X PREFACE. 



As the children nearly all married, and the white families were not 

 very numerous, (there were only seven hundred ranches or country 

 estates in 1846) it happened that nearly everybody was the relative of 

 everybody else by blood or marriage, and where these two bonds failed, 

 the spiritual relation of godfather or godmother supplied the deficiency. 

 All were cousins or compadres (co-fathers). They were all one large 

 family, not only willing but glad to entertain their relatives, and glad 

 to be entertained. Time with them was not money ; knowledge was 

 not power. Leisure, horses, beef, and beans the essentials in those 

 days for making long journeys were abundant, and so their life was 

 a succession of paseos and fiestas riding and feasting. 



But the social good feeling did not prevent political troubles. The 

 Supreme Government at Mexico sent out carpet-bag Governors, who 

 were expelled. Los Angeles and Monterey, the North and the South, 

 contended for the Territorial Capital. The personal interests, the am- 

 bitions, of the Picos, Carrillos, Noriegas, Castros, Alvarados, and Val- 

 lejos, for the honors and profits of civil and military office, led to con- 

 tests in which soldiers were frequently called out ; but the revolutions 

 were not very bloody, for only one man was killed in them previous to 



1845, and he by accident. And yet they were brave, as they proved in 

 the battle of San Pascual, when Gen. Kearney narrowly escaped destruc- 

 tion. From 1835 to 1846 these political troubles continued to increase 

 in seriousness, and many of the leading men, having appealed in vain 

 to Mexico for aid, were discussing the question whether they should not 

 solicit the protection of England or the United States the predominant 

 influence being decidedly in favor of the latter when the discussion 

 was suddenly arrested by the conquest. 



The American commercial era of California began on the 7th of July, 



1846, when the Stars and Stripes were permanently hoisted at Monte- 

 rey. An adventurous Boston boy a mozo JBostones, as the old Spanish 

 record calls him took up his residence at Santa Barbara in 1 794, and 

 John Gilroy, a Scotch sailor, near death, was allowed to come ashore at 

 Monterey in 1814; but with those exceptions Anglo-Saxons did not 

 begin to establish themselves in California until after the overthrow of 

 ,the Spanish authority opened the port,* to foreign vessels, and the land 



