SAN FRANCISCO AS A MECCA FOR 

 NINETEENTH CENTURY NATURALISTS 



With a Roster of Biographical References 

 to Visitors and Residents 



By JOSEPH EWAN 



Tulane University 



As THE Genus is first identified by the distinctness of its species, so the country 

 is first distinguished by its most prominent city. Charleston served as the germ 

 of Carolina, New Orleans of Louisiana, Lima of Peru, Montevideo of Uruguay, 

 and San Francisco of California. California, a vast and diversified country, was 

 an island on the edge of El Dorado, said to be fabulous and fortunate, sought by 

 many, reached only with difficulty, and San Francisco was her heart. Even before 

 the Gold Rush, to come to California from European cities amounted to a journey 

 half way "round the world. And for the American back in the "States" coming 

 to the City of the Golden Fifties was not just going across the Shenandoah to a 

 frontier valley, or just setting out west from Albany, or even the equivalent of 

 taking a clipper ship out of a New England port or New York for Charleston 

 or Apalachicola or New Orleans, but a voyage to a land far away, hemmed in by 

 the Humboldt Sink and the Sierra Nevada, and peopled by men and women who 

 had a different derivation and who spoke a different language. Very early in the 

 history of California reports came back of giants and riches, where ordinary 

 things were extraordinary, and superlatives were elementary parts of speech. 

 Great flocks of wildfowl in the marshes, grizzly bears that challenged the bravest 

 men, giant birds (the California condor), giant trees, and giant seaweeds. Even 

 the slugs in settlers' gardens were enormous ! But it was those giant nuggets of 

 gold ! The spirit of the Seven Cities of Cibola lives on. 



Naturalists have always been in the vanguard of explorers : so it was in Cali- 

 fornia. With a party of prospectors who took the Gila Trail came Audubon's 

 son, John Woodhouse Audubon,^ and with a party of trappers following the 

 trail west from Santa Fe, came William Gambel. Most of these naturalist adven- 

 turers in the Great West were young men between the ages of nineteen and thirty 

 years. Some were serious naturalists trained in the essentials of the natural 

 sciences, either with field experience or with training in medicine, apprentices 

 to an apothecary or a taxidermist's helper. A few, like John Woodhouse Audubon, 

 Isaac J. Wistar, Titian Ramsey Peale, and John Lawrence LeConte, were scions 

 from old naturalist rootstocks. Some of these emigrant naturalists would cast 

 their lot to stav in California — and California meant in the cultural sense San 



1. For biographical notices of naturalists mentioned in this account see the appended 

 roster. 



[1] 



