another Indiana attorney and sometime U.S. Congressman George Grady Dunn, about financial affairs as well as the unseemly state of California politics: ""In my last communication I wrote you that I wanted $900 (???) from James to pay Commodore Stockton upon a purchase which he made or his agent in this country. Address Commodore Stockton at Philadelphia. I find that my taxes on my Iowa lands have not been paid for the last year. If James will not pay them send the money and pay them... Our Capitol has been floating, not yet certainly anchored. Our officers are unpaid and state in debt. Our Legislature is in session, engaged in ferreting out the bribery of last session in the passage of bills... This has been a fine winter - seasonable in every particular - adopted to farming - much of it being prosecuted..."