STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 181 



And these are the inii^ht}^, incredible, mystic changes that have taken 

 place in eighteen years in the same town in which an ordinance was 

 then enacted to impose a tine of on(^ dollar npon any person who killed 

 or maimed a buzzard in the city limits. How many here ever saw a 

 crow or buzzard in the City of San Francisco? These carrion birds 

 never did and probably never will constitute a feature of that city civil- 

 ization which is common to the people of the United States. They tiee 

 from this form of civilization with as little ceremony as the coyote or 

 grizzly bear. The only flesh eating bird cultivated and acknowledged 

 in the progressive and pioneer movements of our citizens, is the majestic, 

 bold, sun-facing eagle of our country, The buzzard ordinance was the 

 last protective acknowledgment of that civilization to which California 

 has been subjected since its settlement by Spain. But in a town in 

 which there were four hundred and f]l\y-nine people, Jthe most of whom 

 were irrepressible Jonathans, who had^ already started two newsapers, 

 and passed an ordinance in favor of erecting a free public schoolhouse, 

 such a relic of lethargic, spiritless reclamation of earth, of agriculture 

 and commerce, could onl}'- exist as a monitor of contrast, to show how 

 the sun was certainly going down upon one race, and how it was as cer- 

 tainly rising upon another. We have shown that in eighteen hundred 

 and forty-seven, when California began to feel the superincumbent pres- 

 sure of energy, of enterprise, and daring, common to the people of the 

 United States, when San Francisco encouraged two newspapers, that 

 there were but thirty-two Spanish and Mexican inhabitants out of four 

 hundred and fifty-nine. What fact of history is more significant and 

 wonderful ? 



In fifteen hundred and thirty-four, C4rijalva, commanding a scpiadron 

 fitted out by Cortez, discovered and took possession of California. From 

 that period continued efforts were made to extend the discovery by the 

 same authorities, and in the j^ear fifteen hundred and ninety-six, under 

 the patronage of one of the Viceroys of New Spain, Don Sebastian 

 Viscayno made an effort to permanently settle California. He made an 

 extensive survey of the coast, and regularly established a garrison a^ 

 Santa Cruz. Three hundred and thirty-one 3'ears ago. the country was 

 discovered under the patronage of a man with almost unlimited resources, 

 and by a people who were under the impression that it was the greatest 

 storehouse of gold, of pearls, and precious stones, that could be found in 

 the universe. Discoveied, not by a people who bad no previous political 

 and commercial relations with the countrj^ but by a Spanish nation, 

 whose neighborhood, contact, and convenient seaports evolved an almost 

 political necessity that it should be occupied, improved, and retained by 

 them. And when, in addition to this, we contemplate the fact that the 

 country was so ver}' accessible ; that there were so few losses sustained 

 by maritime disaster during all the efforts made to explore the coast and 

 territory; that the climate was so much more favorable than that charac- 

 terized by the severe winters of the Atlantic borders; that the natives 

 were comparatively harmless ; that then we would not be regarded as 

 unreasonable or illiberal in supposing that three hundred and thirty-one 

 years was time sufficient to present California as an improved and popu- 

 lous possession of Mexico or some other Spanish Government. But we 

 have ample reason for believing that neither the famous Cortez, the 

 ambitious Viceroys of New or Old Spain, that neither the Jesuitical fra- 

 ternity of Mexico, the Franciscan friars, nor the Dominican monks, all 

 of whom made efforts to possess and populate this teri'itorj', were the 

 agencies through which a country like California was to be speedily or 



