Address on the history of California, from the discovery of the country to the year 1849, delivered before the Society of California Pioneers, at their celebration of the tenth anniversary of the admission of the State of California into the Union. By Edmund Randolph, esq. San Francisco, Sept. 10, 1860.

PIONEERS: From the importunities of the active present which surrounds us, we turn for a brief space to the past. To-day we give ourselves up to memory. And, first, our thoughts are due to those who are not here assembled with us; whom we meet not on street nor highway, and welcome not again at the door of our dwellings; upon whom shines no more the sun which now gladdens the hills, the plains, the waters of California-to the pioneers who are dead. To them, as the laurel to the soldier who falls in the battle for that with his blood he has paid the price of victory, you will award the honor of this triumph, marked by the marvellous creations which have sprung from your common enterprises. To them you will consecrate a success which has surpassed the boldest of the imaginations which led you forth, both them and you, to a life of adventures. Your companions died that California might exist. Fear not that you will honor them overmuch. But how died they, and where do they repose— the dead of the pioneers of California?

Old men amongst you will recall the rugged trapper. His frame was strong; his soul courageous; his knowledge was of the Indian's trail and haunts of game; his wealth and defence, a rifle and a horse; his bed, the earth; his home, the mountains. He was slain by the treacherous savage. His scalp adorned the wigwam of a chief. The wolf and the vulture in the desert feasted on the body of this pioneer. A companion, wounded, unarmed, and famishing, wanders out through some rocky canon and lives to recount this tale-lives, more fortunate in his declining years, to measure, perhaps, his lands by the league, and to number his cattle by the thousand. And the sea, too, has claimed tribute; the remorseless waves, amid the terrors of shipwreck, too often in these latter days have closed over the manly form of the noble pioneer. The monsters of the deep have parted amongst them the flesh of our friends, and their

dissevered members are floating, suspended now in the vast abysses of the ocean, or roll upon distant strands, playthings tossed by the currents in their wanderings. And here, in San Francisco, exacting commerce has disturbed the last resting place of the pioneers. Ten years and a half ago, pinched by the severities of a most inclement winter, under the leaky tent which gave no shelter, they sickened and died (and then women and children were pioneers, too) by scores, and by hundreds they sickened and died. With friendly hands, which under such disastrous circumstances could minister no relief, you yet did bury them piously in a secluded spot upon the hill-side or in the valley, and, planting a rude cross or board to mark the grave, did hope, perhaps, in a more prosperous day, to replace it with a token in enduring stone. But the hill and the valley alike disappear hourly from our sight. The city marches with tremendous strides. Extending streets and lengthening rows encroach upon the simple burial-ground not wisely chosen. The dead give place to the living. And now the builder, with his mortar and his bricks, and the din of his trowel, erects a mansion or store-house for the new citizen upon the same spot where the pioneer was laid and his sorrowing friend dreamed of erecting a tombstone. Meanwhile, by virtue of a municipal order, hirelings have dug up and carted away all that remained of the pioneers, and have deposited them in some common receptacle, where now they are lying an undistinguishable heap of human bones.

Pursuing still this sad review, you well remember how, with the eager tide along and up the course of rivers, and over many a stony ascent, you were swept into the heart of the difficult regions of the gold mines; how you there encountered an equal stream pouring in from the east; and, in a summer, all the bars, and flats, and gulches, throughout the length and breadth of that vast tract of hills, were flooded with human life. Into that rich harvest Death put his sickle. Toil to those who had never toiled; toil, the hardest toil, often at once beneath a torrid, blazing sun, and in an icy stream; congestion, typhus, fevers in whatever form most fatal; and the rot of scurvy; drunkenness and violence, despair, suicide, and madness; the desolate cabin; houseless starvation amid snows: all these bring back again upon you in a frightful picture many a death-scene of those days. There fell the pioneers who perished from the van of those who first heaved back the bolts that barred the vaulted hills, and poured the millions of the treasures of California upon the world!

Wan and emaciated from the door of the tent or cabin where you saw him. expire; bloody and mangled from the gambling saloon where you saw him murdered, or the roadside where you found him lying; the corpse you bore to the woods and buried him beneath the trees. But you cannot tell to-day which pine sings the requiem of the pioneer.

And some have fallen in battle beneath our country's flag.

And longings still unsatisfied led some to renew their adventurous career upon foreign soils. Combating for strangers whose quarrels they espoused, they fell amid the jungles of the tropics and fatted that rank soil there with right precious blood; or, upon the sands of an accursed waste, were bound and slaughtered by inhuman men who lured them with promises and repaid their coming with a most cruel assassination. In the filthy purlieus of a Mexican village swine fed upon all that murder left of honored gentlemen, until the very Indian, with a touch of pity, heaped up the sand upon the festering dead, and gave slight sepulture to our lost pioneers.

Though from the first some there were who found in California all they sought; and as they lived so died, surrounded by their children and their newly made friends, and were buried in churchyards with holy rites; and although those more lately stricken repose in well-fenced grounds, guarded by society they planted, and whose ripening power they have witnessed, and are gathered to a sacred stillness, where we too may hope that we shall be received

when full soon we sink to our eternal rest. Alas! far different the death and burial of full many a pioneer.

