of old mountaineers, and the hardy and indomitable pioneers of the Sacramento valley, and the bear flag, put an end to their dissensions. Castro had himself prepared the way for this aggression by driving Frémont and his surveying party out of the Mexican settlements a few months before. The colony on the Sacramento necessarily sympathized with Frémont; and rumors, more or less well founded, began to run through the valley of hostile intentions towards all the American settlers. But resentment and anticipations of evil were not the sole cause of this movement. There cannot now be a doubt that it was prompted as it was approved by the government of the United States, and that Captain Frémont obeyed his orders no less than his own feelings.

Frémont was still on the northern side of the bay of San Francisco when the American flag was hoisted at Monterey, on the ever-memorable seventh day of July, 1846.

Before the war the government of the United States had fully determined, so far as that matter rested with the Executive, upon the conquest and permanent retention of California as soon as the outbreak of war should offer the opportunity. Orders, in anticipation of war, were issued to that effect, and it was under these orders that California was actually taken. The danger of that day was that England would step in before us. Her ships were watching our ships on the coast of Mexico. The British pretext, it is said, was to have been to secure an equivalent for the Mexican debt due to British subjects; and it is understood that there was a party here who favored this design.

Because Commodore Sloat did not rush to the execution of the orders issued in anticipation of war, on the very first report of a collision between the United States and Mexico, the anxious Secretary of the Navy, dreading to lose the prize, hotly censured him in a letter which reached him after the event had broken the sting of its reproaches, and served only to assure him how well he had fulfilled the wishes of his government. The flag of the United States was no sooner flying than the Collingwood entered the bay of Monterey. There had been a race between the Collingwood and the Savannah. What a moment that was for us, and for the world! What if the Collingwood had been the swifter sailer, and Sloat had found the English flag flying on the shore! What if we had been born on another planet! The cast was for England or the United States, and when the die turned for us, the interest was at an end.

As a feat of arms the conquest of California was nothing for a power like ours. Even more feeble and as much distracted as the rest of Mexico, and with but a nominal dependence upon the central government, but a very little force was sufficient to detach California forever from all her Spanish-American connections. Whatever of military credit there was is due to the pioneers who, under the bear flag, had, before they heard of the beginning of the war, with an admirable instinct for their own rights and the interests of their country, rebelled against any further Mexican misrule, or a sale to the British. The loyalty of their sentiments was beautifully illustrated by the alacrity with which they relinquished the complete independence which appeared to be within their grasp, and turned over their conquests and the further service of their rifles to the country which they remembered with so much affection, and a government from which they would suffer themselves to look for nothing but wisdom and strength, and a tender consideration for the rights and interests of the pioneer.

For three years and a half when there was no war, and for nearly two years after there was a declared peace, California was governed, and for a great part of the time heavily taxed, by the executive branch of the government of the United States, acting through military officers. This I note as an anomaly in the experience of the citizens of this republic.

California separated from Mexico, a new people began to come in from the United States and Europe. But California was remote and yet but little understood. Mr. Webster himself spoke of her as almost worthless, except for the

bay of San Francisco, and as though the soil was as barren and thorny as the rocks of Lower California. Emigrants came, but not many-among the most remarkable arrivals being the ship Brooklyn, freighted with Mormons. The soldiers themselves were nothing more than armed colonists. And everything was peaceful and dull, until suddenly, when no man expected, there came a change of transcendent magnitude.

Gold was discovered at Coloma. This was an event that stirred the heart of the whole world. The motives which pervade and most control the lives of men were touched. All the impulses that spring from necessity and hope were quickened; and a movement was visible among mankind. To get to California, some crossed over from Buenos Ayres to Valparaiso, scaling the Andes. The Isthmus of Darien became a common thoroughfare. Peaceful invaders entered Mexico at every point, and on every route startled the drowsy muleteer as they passed over to the Pacific where the coast was nearest, or pushed on directly for California. Constant caravans issued from our own borders, traversed every intervening prairie, and explored every pass and gap of opposing mountains. As the long train descended to the valley, perhaps the foremost wagon is driven. by an old man, who when he was a boy moved out in this way from Virginia to Kentucky; and passing still from one new State to another, now when he is grown gray halts his team at last upon the shores of the Pacific. Ships sailed from every port on the globe. The man at the wheel, in every sea, steered by the star that led to San Francisco. So came the emigrants of 1849. The occupation of California was now complete, and she became a part of the world. The sighs, the prayers, the toiling and the watching of our overwearied countrymen on these long painful journeys are still demanding a railroad to the Pacific.

Eleven years are passed, and have they no voice? We looked out upon a wide expanse-unfenced, untilled-and though nature was lovely, our hearts sunk within us. Neither the priest nor the ranchero had prepared this country for our habitation. We asked who shall subdue all this to our uses? We look again; and now, upon a landscape chequered with smiling farms and dotted with cities and towns, busy and humming like the hive. What magic is it that has wrought this change? On every hand, with one acclaim, comes back the answer. Labor, it is labor. Of our eleven years, here is the lesson. Man's opinions and his passions were but insolence and vanity. Boasting and praise made but the greatness of the passing day. And labor, only labor, has survived. However silent, however humble and unseen, or on what bestowed, it is labor which has created California, and which rules us at this hour. With our own eyes this we have seen, and of our knowledge we know the lesson to be as true as it is old.

