California. The foreground figure represents the Goddess Minerva, having sprung full grown from the brain of Jupiter. She is introduced as a type of the political birth of the State of California, without having gone through the probation of a Territory. At her feet crouches a grizzly bear, feeding upon the clusters from a grapevine, emblematic of the peculiar characteristics of the country. A miner is engaged with his rocker and bowl at his side, illustrating the golden wealth of the Sacramento, upon whose waters are seen shipping, typical of commercial greatness; and the snow-clad peaks of the Sierra Nevada make up the background, while above is the Greek motto "Eureka" (I have found), applying either to the principle involved in the admission of the State, or the success of the miner at work."

After various amendments had been suggested, the matter was laid on the table. On October the second the report of the committee was again considered. Rodman M. Price submitted a resolution that the design for the seal reported by the committee be accepted. O. M. Wozencraft submitted the following, which was rejected: "That the seal be amended by striking out the figures of the gold-digger and the bear, and introducing instead bags of gold and bales of merchandise." M. G. Vallejo submitted an amendment that the bear be taken out of the design; or, if it do remain, that it be represented as made fast by a lasso in the hands of a vaquero.

After a debate, the amendment proposed by Vallejo was rejected by a vote of sixteen to twenty-one. Price's resolution was then adopted. W. S. Sherwood moved that the seal be the "coat of arms " of the State of California, and the motion was then carried by a vote of twenty-one to sixteen. Price then submitted a resolution that Lyon be authorized to superintend the engraving of the seal; that he furnish the same, in the shortest possible time, to the Secretary of the Convention, with a press and all necessary appendages, and that the sum of $1,000 be advanced to him in full compensation for the design and seal. This resolution was not considered until the eleventh, when a substitute was adopted, authorizing Lyon to superintend the engraving and to furnish the seal as soon as possible to the Secretary of the Convention, to be delivered to the Secretary of State under the Constitution; and the sum of $1,000 was to be paid, in full compensation for the design, seal, press, and all appendages. It was also resolved that the words "The Great Seal of the State of California" be added to the design. Henry W. Halleck inquired if any gentleman present knew what had become of the original design, and that the gentleman by whom it was designed (Major Garnett) requested that it should be found if possible and handed to the gentleman who occupied the chair. Mr. Sherwood said that he believed the seal was not the entire production of the gentleman who had been authorized to have it engraved, and that Lyon did not claim it as such. He said that the original design had been given to Lyon by a gentleman who did not wish his name to be made public, but expressed a desire, in a confidential letter to Lyon, that he (Lyon) might be known as the author.

The bear was added chiefly to gratify Major J. R. Snyder and the men of the Bear Flag Revolution. Then was added the figure of a man with an uplifted pick-ax, as an emblem of the great mining interests of the country.

It seems that Lyon either did not get the $1,000 voted him by the Convention, or that he wanted to be paid again. The following article was published in the "Alta California" of February 19, 1850, and presumably

written by Edward Gilbert, the editor, a member of the Constitutional Convention, and one of our first Congressmen:

We observe that a petition has been made to the Legislature, on behalf of Caleb Lyon, for $1,000 for the State Seal, "designed and executed by him." It may as well be understood at once that if any credit belongs to any person for the design of the seal, it is not to Caleb Lyon, of Lyonsdale. The original design for the seal was made by an officer of the army, sojourning temporarily at Monterey during the time the Convention was in session. When the subject of a seal was mooted, this design was shown to various members of the Convention, who suggested some amendations and the insertion of other matters. These were drawn in by the original designer, who did not wish it to be known who was the author, and the seal was presented by Mr. Lyon. After a pretty hard fight it was adopted, and $1,000 appropriated to Mr. Lyon to procure a die and proper press. This duty he performed after a fashion. The design was marred in the engraving; the die was not sunk near deep enough, and the press was not sufficiently powerful for the purpose. The commissions of the Congressional delegation were without the slightest impress of the seal before they left the country. If we are not very much mistaken, Mr. Lyon, of Lyonsdale, received his money out of the Civil Fund, and is now conveying it to the sylvan retreats of Lyonsdale. But this has nothing to do with the paternity of the seal. All we wish to state, and that most distinctly, is that Mr. Lyon has no right or title to the honor of either designing or executing the seal any more than the Khan of Tartary.

