Note 2 — Chapter VII · San Diego and Its People.

San Diego was like Rome; not the Rome of the time of Romulus, when he marked out the walls with a plough, nor when, later, he bathed in his own blood and that of others and dictated laws to the world: no, San Diego was like the Rome of contemporaneous history, with this difference—instead of being a city of marble, monuments and coliseums, it was a city of saualî2 and cock-pits. The parochial priest of San Diego corresponded to the Pope in the Vatican; the alferez3 of the Civil Guard to the King of Italy in the Quirinal, but both in the same proportion as the sauali or native wood and the nipa cock-pits corresponded to the monuments of marble and coliseums. And in San Diego, as in Rome, there was continual trouble. Everybody wanted to be the leading señor, and there was always some one else in the way. Let us describe two of these ambitious citizens.