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 JD I vho had been in business at Monterey for aree 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

his fathers. By kindness and liberality to the natives who swarmed around him, he made them cultivate his lands, herd his cattle, and guard his property against the more fierce savages from the mountains. In this patriarchal style he lived for nearly ten years, surrounded by everything that could minister to his wants-numbering his cattle by thousands, and owning the land for miles, until-to him fatal dayone of his workmen found a few grains of gold in the soil, when, as if by magic, the whole scene was changed, and from a veritable Utopia, the beautiful Valley of the Sacramento became a Pandemonium. The mighty power of gold was never before exhibited as it was then. With a rapidity very remarkable, the news of the discovery reached the most distant countries, and in a few months there was scarcely a nation that did not have its representatives digging and washing for gold on Sutter's farm, which embraced an area of many miles square. Mankind have certainly been benefitted by the discovery of gold in California-but not so Sutter. That discovery involved him in ruin. It led to the destruction of his land, cattle, and laborers. From being the monarch of all he surveyed in the broad Valley of the Sacramento, it made him again a wanderer, with no means of support in his old age except a donation made by the State, which he had been so greatly instrumental in founding. The life of what living man has been more strangely eventful?

Between 1840 and 1845, the fame of California as an agricultural country had become generally known to the people of the United States, while its importance from a commercial and political point of view was fully appreciated by the Federal Government. Mr. Larkin, who was appointed United States Consul in 1844, had for several years previously kept the government fully informed of the acts of the agents of France and England, who were making arrangements for one or the other of these nations to take possession of the country. Emigration was encouraged by both France and England, as well as by the United States. The number of settlers, in consequence, greatly increased.

It was during this period, in November, 1841, that John Bidwell arrived from Missouri, overland, and entered the service of General Sutter, but soon after located on the land he now owns, near Chico, Butte county, about forty miles from Marysville. Mr. Bidwell is a native of New York State, but emigrated to Missouri, where he was engaged for several years as a school teacher, prior to his starting for California. In company with Mr. Bidwell, overland, were Joseph Childs, Grove Cook, Charles Hoppe, and several others, who at present reside in the State.

As an illustration of the American element in the territory at this time, we refer to an event which occurred on the 19th of October, 1842. Commodore Jones, of the United States navy, having under his command the sloop of war Cyane, and frigate United States, entered the harbor of Monterey, captured the fort, hoisted the stars and stripes, and declared California a territory of the United States, to the hearty satisfaction of nearly all the inhabitants, a majority of whom were citizens of the United States. The next day, for reasons we shall refer to hereafter, Commodore Jones hauled down his colors and apologized to the Mexican authorities for his conduct. But the impression his action left on the minds of the Mexican and British officers caused them to increase their efforts to prevent the country falling into the hands of the United States, and created an intense feeling of hatred on the part of some of the Mexicans, against the citizens of that country.

As early as May, 1846, Pio Pico, the then Governor of the Territory, who was bitterly opposed to the Americans, in a speech before the Departmental Assembly in favor of annexing California to England, remarked: "We find ourselves threatened by hordes of Yankee emigrants, who have already begun to flock into our country, and whose progress we cannot arrest. Already have the wagons of that perfidious people scaled the almost inaccessible summits of the Sierra Nevada, crossed the entire continent, and penetrated the fruitful valley of the Sacramento. What that astonishing people will next undertake, I cannot say; but in whatever enterprise they embark, they will be sure to be successful. Already, these adventurous voyagers, spreading themselves far and wide over a country which seems to suit their tastes, are cultivating farms, establishing vineyards, erecting mills, sawing up lumber, and doing a thousand other things which seem natural to them."

The settlement of California and Oregon during this period, caused a steady stream of emigrants to wend their way across the plains, many of whom died from the tomahawk of the merciless savage, or from gaunt starvation. It is estimated by those who lived on the great line of this overland travel, that upwards of five thousand persons crossed the plains between the years 1840 and 1845, for the purpose of settling on the Pacific Coast. Several parties of these adventurous emigrants are known to have perished, while the hardships endured by all were of the severest nature.

The passage across the Sierra Nevada mountains in those days was attended with frightful dangers. The sufferings endured by a party