In October, 1855, a peculiar complication occurred between Governor Bigler and the Secretary of State, James W. Denver. Under the Constitution, as it then stood, the Secretary of State was the appointee of the Governor. Denver had been appointed by Bigler on February 19, 1853. Afterward a difference arose between the Governor and Secretary of State. Denver had been elected to Congress in 1854, and on October 5, 1855, Bigler addressed a letter to Denver demanding the great seal of State, and said that he desired to keep it in his own office, where he claimed the Constitution contemplated that it should be kept. On the same day Denver replied, declining to permit the seal to pass out of his possession, and immediately departed for Washington to attend to his Congressional duties, leaving his deputy in charge of the Secretary's office. He also left a resignation to take effect November fifth. On the sixth of October the Governor again visited the office of the Secretary, demanded the seal of the deputy, and was again refused its possession. He then handed to the deputy the commission of Charles H. Hempstead as Secretary of State, and directed the deputy to affix to it the seal, but the deputy refused to do so on the ground that it was a constitutional office and could not be vacated except by death, resignation, or impeachment. The deputy of Denver held possession of the office for a month, during which time his acts were not recognized as valid by the Governor, and it is said that the latter caused a duplicate great seal to be made, with which his official acts were attested by his newly appointed Secretary. Years afterward it was stated that forged patents for State lands were in circulation, and that one of those old seals had been stolen and used for attesting them. However this may be, there are two dies of the State seal in the possession of the Secretary of State at this time.

In 1858 the State seal was damaged so that it failed to give a true impression, and a bill was introduced in the Senate by Mr. Thom to authorize the Secretary of State to procure a new seal, to be engraved on steel and to be substituted for and used instead of the seal then in existence; and requiring him to destroy the then State seal in the presence of the Governor and Controller. The bill was accompanied with a design which reduced the size of the seal a twelfth part of an inch, and to admit of this contraction some of the details of the original design were omitted. The bear was made to crouch submissively at the feet of Minerva, the miner's cradle was left out, and the miner was brought nearer the water. On March 10, 1858, the Senate amended the bill by providing that the design

and size should be the same as in the then seal; and on April sixteenth another amendment was adopted that "the design of the present seal shall be preserved intact in the new one, but the size thereof shall be reduced six tenths of an inch, so that the new seal when completed shall be three and three tenths of an inch in diameter." The bill with this amendment passed the Senate on the thirty-first, but it was not considered in the House.

Garnett, the designer of the original seal, was born in Virginia about 1821; entered West Point in 1837; graduated twenty-seventh in his class, July 1, 1841, and appointed Brevet Second Lieutenant of artillery; was assistant instructor of infantry tactics at the military academy from July, 1843, to October, 1844; was Aid-de-Camp to General Wool in 1845, and distinguished himself in the battles of Palo Alto and Resaca de la Palma; was promoted to a First Lieutenancy August 18, 1846; was Aid-de-Camp to General Taylor during the Mexican War and until 1849; breveted Captain and Major for gallant and meritorious conduct at Monterey and Buena Vista; transferred to the infantry in 1848; promoted to a Captaincy in 1851; from 1852 to 1854 was commandant of the corps of cadets and instructor of infantry tactics at West Point; appointed Captain of the First Regiment Cavalry in 1855, and Major of the Ninth Infantry in the same month; was commander in the operations against the Indians on Puget Sound in 1856, and commanded the Yakima expedition in 1858. At the breaking out of the rebellion he took the side of the Confederates, was promoted to a Brigadier-Generalship and assigned to the Department of West Virginia. Here General McClellan attacked him, and after several days of alternate fighting and retreating, at the battle of Carrick's Ford, on July 15, 1861, Garnett was killed and his forces routed. His body was carefully cared for by the Federal commander, and after being embalmed was forwarded to his friends.

Caleb Lyon was appointed Consul to Shanghai, China, by President Polk in 1845. On his return to New York he served in both branches of the Legislature, and in 1853 was elected from that State to Congress. In 1864 he was appointed Governor of Idaho Territory, and retained the office three years. He died at Rossville, New York, on September 9, 1875. Of the members of the convention whose names figure in this article, W. E. Shannon died of cholera at Sacramento on November 3, 1850, at the age of twenty-eight. Rodman M. Price was afterward elected Governor of New Jersey, and is now living in the east. Vallejo is still living in this State, and takes an active part in public matters. Winfield S. Sherwood was afterward a District Judge, and died in Sierra County on June 25, 1870. Snyder held many important public positions, removed to Sonoma County, conducted an extensive vineyard, and died there April 29, 1878. Halleck was at that time the Secretary of State under the military government. He afterward practiced law in San Francisco, and in July, 1862, was appointed General-in-Chief of all the armies of the United States. He held that position until March 12, 1864, when General Grant was made Lieutenant-General. He died in Louisville, Kentucky, January 9, 1872.