California in full possession of the white man, and embraced within the mighty area of his civilization! We feel the sympathies of our race attract us. We see in our great movement hitherward in 1849 a likeness to the times when our ancestors, their wives and little ones, and all their stuff in wagons, and with attendant herds, poured forth by nations and in never-ending columns from the German forests, and went to seek new pastures and to found new kingdoms in the ruined provinces of the Roman empire: or when swayed by another inspiration they cast their masses upon the Saracens, and sought to rescue the sepulchre of Christ from the infidels. We recognize that we are but the foremost rank of that multitude which for centuries has held its unwavering course out of Europe upon America, in numbers still increasing; a vast unsummoned host, self-marshaled, leaderless, an innumerable, moving and onward forever, to possess and people another continent. Separated but in space, divided but by the accidents of manners, of language and of laws-from Scandinavia to California-one blood

and one people. Knowledge is but the conservation of his thoughts, art but the embodiment of his conceptions, letters the record of his deeds. Man of our race has crowned the earth with its glory! And still in the series of his works you have founded a State. May it be great and powerful whilst the ocean shall thunder against these shores! You have planted a people; may they be prosperous and happy whilst summers shall return to bless these fields with plenty! And may the name of the pioneer be spoken in California forever!

Since the foregoing address was delivered the following letter has been received by Mr. Randolph from Mr. Sprague, a gentleman well known in this city, and interesting as showing the discovery of gold in California thirty-five years ago:

GENOA, CARSON VALLEY, September 18, 1860. FRIEND RANDOLPH: I have just been reading your address before the Society of Pioneers. I have known of the J. S. Smith you mention, by reputation, for many years. He was the first white man that ever went overland from the Atlantic States to California. He was a chief trader in the employ of the American Fur Company. At the rendezvous of the company on Green river, near the South Pass, in 1825, Smith was directed to take charge of a party of some forty men (trappers) and penetrate the country west of Salt lake.. He discovered what is now called Humboldt river. He called it Mary's river, from his Indian wife Mary. It has always been known as Mary's river by mountain men since, a name which it should retain, for many reasons.

Smith pushed on down Mary's river; being of an adventurous nature, when he found his road closed by high mountains he determined to see what kind of country there was on the other side. It is not known exactly where he crossed the Sierra Nevada, but it is supposed that it must have been not far from where the old emigrant road crossed near the head of the Truckee. He made his way southerly after entering the valley of Sacramento, passed through San José and down as low as San Diego. After recruiting his party and purchasing a large number of horses, he crossed the mountains near what is known as Walker's Pass, skirted the eastern slope of the mountains till near what is now known as Mono lake, when he steered an east-by-north course for Salt lake. On this portion of his route he found placer gold in quantities, and brought much of it with him to the encampment on Green river.

The gold that he brought with him, together with his description of the country he had passed through, and the large amount of furs, pleased the agent of the American Fur Company so well that he directed Smith again to make the same trip, with special instructions to take the gold fields on his return and thoroughly prospect them. It was on this trip that he wrote the letter to Father Duran. The trip was successful until they arrived in the vicinity of the gold mines, east of the mountains, when, in a battle with the Indians, Smith and nearly all of his men were killed. A few of the party escaped and reached the encampment on Green river. This defeat damped the ardor of the company so much that they never looked any more for the gold mines.

There are one or more men now living who can testify to the truth of the above statement, and who can give a fuller statement of the details of his two journeys than I can.

The man Smith was a man of far more than average ability, and had a better education than falls to the lot of mountain men. Few or none of them were

APPENDIX 2.

Address on the acquisition of California by the United States, delivered before the Corporate Society of California Pioneers, at the Academy of Music, in the city of San Francisco, on September 10, 1866, on occasion of the sixteenth anniversary of the admission of the State of California into the federal Union. By John W. Dwinelle, a member of that society, president of the EthnoHistorical Society of San Francisco, member of the Ethnological Society of New York, and of the Historical Society of New York.

MR. PRESIDENT and Brother PIONEERS: It has been suggested to me, by the committee through whose hands I received your invitation to address you at this time, that I should give a historical character to my address. I was glad to receive this intimation, for it accorded perfectly with my own desire. The great events of history, when not sufficiently remote to be counted by centuries, are commonly reckoned by decades, or periods of ten years. We are met on the occasion of the sixteenth anniversary of the admission of California into the federal Union of the United States. But, presuming upon your assent, I shall dedicate a portion of these exercises to the celebration of two other historical events of signal interest and importance, namely: the conquest of California by the United States, which took place twenty years ago, on the 7th day of July, A. D. 1846, and the foundation of San Francisco, which was consummated ninety years ago, on the 17th day of September, A. D. 1776. Two decades have therefore elapsed since California has become Anglo-American, and nine decades since San Francisco was inscribed upon the map of political geography. It will therefore be peculiarly interesting on this occasion to cast a retrospective glance into history, and to inquire how it has come to pass that we are here, and by what title we claim to possess this fair California of ours.

