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 mcre 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 reposethe 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 purliens 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 rndest 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