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CHAPTER III

California is a land redolent of romance in its early history of discovery and exploration. Its very name created in 1510 for a romance of medieval chivalry, "the most fictitious of fiction," is an etymological enigma to this day. Its source origin in a forgotten Spanish romance was not discovered until the winter of 1863, and then by Rev. Edward E. Hale in the course of Spanish archival researches at a time when he expected to become the reader and amanuensis for William H. Prescott, the historian. Melodious as the name is, the California poet Edwin H. Markham observes that it is "as well also the oldest of any state save only Florida," given by Ponce de Leon in 1512, while in search of the fabled Fountain of Youth.

For long California was "a mere field of cosmographic conjecture," whether island, peninsula or part of mainland. Its location was placed somewhere between Mexico and India, with its boundaries vagueness itself. The fabled and the material California have in turn attracted a world's undivided interest. Her history is unique. Considered in entirety or in its successive phases, the record is one unequalled in variety, originality and interest by that of any other province of the New World. Whether regarded from the purely romantic or the positive, materialistic viewpoint, no state of the union has commanded more continuous notice and attention. Writers and historians ever return for a fascinating theme to California, land of gold, of perpetual sunshine, of natural blessings such as no other land has been endowed with in such prodigality.

The romancer of 1510 described his California as an imaginary island "located on the right hand of the Indies, very near the terrestrial paradise." He peopled it with black Amazons, who trained griffins for warfare and caparisoned them with gold. The only mineral on the island was gold, though it was fabulously rich also in precious stones and pearls. It was, as Poet Markham described it, "a rosy romance." Still the Spanish romancer's most extravagant dreams did not conjure up such a rich land as the real, materialistic California has proven to be. The California that the explorers placed on the map and named proved in truth to be the land of gold and of untold riches. Not of precious stones and pearls, but of gold and products of the virgin soil.

The gold was not unearthed until nearly three and a half centuries after the romance, and then by the Anglo-Americans, in whose veins throbbed and pulsated to action the admixed red blood of preceding generations of the adventurous and resistless Saxon.

The problem of Columbus' day was to reach "far Cathay" by sea, sailing westward — to open a new route to India. Ever the cry was India. This feverish quest for wealth was the impelling motive also of Hernando Cortez after his conquest of Mexico and the subjugation of Montezuma (1520-21). In the various explorations under him, of the California and North Pacific coasts (1532-37), whatever the specific moving cause of particular expeditions, whether in the alarm-spreading presence in the North Pacific of English buccaneer or freebooter to seize the annual Spanish treasure galleon from the Philippines, whether the threatened aggressions of foreign powers for territorial acquisition or commercial spoliation, or whether the location of a California relief port for the teredo-eaten hull or scurvy-stricken crew of the annual "great Manila ship."

It was all very nice for the history recording apologists for "these conscienceless gold-seeking adventurers" to advance the specious plea for them, of spreading the faith and win souls through religion, their real motive in the quest for the Indies was always gold, precious stones, the luxurious and costly fabrics — to find the shorter route to wealth, glory and the commerce with the Eastern El Dorado, fat and overflowing with the things precious for the increasing wealth and luxurious demands of the age.

Great would be the glory and great also the profit of the individual or the nation that would shorten the overland route to India, minimize its perils and difficulties, and pour into the receptive lap of Europe the priceless and coveted commodities of Asia in quantity unstinted. The very name of India suggested boundless wealth and riotous, luxury. The Indian sea-route never was voyaged, via the fabled and long sought "Strait of Anian," because the early navigators had to learn that a New World continental barrier blocked the way. In the course of time and in a slow but gradual unfolding of a foreordained destiny, California astonished the world with her stores of gold and her succeeding greater material wealth in the soil and products thereof, and her name was acclaimed the synonym for a wealth incomparably greater and more substantial than all the fabled and dreamed of treasures of the Indies.

It was long the subject for wonder and amazement with early travelers and the sea commanders that California so rich and fertile, a great territory capable of sustaining such a large population, and a region so remarkably favored by nature in all things conducive to man's comfort, happiness and prosperity, should, for more than three-quarters of a century during the Spanish-Mexican regime from 1767 to 1846, be left neglected, remain practically undeveloped, its vast gold-besprinkled interior unknown and unexplored, and the stretch of country along an ocean highway so ill protected as to make it the easy prey of any nation that would have cared to seize it. The little known concerning the land and its isolation were the main safeguards against such forcible seizure.

During the later development periods, California's geographical isolation and position was relatively a less important controlling factor than in the times of discovery exploration. Stretching along the unknown Pacific, the right to control the commerce on which the Spaniards asserted, and next door neighbor to their Mexican province, it was natural that they should discover California and hold possession. No reason then to imagine that the English speaking settlers from the extreme eastern continental shore would come and control the most remote and isolated western border. Previous to the adventitious discovery of gold, in January, 1849, California was practically unpeopled, save for the few scattered Spanish settlements near the sea-coast by those who had come by the comparatively easier and shorter journey from Mexico, helped out by occasional Americans and others landed or deserting from trading vessels, or wandering across the country as hunter, trapper or adventurer.

It required a transcendental event to bring about, as it did, California's phenomenally rapid settlement, to brave and overcome the physical obstacles and geographic barriers on the months' long and dangerous overland journey. But for the lure of gold, California might have long continued a sparsely populated country to be settled and developed slowly by a farming class as Oregon and Washington were in large part. The real, positive and unlooked for development of the state began with the discovery of gold. Only natural that Spain should be first to send settlers, but her error was in not practically following up her decided advantages in the presented opportunity. Existing conditions in a country of plenty and the easy life in a genial climate, without necessity for arduous toil ''tended no doubt toward stagnation rather than progress." Had these pioneers and their descendants been of as progressive a race as those that were to dispossess them, the very barriers separating the west from the east would have been Mexico's most helpful agency in retaining her California province.

As established in the Californias, the missions were as much political as religious institutions, and they were accorded the protection of the king's soldiers, wretchedly equipped, ill-paid and frequently unpaid for long as they were. Kings of Spain and viceroys of Mexico made their entrances and exits on the world's stage, but California slumbered along and underwent little material change from the discovery days under Cortez, save for the fringe of civilization planted along the sea-coast and spread out thinly from the twenty-one missions from San Diego to Sonoma. In 1831 these missions had already lost much of their splendor and greatness. The downhill grade began in 1824, followed by secularization in 1845, sale of a number of missions for a song, and the neglected Indian converts scattered to run wild and wretched over the country.

Almost up to the time that the great immigration upon the gold discovery startled the world, ushering in an era so extraordinary in history that H. H. Bancroft, the California historian, has epitomized it in the trite phrase, "The Inferno of 49," the interior valley country, which has been the wealth basis of the state through every development stage, continued terra incognita practically. The little known concerning it was indefinite and much of this conjectural. The very purpose for which the information was gathered — if it was with a definite object in view — existed no more because secularization under the Mexican republic had sealed the doom of the missions and bereft the padres of power and property. The sun then set on the golden age of the missions, the day of another race dawned and with it was ushered in the real and too long held back advancement of a sadly neglected land.