xii PREFACE. 



nes. Some of them were English, but they were all glad of the change 

 of government, and they induced the great majority of the Calif ornians 

 to submit quietly when the Stars and Stripes were hoisted. There 

 was some resistance, but it was almost hopeless from the first. The 

 American Cabinet had determined to own California, and indeed there 

 is good reason to believe that, but for the expectation of getting this 

 country, they would not have taken up arms when they did. Soon 

 after the first encounter on the Rio Grande orders were issued to 

 recruit a regiment of men in New York to serve in California, with the 

 understanding that they should remain here as citizens after the war. 

 Those only were to be received who would be suitable settlers for a new 

 country. On the 2Qth of September, 1846, they sailed; on the 6th of 

 March, of the next year, the first vessel arrived in our bay. They had 

 little military duty to perform, but many of them have since become 

 prominent men. 



The gold discovery was made on the I9th of January, 1848, a month be- 

 fore the treaty of Gruadulupe Hidalgo was signed, and five months and 

 a half before peace was finally proclaimed and the American title to Cali- 

 fornia acknowledged by Mexico. In June the whole territory was ex- 

 cited, and on the 2Oth of September the first public notice of the dis- 

 covery printed in the Atlantic States, so far as I can learn, appeared in 

 the Baltimore Sun, attracting little attention. Letters of army officers 

 and small shipments of dust began to arrive in November, followed soon 

 by fuller and more favorable accounts, and in January the States were 

 in a fever. It was then that most of us determined to seek our fortunes 

 in the distant El Dorado, in a land almost unknown to geography, on an 

 ocean almost unknown to commerce. Those near the Atlantic started 

 to double Cape Horn ; those in the Mississippi Valley to cross the Rocky 

 and the Snowy mountains. It was a bold adventure to go to a remote 

 country of which we knew little, to engage in a business of which we 

 knew nothing. Most of us, after getting our outfits, had no money left 

 to bring us back, or support us in case of adversity. The amount of 

 gold which had arrived from the mines was small, and the statements 

 that there were rich claims for all who might come, were not justified 

 by the knowledge of that time, though they were proved to be correct 



