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CHAPTER I.

ELDORADO-THE JOURNEY.

The present generation, and especially the sons and daughters of the Golden West, take a commendable interest in reading the accounts of the circumstances and conditions attending the early history and the experiences of pioneer life in California, after the discovery of gold in 1848. The admission of the State into the Union Sept. 9, 1850, one week after the arrival of the writer, was a memorable day, and will be duly celebrated by all who participated in the stirring scenes of those early times. It is estimated that 40,000 immigrants arrived here overland and by way of the Isthmus of Panama in 1849, and 30,000 in 1850. As to the kind of men, (but very few women came those years), who composed the greater part of the immigrants and remained to develop the resources of the Golden State, a late writer says: "To this land of golden promise in the early times came the bravest and best men of the older states. The pioneers were the adventurous and daring spirits of the old home, who, ill-content to stay and vegetate amid the familiar scenes of their birth, took heart of hope, and through weeks and months of peril and fatigue toiled across the waterless and savage-peopled wastes to the land afar. They lit

their campfires of buffalo chips and sage brush and tossed in uneasy dreams at night with their guns for pillows. The reveille that awoke them was often the crack of rifles in the hands of savages. For days, weeks and months they thirsted and hungered amid the alkali deserts and the rocky canyons, and when they reached this land of promise there was little left them but that dower of splendid manhood, brains and brawn. No better, braver, truer men ever went up against double-shotted guns in battle than were most of the gallant, hardy young men who peopled California fifty years ago, and the wealth they dug from the earth and washed from the auriferous streams was but the fair reward of valor. The State these men founded has been developed by their sons until in the bright galaxy of stars on the nation's flag there gleams no brighter emblem than that of California.

"Beautiful California, the sunny land of giant woods and giant mountains, and valleys that are fat with plenty! California, the brilliant and beautiful land of handsome and charming women, who have helped to make the whole world brighter and better. California, whose golden gardens reek with the odors of the orange blooms, and whose flowers garland with magnificence the vales from foothill to seacoast."

Though leaving home with all its endearments, on a journey that could not occupy less than two years in time, to encounter the dangers incident to such an undertaking, encountering sickness with no kind and loving hand to administer to their wants, all these considerations were overborne by that wild enthusiasm that found utterance in such extravagant song as that of which the following is a well-remembered stanza: