122 HISTORY OF CALIFORNIA. 



"Not so with California. The discovery of the 

 vast metallic and mineral wealth in her mountains had 

 already attracted to her, in the space of twelve months, 

 more than one hundred thousand people. An exten- 

 sive commerce had sprung up with China, the ports of 

 Mexico on the Pacific, Chili, and Australia. 



" Hundreds of vessels from the Atlantic ports of 

 the Union, freighted with our manufactures and 

 agricultural products, and filled with our fellow-citi- 

 zens, had arrived, or were on their passage round 

 Cape Horn ; so that, in the month of June last, (1849) 

 there were more than three hundred sea-going vessels 

 in the port of San Francisco. 



" California has a border on the Pacific of ten de- 

 grees of latitude, and several important harbors which 

 have never been surveyed ; nor is there a buoy, a 

 beacon, a lighthouse, or a fortification, on the whole 

 coast. 



" There are no docks for the repair of national or 

 mercantile vessels nearer than New York, a distance 

 of some twenty thousand miles round Cape Horn. 



" All these things, together with the proper regula- 

 tions for the gold region, the quicksilver mines, the 

 survey and disposition of the public lands, the adjust- 

 ment of land titles, the establishment of a mint and 

 of marine hospitals, required the immediate formation 

 of a more perfect civil government than California 

 then had, and the fostering care of Congress and the 

 Executive. 



" California had, as it were by magic, become a 

 State of great wealth and power. One short year 

 had given her a commercial importance but little 

 inferior to that of the most powerful of the old States. 

 She had passed her minority at a single bound, and 



