420 HE SOURCES OF CALIFORNIA. 



are now pretty nearly abandoned. The harbor is good, but 

 the land in San Diego county is not rich, and it may be said 

 that the town has no brilliant destiny before it, at least not in 

 the near future. The Mission of San Diego was the earliest 

 in California and was founded in 1769. 



In Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo, nearly all the inhab- 

 itants are Spanish Californians, and nearly all the houses are 

 of adobes. Both are small, dull places, founded in the last 

 century, and the sites of old missions. The San Taus Obispo 

 Mission was founded in 1772, that of Santa Barbara in 1782. 



§ 277. Mining Towns. — Weaverville, Shasta, Oroville, 

 Quincy, Auburn, Downieville, Mokelumne Hill, Jackson, and 

 Mariposa, are large mining towns, and are the county-seats of 

 various mining counties, but they possess no features of suf- 

 ficient importance to entitle them to separate notice here. 

 The mining towns of California, as a general rule, are built in 

 caSons, with irregular crooked streets. The main business 

 street runs through the middle of the caiion and is densely 

 lined with stores, billiard rooms, liquor shops, restaurants, and 

 inns. Many of those houses are of brick and fire-proof. The 

 dwellings are scattered about irregularly ; some are neatly 

 built and are surrounded with pleasant gardens ; the majority 

 are miserable little shanties or log-cabins, with no yard, flowers 

 or fruit-trees to give an appearance of home. The population 

 of these towns is not permanent. One year they are here, 

 next they are elsewhere. In 1854 Oroville was laid out ; in 

 1857 it cast one thousand votes, and. was the third town in the 

 state; in 1860 its glory had departed, and at least a dozen 

 towns have now a larger population and a larger trade. 



§ 298. Ge7ieral Remarks. — ^In taking a general view of the 

 towns of Cahfornia, we perceive that all those of the most 

 note are exclusively American. San Francisco, Sacramento, 

 Marysville, Stockton, Nevada, Grass Valley, Placerville, Co- 

 lumbia, Petaluma, Yreka, Shasta, Sonora, Oakland, Vallejo, 

 Santa Clara, Downieville, Weaverville, Mokelumne Hill, Au- 

 burn, Oroville, Jackson, Santa Cruz, Santa Rosa, Healdsburg, 



