State Agricultural Society. 75 



forming a pai't of the universal solitude that then everywhere reigned. 

 But a better and brighter day dawned. A few American citizens — some 

 by accident and some moved by the true spirit of adventure — coming 

 into and roaming over this country were enraptured with its majestic 

 and beautiful sceneiy, and captivated by its salubrious and invigorating 

 climate. Believing they had found the land of promise — the modern 

 Eden — they settled in different localities and began in earnest to build 

 them houses and raise them up households. Thus was planted here the 

 seed of American enterprise and of American institutions. 



These few pioneers knew not what they were doing; they knew not 

 nor could they comprehend the great part they were acting in the 

 important changes the country they had adopted was so soon to pro- 

 duce in the world. But with the certainty of fate, or destiny, or Prov- 

 idence — call it what you may — those changes came and came rapidly. 

 They gave to the United States a territory equal to an Empire, a terri- 

 tory richer in precious metals than any other territory of equai extent 

 the world had ever known, a territory which in the short space of 

 twenty years has added to the wealth of the world — has increased the 

 business capital of the nation over a thousand millions of dollars! This 

 increased capital and wealth has given to mankind throughout the 

 world new life, new energy, new enterprise, and new capacity for gen- 

 eral business and improvement, both private and public. It has entered 

 into and had its influence upon all the ramifications of society in all the 

 civilized nations of the earth. It has opened the coffers of the rich, 

 created new channels for labor, administered to the wants and increased 

 comforts of the poor. It has projected and built thousands of miles of 

 railroad and telegraph lines, both in the new and the old worlds. It 

 has quickened international communications and increased international 

 commerce by spanning the depths of the largest oceans with telegraphic 

 cables and seaming the surface of the high seas with lines of magnificent 

 ocean steamers. It has projected and consummated the two greatest 

 enterprises ever undertaken by man by uniting the extremes of the 

 western continent with an overland railroad, and those of the eastern 

 by a steamship canal, thus creating two short competing routes for the 

 travel and commerce around the world. 



The admission of California in o the Union with her free Constitution 

 and free territory was undoubtedly one of the principal initiative causes 

 that brought about the Southern rebellion, and California gold in turn 

 furnished the Government, in the hour of her peril, with much of the 

 necessaiy means to crush the rebellion, and with it to banish from the 

 earth American slavery — thus settling for all time to come the most 

 troublesome question our fathers had to deal with in the organization of 

 the Government and the most dangerous one that ever has threatened 

 its continued prosperous existence. Viewed in this light, California 

 furnishes a striking example of the powerful influence that a people 

 intensely in earnest in the accomplishment only of their own purposes, 

 and pursuit only of their own ends, may under Providence exert upon 

 the destinies of the world. 



Our State, as well as our people, is, in many respects, without a prece- 

 dent or a parallel. She sprang at one bound from infancy to maturity. 

 Without permission of the General Government, with no enabling Act, 

 or territorial or other organization known to our laws, publishing to the 

 world a Constitution expressive of the sentiments and will of her people, 

 she knocked at the door of Congress for admission among the sisterhood 

 of nations. After a short but desperate struggle, in which usage, pre- 



