the mission and informed you that there were certain white people in the country. We are Americans, on our journey to the River Columbia. We were in at the Mission San Gabriel, in January last. I went to San Diego and saw the General, and got a passport from him to pass on to that place. I have made several efforts to pass the mountains, but the snows being so deep, I could not succeed in getting over. I returned to this place-it being the only point to kill meat-to wait a few weeks until the snow melts, so that I can go on. The Indians here also being friendly, I consider it the most safe point for me to remain until such time as I can cross the mountains with my horses-having lost a great many in attempting to cross ten or fifteen days since. I am a long ways from home, and am anxious to get there as soon as the nature of the case will admit. Our situation is quite unpleasant -being destitute of clothing and most of the necessaries of life, wild meat being our principal subsistence. I am, Reverend Father, your strange but real friend, and Christian. "May 19th, 1827. J. S. SMITH."

Mr. Sprague says, the party reached the place where the gold was found, when, in a battle with the Indians, Smith, and nearly all his party were killed. Greenhow, in his "History of Oregon and California," says Smith was killed by the Indians northwest of Utah Lake, in 1829. Both Sprague and Greenhow were evidently misinformed on the subject, as it is known by Mr. Smith's acquaintances, some of whom still live in California, that he returned to St. Louis in 1830, where he sold out his interest in the fur company, and, in 1831, left Missouri, with eleven wagons and mule teams, laden for Santa Fé, and was killed by Indians, while on this journey, on the Cimeron river, near Toas.

In 1825, another company of trappers, under the command of James. O. Pattie, started from the Mississippi valley to reach the Pacific coast, overland. But, keeping too far to the south, they passed through New Mexico into the valley of the Gila, where they were plundered by the Yuma Indians, and escaped by means of rafts, which carried them down that river to its junction with the Colorado. A report of this expedition, published at Cincinnati, in 1832, under the title of the "Hunters of Kentucky," was greatly instrumental in attracting the attention of emigrants to this coast. The particulars of Pattie's journey were published with President Jackson's message to Congress, in 1836. The subject of emigration to the Pacific coast at that time occupied much of the attention of Congress.

Walker, whose name is wedded to so many localities in the Stateand who still resides in it; Pauline Weaver, the pioneer of Arizona; Kit Carson, Maxwell, and Bill Williams, whose name is famous in the regions of the Colorado River, were all men of this class, several of whom probably hunted in California before Smith.

Having devoted as much space to this subject as the object of our work will permit, we must proceed with our outline of the history of the early settlers of California.

The large quantities of tallow which were received at Callao, known to be the product of cattle killed expressly to procure it, attracted the attention of John Begg & Co., an enterprising English firm at Lima, Peru, who, in 1824, entered into a contract with the Peruvian Government, to supply it with California salted beef, for the use of its army and navy. To carry out this object, Messrs. McCulloch & Hartnell established a packing house at Monterey, in the fall of 1824, and imported about twenty salters and coopers from Ireland and Scotland to conduct the business. It was for this work that Mr. David Spence, a -well known citizen of Monterey, came to California from Lima, on the 29th of October, 1824, and has remained there ever since.

This pioneer packing establishment shipped several cargoes of meat to Peru, which were pronounced of excellent quality, but the government of that country, at that time, had no funds to pay for its supplies, the contract was broken, and the business ended in 1825. At first, the company used salt imported from Peru, but it was soon discovered that California produced a much better article.

In September, 1828, Timothy Murphy arrived at Monterey, from Lima, and was employed as a clerk by Messrs. McCulloch & Hartnell.

In 1829, Jean Louis Vigues, a native of Bordeaux, France, the founder of the well known house of Sansevain & Co., the pioneer wine makers, arrived at Monterey, from the Sandwich Islands, but removed to Los Angeles in 1831, where he died in 1863, aged eighty-two years. The missionaries in the southern counties had made both wine and spirits for several years prior to the arrival of M. Vignes, but he was the first to make these articles as a business, in California. In 1846, he had the largest vineyard in the whole of Upper California. His nephew, Don Luis Sansevain, who had been many years connected with M. Vignes in the management of the business, has become famous for the quality of the wine made from the pioneer vineyard.

The subject of emigration from the States east of the Rocky Mountains to the territory on the Pacific Coast, had occupied the attention of Congress for many years before California came into possession of the United States. As far back as 1820, Mr. Floyd, who was then a Representative from the State of Virginia, offered a bill ". 'favoring emigration to the country west of the Rocky Mountains, not only from the United States, but from China.”

The reports circulated concerning the country had, as early as 1825, induced quite a number of persons to find their way overland to the Pacific coast, so that, before 1830, there were nearly five hundred foreigners on the west side of the Sierra Nevada mountains. In 1831,

Los Angeles, then the largest town in the Territory, contained about twelve hundred inhabitants, a large proportion of whom were foreigners. San José contained five hundred, and one half of these were foreigners. There were also a few at Branciforte, a pueblo founded near the Mission of Santa Cruz. These were all the towns in the Territory at that time. The first house in San Francisco was not erected until 1835. The foreign population did not increase much during the succeeding ten years as we find by M. De Mofras' reports to the French government, written in 1841, that he estimated them at only one thousand, divided among the following nationalities: Americans from the United States, 360; English, Scotch and Irish, 300; Spaniards from Europe, 80; Germans, Italians, Portuguese and Sandwich Islanders, 90; Mexicans, 170; and about 4,000 half-breeds. All the early settlers intermarried with the natives. The number of children in some of these mixed families was extraordinarily large. The wife of one prominent American, at Monterey, had twenty-two; the wife of another had twentyeight; the wife of Mr. Hartnell, the United States translator, had twenty, all alive when California came into possession of the United States. Many of these half-breeds were of extraordinary size, some of them being seven feet high, and stout in proportion, while the ladies, hundreds of whom are still living, are fine specimens of humanity.

