The Emporia news. [volume] (Emporia, Kan.) 1859-1881, 1871-01-06
TIE EARLY SPANIARDs OF CALIFOR-
NIA-THEIR HISTORY AND THEIR

FATE.
A San Francisco correspondent of
the Cincinnati Commercial gives this
interesting bit of historical reminis-
cence:
One of the most melancholy and yet
Instructive chapters of the marvellous
history of California will be that which
relates to the evil and miserable destiny
which has overtaken the brave old
princeiy Spaniards, only in less degree
than the interior Mexicans and the bar
barians whom they subjugated. When
the discovery of gold flashed upon this
goodly land they were living in patri-
archial and virtuous simplicity, the own
ers of ranches across which one might
gallop all a summer day, and of lordly
herds which no man could number.
With here and there an exception of
some rancorous enmity against a prying
aud bargaining Yankee, the hospitality
of the superb old grandees was absnlufe-
ly limitless, and to the wanderer rowing
over these boundless plains they gladly
offered the choicest of their herd of sad
die horses as q relief to his own, so
rejoiced were they to behold strang-
er's face.
Then came the fatal discovery, and
the land was filed from end to end with
eager, clamorous, hungry men, tearing
up ali the banks of the peilneid streams,
and pushing even far up into the noun
tains, to corrupt the fountain heads !;
and straightway, without stroke of
their hands, or an outlay of Spanish
dollar, these old grandees found them
selves richer than all the indies. Every
high-horned shining bullock in their
countless herds became skin full of
silver, and all the yellow marrow of his
bones was like fat gold.
Before such unheard of temptations,
it was only mortal that they should fall.
Knowing nothing whatever of the use
of money, hardly more than if Adam in
his primitive innocence i'll the garden,
had suddenly been endowed with all
the coinage of India, they scattered
their new-found gold like the regal
spendthrifts they were. They fell from
Paradise, and the swarming sheriffs
attachments against their lordly estates
were the claiming sword which turned
every way, to keep the way of the tree
Of life" Vainly did gallant old Pho
BicO, that bitter hater of Americans,
warn his countrymen againstthe treach-
efous and insidious race. 1--WE find our
selves threatened by hordes of Yankee
immigrants, who have already begun
to flock into our country, and whose
progress we cannot arrest. Already
have the wagons of that perfidiOus peO-
pie scaled the almost inaccessible sum-
mits of the Sierra Nevada, crossed the
entire continent, and penetrated the
fruitful valley of the Sacramento"
They saw their magnificent ranches
slip one by one from their enervated
and luxurious grasp, and pass forever
into the possession of that ''pertidous
people," They beheld all their noblest
and fairest maidens slip helplessly away
ii ON their proud old allegiance, because
their own countrymen were become
too poor TO support them in their
sumptuous Incidence, and become the
wives of the hated and despised intru-
ders. They saw their gallant but ruin
ed sons, condemned to a dissolute cell
bacy, pass swiftly down to an Infamous
drunkard's grave, gnaw their proud
hearts and die. The race of the naughty
family of the Amadors to-day drags out
a miserable and despised existence as
Il squatter on the ancestral estate on San
Francisco Bay, now worth millions.
The noble and kindly old missionary,
Padre Altermira, of Sonoma, whose
possessions once surpassed all the riches
of Israel or the Idumean patriarch, now
lives in exile in vile convent in Tene-
rifle.
No more do the gallant wedding
trains, with fair women and brave men,
booted and spurred cavaliers, gorgeous
with all the trappings of Castilian mag
nificence, with boots of Cordovan leath-
Ell, and pouches of purple and of VOLTS
fur or spotted like pard, sweep in gay
cavalcade from mission to mission, be-
fore the eyes of wandering catechumens
and Indian neophytes. No more do the
cheros scud on their fleet mustangs
through the light violet haze, beneath
the silver moon, bent on errands of love,
or flee through the darkness, terror
stricken and dumb, before the terrible
form of 'The Stricken Bull of Salines."
No more are their soft thrilling waitzes
and the tinkle of the light guitar heard
within their simple mud walls, undis-
turbed by the presence of hated trad
ers, while the rich, red wine from the
City of the Angels passes around to
each i'll the capacious gourd.
They are strangers and aliens now i'll
the land they once possessed. In South
ern California, being somewhat masseCi
together, they are still able to make
some head against the iRcursion of
American ideas and American customs,
but most of them, even there, who have
not become absolutely worthless, are
trading, trafficing, close, practical, like
Americans, at least towards Americans.
have known a proud, old family, too
indolent to labor, and too naughty, try
ing to live on hundred cattle pastured
on the range" borrow a shot gun from
an American to shoot some quails, as
they had absolutely nothing in the house
to eat. A good many of their daughters
of the lower sort subsist almost entire
ly on the presents of their lovers, the
bachelor ranchers, like the Partisan
grisettes, and they do not work like the
latter. All of them who are marriage
able, except some few of the proudest
| and purest families who keep the old
bitterness, are on the lookout for Amer
lean husbands, as being the best aver
ace bread -Uetters