In deeds of loftiest daring of individual man, encounters fierce and rudest shocks, too often has parted the spirit of the pioneer, and left his mortal body to nature and the elements. Thus wilds are conquered, and to civilization new realms are won.

Upon his life and death let them reflect who would deny to the pioneer the full measure of the rights of freemen.

For us we behold the river or the rock, the mountain's peak, the plainwhatever spot from which his eyes took their last look of earth. There, as he lies, one gentle light shining athwart the gathering darkness, still holds his gaze. Guided by that light we will revisit the distant home of the dying pioneer. In imagination we will there revive the faded recollections of the intrepid boy who, in years long past, disappeared in the wilderness and the west, and for a lifetime has been accounted dead. We will renew, while we console, the grief of the aged father and mother. To the fresh sorrows of the faithful wife we pledge the sympathy and love of brothers. To the sons and daughters of our friends we stretch forth our hands in benedictions on their heads. To ancient friends we too are friends, until with our praises, and the eventful story of his life, we make to live again in his old peaceful home him who died so wildly. What though, to mournful questioning, we cannot point their graves? They have a monument--behold the State; and their inscription, it is written on our hearts.

Thus, as is meet, we honor our dead pioneers with severe yet pleasing recollections, grateful fancies, and tears not unmanly. With an effort we turn from ourselves to our country.

Of populous Christian countries Upper California is among the newest. Her whole history is embraced within the lifetime of men now living. Just ninetyone years have passed since man of European origin first planted his footsteps within the limits of what is now our State, with purpose of permanent inhabitation. Hence all the inhabitants of California have been but pioneers.

Cortez, about the year 1537, fitted out several small vessels at his port of Tehuantepec, sailed north and to the head of the Gulf of California. ́ It is said that his vessels were provided with everything requisite for planting a colony in the newly discovered region, and transported four hundred Spaniards and three hundred negro slaves, which he had assembled for that purpose, and that he imagined by that coast and sea to discover another New Spain. But sands and rocks and sterile mountains, a parched and thorny waste, vanquished the conqueror of Mexico. He was glad to escape with his life, and never crossed the line which marks our southern boundary. Here we may note a very remarkable event which happened in the same year that Cortez was making his fruitless attempt. Four persons, Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca, Castillo, Dorantes, and a negro named Estevancio, arrived at Culiacan, on the Gulf of California, from the peninsula of 'Florida. They were the sole survivors of three hundred Spaniards who landed with Pamfilo Narvaez on the coast of Florida for the conquest of that country, in the year 1527. They had wandered ten years among the savages, and had finally found their way across the continent. The same Nunez was afterwards appointed to conduct the discovery of the Rio de la Plata, and the first conquests of Paraguay, says our authority, the learned Jesuit Father Miguel Venegas.

The viceroy Mendoza, soon after the failure of Cortez, despatched another expedition, by sea and land, in the same direction, but accomplished still less; and again in 1542, the same viceroy sent out Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo, a courageous Portuguese, with two ships to survey the outward or western coast of California. In the latitude of 32 degrees he made a cape which was called, by himself, I suppose, Cape Engaño, (Deceit ;) in 33 degrees, that of La Cruz, and

that of Galera, in 36 degrees, and opposite the last he met with two large islands, where they informed him that at some distance there was a nation who wore clothes. In 37 degrees and a half he had sight of some hills covered with trees, which he called San Martin, as he did also the cape running into the sea at the end of these eminences. Beyond this to 40 degrees the coast lies NE. and SW., and about the 40th degree he saw two mountains covered with snow, and between them a large cape, which, in honor of the viceroy, he called Mendocina. The headland, therefore, according to Venegas, was christened three hundred and eighteen years ago. Cabrillo continued his voyage to the north in midwinter, and reached the 44th degree of latitude on the 10th of March, 1543. From this point he was compelled by want of provisions and the bad condition of his ships to return, and on the 14th of April he entered the harbor of Natividad, from which he had sailed.

In 1578, at midsummer, Sir Francis Drake landed upon this coast, only a few miles northward from this Bay of San Francisco, at a bay which still bears his name. Sir Walter Raleigh had not yet sailed on his first voyage to Virginia. It will be interesting to know how things looked in this country at that time. After telling us how the natives mistook them for gods, and worshipped them, and offered sacrifices to them, much against their will, and how he took possession of the country in the name of Queen Elizabeth, the narrative goes on : “Our necessaire business being ended, our General with his companie travailed up into the countrey to their villiages, where we found heardes of deere by 1,000 in a companie, being most large and fat of bodie. We found the whole countrey to be a warren of a strange kinde of connies, their bodies in bigness as be the Barbarie connies, their heads as the heads of ours, the feet of a Want, (mole,) and the taile of a rat, being of great length; under her chinne on either side a bagge, into the which she gathered her meate, when she hath filled her bellie abroad. The people do eat their bodies and make great accompt of their skinnes, for their king's coat was made out of them. Our General called this countrey Nova Albion, and that for two causes: the one in respect of the white bankes and cliffes which lie toward the sea; and the other because it might have some affinitie with our countrey in name, which sometime was so called. "There is no part of earth here to be taken up, wherein there is not a reasonable quantitie of gold or silver."