IGNORANCE OF EARLY GEOGRAPHERS.

It was only by accident, after all, that Columbus discovered the vast region of continents and islands which are now called America. He was not in quest of new continents, nor of the golden-fruited gardens of the Hesperides. Believing, from inductive reasoning, that the earth was round, but with very imperfect. notions of its magnitude, he was firmly persuaded that by sailing in a westerly direction from the coast of Spain, he would in due time arrive on the coast of China, which was then classed as a portion of the Indies; and when he discovered the first American islands, believing that he had already reached the Indies, he gave to the natives the name of Indians, which inaccurate classification they have ever since retained. Looking over the books and maps of the old geographers, it is curious and wonderful to observe how much they did know, and how much they did not know, of the geography of the northwestern coast of America for more than two hundred years after the discoveries made by Columbus. Although Cortez, when he fell into that inevitable disgrace with which the kings of Spain have always rewarded their greatest benefactors, sent out various expeditions from Mexico for the exploration of the northwestern coast, and even accompanied some of them as far as La Paz, in Lower California, and although the viceroys who succeeded him sent out various expeditions within fifty years after the conquest of Mexico, both by sea and by fand, which must have penetrated as far north as the 42d degree of latitude, yet the physical geography of that region remained in the most mythical condition, and the very existence of the Bay of San Francisco was contested as fabulous by the Spanish viceroys of New Spain less than a hundred years ago. There is in the possession of the Odd Fellows' library of this city an engraved map of the world, published at Venice in the year 1546, which is remarkable for its general accuracy, and for the beauty of its execution; but on this map, at the latitude of San

Francisco, the American continent is represented as sweeping around in a large circle, and forming a junction with that of Asia; while the Colorado, the largest river in the world, rising in the mountains of Thibet, and meandering through a course of 15,000 or 20,000 miles, pours its vast volume of waters into the Gulf of California. In the year 1588, a Spanish captain of marine, named Lorenzo Ferrer Maldonado, published an account of a voyage which he pretended to have made from the Atlantic ocean, through the Northern sea, to the Pacific, and thence to China, giving all its geographical details and personal incidents. This apocryphal voyage proved a delusion and a stumbling-block to historians and voyagers for more than two hundred years, and it was not until the year 1791 that two Spanish frigates, sent out for that purpose by authority of the. King of Spain, by a thorough exploration of the extreme northwestern coast, established the fact that a passage through the North sea did not exist, and that the pretensions of Maldonado were utterly false. It is only within a comparatively recent period that the fact has been generally received in modern geography that California was connected with the main continent, and was not an island. In Ogilvie's "America, being the latest and most accurate account of the New World," a most elegant and luxurious folio, published in London in the year 1671, California is laid down as an island, extending from Cape St. Lucas, in the tropic of Cancer, to the 45th degree of latitude, and including the famous New Albion of Sir Francis Drake. The same map is reproduced by Captain Shelvocke, of the royal navy, in his account of his "Voyage Around the World by way of the South Sea, in his Majesty's ship-of-war, published in London in 1726; and in a geographical work published in London in the same year, by "Daniel Coxe, esq.," an account is given of "a new and curious discovery and relation betwixt the river Meschachebe (Mississippi) and the South sea, which separates America from China by means of several large rivers and lakes, with a description of the coast of the said sea to the Straits of Uries, as also of a rich and considerable trade to be carried on from thence to Japan, China, and Tartary." I cannot ascertain that California was relieved of its insular character among geographers until the publication of a map by Father Begert, a missionary of the Society of Jesus, in an account of Lower California which he printed at Manheim in the year 1771, on his return to Germany after his order had been expelled, in 1769, by order of the King of Spain, from the missions which they had successfully established among the Indians of Lower California. Even after it was .admitted that California was not an island, but a part of the main land, the most indefinite notions prevailed as to the extent to which the Gulf of California penetrated towards the north; and to the very last of the Spanish and Mexicau dominion, when any specific description was given to California in official documents, it was spoken of as a peninsula.

OUR TITLE TO CALIFORNIA.

If a Californian of ordinary historical intelligence were asked by what legal title we assume to possess this country, after following the chain through Mexico to Spain he would probably pause for want of further specific information, or, at the most, suggest that Spain derived her title to California through the right of first discovery. If he were told that all the rights of Spain, and our rights through her, to this land were derived entirely from a grant made to Spain by the Pope, he would undoubtedly be greatly surprised; yet such is the historical fact. Previous to the discovery of America by Columbus,, in 1492, the Portuguese had discovered the Azore islands, in longitude 31 west, and on the strength of that discovery claimed that the countries discovered by Columbus belonged to the crown of Portugal, and that the Spaniards should be wholly excluded from them. But the Spaniards refused to admit this pretension, and referred