HISTORY OF THE SEAT OF STATE GOVERNMENT.

The first Constitutional Convention of California met in Colton Hall, Monterey, September 1, 1849, and on the twenty-sixth the question of the location of the seat of State Government came up upon the consideration of the report of the Committee on Miscellaneous Provisions of the Constitution. That committee reported the following as the first section of Article XI:

The first session of the Legislature shall be held in the Pueblo de San José, which place shall be the permanent seat of government until removed by law; provided, however, that two thirds of all the members elected to each house of the Legislature shall concur in the passage of such a law.

Henry W. Halleck, then Secretary of State under General Riley, the military Governor, and a member of the convention from Monterey, offered the following as a substitute:

The first session of the Legislature under this Constitution shall be held at Monterey, and the subsequent sessions at the permanent seat of government, which shall be the Pueblo de San José, unless otherwise directed by a majority of all the members elected to each house of the Legislature.

In the lengthy debate which followed, the delegates from Monterey represented that the amendment was offered merely as a compromise; that they were willing that the seat of government should be changed to San José after the adjournment of the first Legislature; that if the first Legislature should meet at San José in the following December, as had been proposed, it would be difficult for the people of that town to provide proper accommodations; that they were authorized by the people of Monterey to tender Colton Hall and other suitable buildings to the State for the use of the Legislature and the other State officers; that the Capital should not be removed from Monterey without some notice, as that place had been, with the exception of a few years, the seat of government of the country since seventeen hundred and eighty-one; that it was true that the accommodations in Monterey, from circumstances entirely beyond the control of the inhabitants, for the members of the convention, had been very scanty, but that difficulty would be remedied before the meeting of the first Legislature; that the government records were then at Monterey, and that they could not be legally removed until after the new government had gone into operation and had changed the location of the capital, so that, therefore, if the first Legislature should meet at San José its session would be held at quite a distance from the place where the official records would be kept; that the question of the removal of the capital had been sprung on the people of Monterey, and that the people of San José had unexpectedly presented to the Convention maps showing the advantages of their town, and that Monterey was the center of the population of the State, and was more accessible generally than San José. The delegates from San José argued that that place was the geographical center of the State; that because Monterey had been the seat of Government for years was no reason why the removal should not be had; that they had been authorized by the local authorities of San José to tender to the State for the use of the Legislature a furnished building, free of expense. They

presented a plan of their town, and stated that the local authorities, by a resolution passed on the eighth, had unanimously resolved to permanently donate to the State a square of thirty-two acres, and valued at $60,000, provided the Capital should be moved to that place at the first session of the Legislature; that until the Capitol was built they would tender gratuitously for the use of the Legislature a building, which was then being erected, seventy feet long, thirty-five feet wide, and twenty-one feet high.

Rodman M. Price, of San Francisco, moved to amend the substitute by striking out "Monterey" and inserting "San Francisco." He said that he had not been authorized by his people to offer a lot of ground or a building for the accommodation of the Legislature, but he knew that suitable accommodations would be furnished, and that grounds for the permanent buildings would be freely donated. Suggestions were made also to locate the seat of government at San Luis Obispo, at Benicia, at Stockton, and at Santa Barbara. The amendment of Mr. Price to insert "San Francisco" in the substitute was lost. A motion to strike out all after the word 66 San José" in the substitute was also lost. The substitute was then rejected-fifteen to twenty-three, and the section as reported by the committee was adopted-twenty-three to fourteen, and became a portion of the Constitution of the State.

It was

The building in which the first Constitutional Convention met was probably the only one in California at that time suited for the purpose. a handsome two-story edifice of yellow sandstone, situated on a gentle slope above the town. It was named Colton Hall on account of its having been built by Walter Colton, the Alcalde, from the proceeds of the sale of city lots. The upper story, in which the convention met, formed a single hall, about sixty feet in length by twenty-five in breadth. A railing ran across the middle, dividing the members from the spectators. The former were seated at four long tables. The President occupied a rostrum at the further end, over which were suspended two American flags and a picture of Washington. The building is still standing.

The session of the first Legislature commenced at San José December 15, 1849. When the session opened, the town could not accommodate the large increase of population so suddenly thrown upon it, and complaint