WEST OF THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS. 269
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 wander-
ings. 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 severi-
ties 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 prosper-
ous day, to replace it with a token in enauring 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 n%ver 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 starva-
tion 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 soine 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 al-
though 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
270 RESOURCES OF STATES AND TERRITORIES
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 plain
whatever 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 pio-
neer. In imagination we will there revive the faded recollections of the in-
trepid 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 recol-
lections, 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 ninety-
one 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 inhabita-
tion. Hence all the inhabitants of California have been but pioneers.
Cortez, about the year 1537, fitted out several small vessels at his port of Te-
huantepec, 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 re-
markable event which happened in the same year that Cortez was making his
fruitless attempt. Four persons, Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca, Castillo, Dor-
antes, and a negro named Estevancio, arrived at Culiacan, on the Gulf of Cali-
fornia, 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 coura-
geous Portuguese, with two ships to survey the outward or western coast of
California. Ln the latitude of 32 degrees he made a cape which was called, by
himself, I suppose, Cape Engano, (Deceit;) in 33 degrees, that of La Cruz, and
WEST OF THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS. 271
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 Men-
do.ciua. 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 ehips to return, and on the 14th of April he entered the harbor of Nativi-
dad, 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 Vir-
ginia. 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 trav-
ailed 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 Barbaric 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 reason-
able 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 yare of our
arrival there, with the free giving up of the province and people into her Majes-
tic' s hands, together ivith her highness' picture and arms, in a piece offivepence
of current English money under the plate, w her eunder 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 he 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
272 KESOURCES OF STATES AND TERRITORIES
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 coun-
sellors the viceroy appointed Captain Alonzo Estevan Pegnero, a person of
great valor and long experience, who had,, served in Flanders; and Captain
Gas par de Alorcon, 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 diseoveriesca.n.d 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 Mendo-
cino, 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 J3anta 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 carne
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 pas-
tures 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
WEST OF THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS. 273
induced the Capitania (flag-ship) to put into Puerto Francisco was to take a
survey of it and see if anything was to be found of the San Angustin, which, in
the year 1595, had, by order of his Majesty and the Viceroy, been sent from the
Philippines to survey the coast of California, under the direction of Sebastian
Rodriguez Cermenon, a pilot of known abilities, but was driven ashore in this
harbor by the violence of the wind. And among others on board the San Au-
gustin was the pilot Francisco Volanos, who was also chief pilot of this squad-
ron. He was acquainted with the country, and affirmed that they had left ashore
a great quantity of wax and several chests of silk ; and the general was desirous
of putting in here to see if there remained any vestiges of the ship and cargo.
The Capitania came to anchor behind a point of land called La Punta de los
Reyes."
Did Vizcayno enter the Bay of San Francisco ? I think it plain that he did
not. Yet exceedingly curious and interesting it is to reflect that he was but a
little way outside the heads, and that the indentation of the coast which opens
into the bay of San Francisco was known to him from the report of the pilots
of the ships from the Philippines, and by the same name. In the narratives of
the explorers the reader is often puzzled by finding that objects upon the shore
are spoken of as already known, as for example in this voyage of Vizcayno the
highlands a little south of Monterey are mentioned by the name of the Sierra
de Santa Lucia, so named at some previous time : the explanation follows in the
same sentence where they are said to be a usual land-mark for the China ships
i. e., undoubtedly the galleons from the Philippines. Vizcayno could reach no
further north than Cape Mendocino, in which neighborhood he found himself
with only six men able to keep the deck ; his other vessel penetrated as far as
the forty-third degree ; and then both returned to Acapulco. In those days
there was a fabulous story very prevalent of a channel somewhere to the north
of us which connected the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, and it seems that some
foreigner had actually presented to the King of Spain a history of a voyage he
had made directly across from Newfoundland to the Pacific ocean by the
straits of Anian. The King is said to have had an eye to the discovery of this
desirable canal at the same time that he was making provision for his trade from
the Western Islands.