At this time (1841) the district and presidio of San Diego, embracing the Pueblo of Los Angeles, contained 1,300 inhabitants; that of Monterey 1,000; Santa Barbara, 800; San Francisco, 800; and about one thousand one hundred inhabitants were scattered throughout the interior. De Mofras says, in his report, that there was a large number of emigrants then on their way from the United States to California. The papers published in many of the Atlantic States, between 1835 and 1840, show that companies were formed in most of them for the purpose of aiding emigrants to reach the Pacific Coast. The settlement of this Territory was the most prominent subject before the people of the United States at that time. So numerous were the emigrants between 1832 and 1840, that the Mexican Government became alarmed, and placed every impediment in the way of their settlement. It is a notable fact, in this connection, that but few grants of land were made to Americans outside the pueblos during the twenty-four years the country was under Mexican control. It was during this period that many of the men whose names figure most conspicuously in the State, made their appearance in California.

On the 10th of March, 1832, Thomas O. Larkin, who did more than any other person towards annexing the country to the United States,

arrived at San Francisco, and in company with his half-brother, J. B. R. Cooper, who had arrived at Monterey in 1823, erected the first flour mill in the Territory. In 1833, Mr. Larkin was married to Mrs. Rachel Holmes, of Boston, (Mass.,) who was probably the first American lady who came to California.

In 1836, J. P. Leese, who had been in business at Monterey for three years, came to Yerba Buena cove, as the site of San Francisco was then called, for the purpose of establishing a branch of his firm there. After removing the suspicions of the Mexican authorities, he selected a spot for his house at the corner of Clay and Dupont streets the same lot on which the old St. Francis Hotel was afterwards built. This was the first house erected in San Francisco. W. A. Richardson, who had been appointed Harbor Master in 1835, had previously erected a shanty, by nailing a ship's foresail over a few redwood posts, a little to the north of Leese's house, between Clay and Washington streets. It was at the completion of Leese's house, that the stars and stripes were first hoisted on the soil of California, to celebrate the event. In April, 1837, Leese married a sister of General Vallejo. Their daughter Rosalie, was the first child born in San Francisco. The first child born in the State, both of whose parents were Americans, was Guadalupe V. Botts, born at Petaluma January 4th, 1846.

In 1833, Isaac Graham came from Tennessee, overland, and settled at Santa Cruz, where, in 1841, he erected the first saw-mill in California. In 1836, this Graham, and Juan Bautista Alvarado, a native Californian, who held a subordinate appointment under the Mexican authorities at San Francisco, overthrew the Mexican Government and declared California an independent State. Graham, with fifty American riflemen, and Alvarado with one hundred Californians, captured the Presidio of Monterey, with the Governor of the territory, and nearly six hundred Mexican soldiers. This conduct of Graham brought down the enmity of the Mexican Government upon all the Americans; and in May, 1840, about one hundred of them were arrested, and either sent to jail, at Santa Barbara, or transported out of the country. Graham, who was sent to San Blas, was brought back by the Mexican Government, and lived in Santa Cruz till November 8th, 1863, when he died, surrounded by an interesting family.

On the 2d of July, 1839, John A. Sutter, the most famous of all the pioneers of California, landed at Yerba Buena, with ten Americans and Europeans, and eight Sandwich Islanders, with whose aid, in 1839, he had built Sutter's Fort, near the site of the present city of Sacra

mento, which, within ten years after, became the Mecca towards which pilgrims from all countries, of all creeds and colors, bent their steps.

The life of General Sutter has been so replete with incidents, of such an extraordinary character, that his history seems more like a series of ingeniously contrived fictions, than a narrative of sober facts. Born in Germany, of Swiss parents, he became a captain in the grand army of France, and mingled with the elite of French society during the reign of Charles X.; but, prompted by an impulse which appears scarcely natural, in the very dawn of his manhood, when society has most attractions, he longed for some secluded spot in the wilderness, where he might build up an ideal world around him. It being impossible to find such a spot in Europe, with its false civilization, in which hypocrisy and pretence are the ruling elements of success, he wends his way to America, to find an untrodden field in its far western territory. Arriving at New York in 1834, within a month he is on his way to the much praised "Wide West," whose dense pine forests and boundless prairies were distasteful to him. He next goes to the semitropical region of New Mexico, whose parched, sand-covered plains, treeless hills, and savage Indians, drove him almost to despair. It was here, while pondering where next to go, that he met a party of wandering trappers who had seen California. They described its charms so vividly that he determined to find his way there. Proceeding to the Rocky Mountains, he joins a company of trappers bound for the shores of the Pacific Ocean, and, with them crosses the continent. But his guides led him to the cold, humid, and cheerless region of Fort Vancouver, from whence it was impossible then to reach California by land. Hearing that there was a trade between the Sandwich Islands and the land he sought, he makes a voyage to Honolulu, in order to reach the harbor of San Francisco. After many weary months of waiting, a vessel is at last ready to sail for the American coast, but not for California. It is bound for Sitka. Sutter takes passage, trusting to Providence, and by a remarkable accident, the ship is driven into San Francisco in distress, and he finds himself in California.

Here a new difficulty arose. Not a resident of the territory had seen its interior, or could tell him how to reach the spot his trapper friends had so vividly described. After weeks of search, on the 16th of August, 1839, he finds the old beaver hunter's camp, near the junction of the American and Sacramento rivers, which presented all the elements of the scene he had been wandering for five years to discover. Here he landed, and in a few months had constructed Sutter's Fort, made his home, and called it New Helvetia, in memory of the land of