68 RURAL CALIFORNIA 



sea-faring man now and then took, to the ranchero's 

 swaying life in the saddle as more delightful than 

 riding the waves and one case is recorded in which 

 the skipper himself deserted his trading ship because 

 he preferred to guide his course by the light of eyes 

 caught in the fandango rather than by the stars of 

 a marine midnight. Thus, while a few men came 

 from the sea, a few others,, in pursuit of peltry or the 

 trade therein, wandered into California from the 

 north and from the east and, finding the dolce far 

 niente of the Mexican regime sweeter far than pio- 

 neering on the Mississippi Valley frontiers or trap- 

 ping and trading in the wilderness northward even to 

 Hudson's Bay, embraced the hospitality and the 

 daughters of the new country and lived happily ever 

 after as Californians. There were not many of these 

 earliest foreigners on the whole, but they were of 

 several nationalities including English., Scotch, Irish, 

 Germans, French and Portuguese and they laid the 

 foundation for cosmopolitanism in California to which 

 subsequent events, however, made much greater con- 

 tributions. 



Americans prevailed in the affairs of the vast rich 

 and open country of California from the first entrance 

 of plains-crossing pioneers from the Missouri Eiver 

 in 1826, in the person of Jedediah Smith who is 

 recorded by historians as "the first overlander." 

 Others soon followed and within two decades consid- 

 erable companies of men were seeking individual 

 fortunes in a country they believed would soon be 

 a part of the United States. Both for personal advan- 