In 1697 the Jesuits, with patient art and devoted zeal, accomplished that
which had defied the energy of Cortez and baffled the efforts of the Spanish
monarchy for generations afterwards. They possessed themselves of Lower
California, and occupied the greater portion of that peninsula, repulsive as it
was, with their missions. In 1742, Anson, the English commodore, cruising off
the western coast of Mexico, watched for the Spanish galleon which still plied
an annual trip between Acapulco and Manila. This galleon was half man-of-
war, half merchantman, was armed, manned, and officered by the King, but
sailed on account of various houses of the Jesuits in the Philippines, who owned
her tonnage in shares of a certain number of bales each, and enjoyed the mo*
nopoly of this trade by royal grant. She exchanged dollars from the Mexican
mines for the productions of the east, and we read that at that day the manufac-
turers of Valencia and Cadiz, in Spain, clamored for protection against the silks
and cotton cloths of India and China thus imported by this sluggish craft which
crept lazily through the tropics, relied upon rain to replenish the water jars on
deck, and was commonly weakened by scurvy and required about six months
for the return voyage into Acapulco, thence transported on mules to Vera
Cruz, and thence again after another tedious voyage to Europe. Anson watched
in vain ; the prudent galleon thought it best to remain under the shelter of the
guns of Acapulco, in the presence of so dangerous a neighbor. He sailed away
to the west, stopped and refreshed his crew at a romantic island in the middle
of the Pacific ocean, went over to Macao and there refitted, and then captured
the galleon at last, with a million and a half of dollars on board, as she was
H. Ex. Doc. 29 18
274 RESOURCES OF STATES AND TERRITORIES
going into Manilla, after a desperate combat with his ship, the Centurion. He
then returned to China, extinguishing a great fire in Canton with his crew, sold
the galleon in Macao, and got back safe to England with his treasure. His
chaplain, Mr. Richard Walter, the author of the admirable narrative of this cele-
brated voyage, goes on, after relating the capture, to say : " I shall only add,
that there were taken on board the galleon several draughts and journals. *
* * Among the rest there was found a chart of all the ocean, between the
Philippines and the coast of Mexico, which was that made use of by the galleon
in her own navigation. A copy of this draught, corrected in some places by
our own observations, is here annexed, together with the route of the galleon
traced thereon from her own journals, and likewise the route of the Centurion
from Acapulco through the same ocean."
Here we may look for information. We have at least one log-book and chart
of the old Manilla galleons. What if we could have access to the books of
account of those venerable old traders in their monasteries at Manilla ! Examin-
ing this chart we find that the coast of California, from a little further north than
Punta de los Reyes, is laid down with remarkable accuracy. We have a great
indentation of the coast immediately below Punta de los Reyes, a large land-
locked bay with a narrow entrance, immediately off which lie seven little black
spots called Los Farallones in short, a bay at San Francisco, but without a
name. The Farallones, I think, were named by Cabrillo, in 1542, two hundred
years before Anson's time. Was this our port of San Francisco as we know it,
or that which Vizcayno entered when he anchored on the 12th of January,
1603, under a point of land called La Punta de los Reyes ? Lower down we
have Point Afio Nuevo and Point Pinos, and a bay between, but not the name
of Monterey, then a great many islands, then Point Conception, then San Pedro,
and then the Port of San Diego, and Lower California to Cape San Lucas. The
outward track of the galleon lies between 12 and 15 degrees north, and on her
return she goes up as high as about 35 degrees, and there being off Point Con-
ception, but a long way out to sea, she turns to the south and runs down the
coast to Cape San Lucas, where the Jesuit fathers kept signal fires burning on
the mountains to guide her into port, and expected her return with the fruits
and fresh provisions which the exhausted mariners so much needed. Such was
the strange precursor of the steamship and clipper on the waters of the Pacific,
and the first great carrier of the commerce between its opposite shores ! You
will observe how nature brings this commerce to our doors. The outward run
of the galleon so near the equator was to take the eastern trade-winds, which
wafted her without the necessity of changing a sail directly to the Philippines ;
China and the Indies and her returning course was to avoid these trade- winds
and to catch the breezes which to the north blow from the west. And this
great circle of the winds touches our shores at the Bay of San Francisco. This
chart was drawn for the use of the Spanish generals, (for such was the title and
rank of the commanders of the Spanish galleons,) and " contained all the dis-
coveries which the Manilla ships have at any time made in traversing this vast
ocean."
It was these discoveries that gave names to so many points upon our coast
undoubtedly, and prompted so many explorers, after Cabrillo, and both before