THE 
National Geographic Magazine 
VoL. VII OCTOBER, 1896 No. 10 
CALIFORNIA 
By the Hon. George C. Perkixs, 
United States Senator 
The Californian is never at a loss for some good words for his 
state. If he is a pioneer he has wrought at the foundations and 
rejoices in the rise and progress of a commonwealth having now 
more than fourteen hundred thousand people. The Argonaut 
did not much concern himself wdth the geographical greatness 
of the future state. He did not even know that there would be 
a state. There was the great outlying territory of Alta Califor- 
nia, stretching along for more than nine degrees of latitude and 
broadening inland to the crests of the Sierra 250 miles or more, 
an area that today contains 156,000 square miles, or more than 
99,000,000 acres, constituting the second largest state in the 
Union. He knew little of the coastline, with its indentations a 
thousand miles in extent, as he sailed into that magnificent hay 
after his voyage around cape Horn, and he knew less if, after the 
long trail overland, he looked down from the top of the Sierra on 
the great valleys that lay between the mountains and the ocean. 
The Spanish dominion, which lasted for 53 years, did not con- 
cern him much, since it left few vestiges of civilization. Mex- 
ican rule in Alta California was little more than a continuation 
of that of the mother country. Tlie mi.ssions founded by the 
Catholic fatliers con.stituted a chain of settlements from the bay 
of San Diego to tlie northern limit of the bay of San Francisco, 
each one making a little garden si>ot in the uncultivated waste. 
They founded no towns and built no cities. Tliese missions 
in the height of tlieir prosperity contained 24,000 Indian neo- 
phytes, possessing several hundred thousand cattle, 135,000 
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