signed on October 13, 1849. Its most important provision was doubtless one which declared against slavery in the new state. The boundary of the state as it exists today was fixed and the convention throughout was marked by harmony. As soon as possible after the close of the convention, copies of the constitution were distributed through the state. November 13 had been fixed as election day and a spirited campaign was waged. The rainy season had begun and only a light vote was cast, but it was sufficient to ratify the constitution. Peter H. Burnett was elected Governor and John McDougall, Lieutenant-Governor. Edward Gilbert and Geo. W. Wright were elected to Congress. On December 15 the newly elected Legislature convened at San Jose, which became the new capital of the state.

The first important action of the new Legislature was the election of United States Senators, John C. Fremont and William M. Gwin being selected. The newly-elected senators and congressmen left at once for Washington to exercise their influence in securing admission of California to statehood. It is needless to say that they were not welcomed, especially by those members of Congress from the south. After four years of delay, during which time California's claims had repeatedly been the subject of bitter discussion, statehood was finally granted on September 9, 1850. Fremont drew the short senatorial term, which gave him only a few weeks in which to represent the state whose fortunes had been so closely linked with his own.

San Jose remained the capital of the state for two years, after which the seat of government was removed to Vallejo, where it remained until 1853. For one year the capital was at Benecia, but in 1854 the seat of the state government was removed to the city

of Sacramento, where it has remained until the present time.

In 1849 Major Robert Selden Garnett of the U. S. Army designed the great seal of the State of California. An explanation of the design is officially entered in the records of the State of California as follows: "Around the bend of the ring are represented thirty-one stars, being the number of states of which the Union will consist upon the admission of 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 grape-vine, 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 it), applying either to the principle involved in the admission of the state, or the success of the miner at work."

Thus was completed the American conquest of California three hundred and eight years after the discovery of its golden shores by the immortal Portuguese mariner, Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo, who sailed in his Spanish galleon from Old Mexico in 1542, fifty years after the discovery of the New World by Christopher Columbus.

THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY

ARTOR, LENOX AND TH DIN FOUNDATIONS.

X

THE FIVE MIRACLES

In the world's history of commercial and industrial progress California lays claim to five distinct miracles of achievement. These are:

I. The building of the chain of twenty-one Franciscan Missions in an uncivilized land, resulting in the regeneration of the Indians of California from heathen barbarism to Christianity and the arts of peace.

II. The building of the Central Pacific railroad across the Sierra Nevada mountains.

III. The reclamation of the deserts by irrigation. IV. The rebuilding of the city of San Francisco in three years after its destruction by earthquake and fire in 1906.

V. The Owens River aqueduct.

Before and since these achievements, and in between them, there are many other milestones on the road of human progress which California may well point to with pride, but the "five miracles" above named stand out as climaxes in the pageant.

From Junipero Serra's first little, uncertain irrigation ditch at San Diego, from the ox-teams of the pioneer traders, the caravels of the Spanish explorers and mariners and the wind-jamming brigs of New England that wandered around Cape Horn to California in quest of hides and tallow, it is, indeed, a far cry forward to the mighty railways and the splendid deep-sea steamship lines of today which