Every one will at once recognize the burrowing squirrel that still survives to plague the farmer, and who it will be seen is a very ancient inhabitant of the fields he molests; and no one but will dwell upon the words in which he speaks of the gold and silver abounding in this country. Were they but a happy guess in a gold-mad age, a miracle of sagacity, or a veritable prophecy? Before he sailed away, "our General set up a monument of our being there, as also of her Majestie's right and title to the same, viz: a plate nailed upon a faire great poste, whereupon was engraven her Majestie's name, the day and yeare of our arrival there, with the free giving up of the province and people into her Majestre's hands, together with her highness' picture and arms, in a piece of fivepence of current English money under the plate, whereunder was also written the name of our General."

These mementoes of his visit and the first recorded landing of the white man upon our shores, I think have never fallen into the possession of any antiquary. And it would also appear that Sir Francis Drake knew nothing of Cabrillo's voyage, for says: "It seemeth that the Spaniards hitherto had never been in this part of the country, neither did discover the lande by many degrees to the southward of this place.

There were other expeditions to Lower California and the western coast, after the time of Cortez and Cabrillo, but they all proved fruitless until the Count de Monterey, viceroy of New Spain, by order of the King, sent out Sebastian Viscayno. He sailed from Acapulco on the 5th day of May, 1602, with two

large vessels and a tender, as captain-general of, the voyage, with Toribio Gomez, a consummate seaman, who had served many years in cruising his Majesty's ships, as admiral; and three barefooted Carmelites, Father Andrew de la Assumpcion, Father Antonio de la Ascension, and Father Tomas de Aguino, also accompanied him. And that Viscayno might not lack for counsellors the viceroy appointed Captain Alonzo Estevan Peguero, a person of great valor and long experience, who had served in Flanders; and Captain Gaspar de Alorçon, a native of Bretagne, distinguished for his prudence and courage; and for sea affairs, he appointed pilots and masters of ships; "likewise Captain Geronimo Martin, who went as cosmographer, in order to make draughts of the countries discovered, for the greater perspicuity of the account intended to be transmitted to his Majesty, of the discoveries and transactions on this voyage. The ships were further supplied with a suitable number of soldiers and seamen, and well provided with all necessaries for a year. This expedition was therefore, in every respect, a notable one'for the age. Its object, the King of Spain himself informs us, was to find a port where the ships coming from the Philippine islands to Acapulco, a trade which had then been established some thirty years, might put in and provide themselves with water, wood, masts, and other things of absolute necessity. The galleons from Manila had all this time been running down this coast before the northwest wind, and were even accustomed, as some say, to make the land as far to the north as Cape Mendocino, which Cabrillo had named. Sebastian Viscayno with his fleet struggled up against the same northwest wind. On the 10th of November, 1602, he entered San Diego and found, on its northwest side, a forest of oaks and other trees, of considerable extent, of which I do not know that there are any traces now or even a tradition. In Lower California he landed frequently, and made an accurate survey of the coast, and to one bay gave the capricious appellation of the Bay of eleven thousand Virgins.' Above San Diego he kept further from the shore, noting the most conspicuous landmarks. But he came through the canal of Santa Barbara, which I suppose he so named, and, when at anchor under one of the islands, was visited by the king of that country, who came with a fleet of boats and earnestly pressed him to land, offering as proof of his hospitable intentions to furnish every one of his seamen with ten wives. Finally he anchored in the bay of Monterey on the 16th of December, 1602-this was more than four years before the English landed at Jamestown. The name of Monterey was given to this port in honor of the viceroy. On the 17th day of December, 1602, a church, tent or arbor, was erected under a large oak close to the seaside, and Fathers Andrew de la Assumpcion and Antonio de la Ascension said Mass, and so continued to do whilst the expedition remained there. Yet this was not the first Christian worship on these shores, for Drake had worshipped according to a Protestant ritual at the place where he landed twenty-five years before. The port of Monterey, as it appeared to those weary voyagers, and they were in a miserable plight from the affliction of scurvy, seems to have been very pleasing. It is described in the narrative of Father Andrew as an excellent harbor, and secure against all winds. "Near the shore are an infinite number of very large pines, straight and smooth, fit for masts and yards, likewise oaks of a prodigious size for building ships. Here likewise are rose trees, white thorns, firs, willows, and poplars; large clear lakes, fine pastures and arable lands," &c., &c. A traveller of this day, perhaps, might not color the picture so highly. Viscayno sent back one of his ships with the news, and with the sick, and with the other left Monterey on the 3d of January, 1603, and it was never visited more for a hundred and sixty-six years. On the 12th, having a fair wind, we are told that he passed the port of San Francisco, and that losing sight of his other vessel he returned to the port of San Francisco to wait for her. Father Andrew de la Assumpcion (as reported in Father Venegas} on this interesting point uses the following language: "Another reason which