The true northerner. [volume] (Paw Paw, Mich.) 1855-1920, 1885-07-16

~The population Of Alta California,
exclusive Of Indians, was ut this time
QS34) about i've Thousand, OF whom
not more than forty were English and
Americans. Some of these, however,
occupied very influential positions;
several were alcaldes, and nearly all had
married wealthy senoritas. But in or
der to obtain any political rights they
had been compelled to become Catholics,
and were objects of suspicion and I'M
tired. Don Jose Castro was heard, in
1897, to declare that o California
cavallero cannot win q senorita if OPP
posed in his suit by an American
sailor. These heretics must
he cleared from the land Their num-
beers, however, we're constantly receiv-
ing accessions. The foreign element
grew stronger, despite all elements to
dislodge them. They held on, with
the tenacity OF men in whose veins the
blood of many generations of Aryan
pioneers was flowing. A few swagger-
ing trappers came wandering through
the mountain passes; few runaway
sailors, such as Gilroy. who married
Spanish heiress of vast possessions, be-
came lord Of inland valleys; a few keen
witted Yankee traders settled in the
towns; and the end of American domi-'
nation was close at hand. Meanwhile
the Ight-hearted, passionate, generous
native Californians established their
ranches in all the fertile valleys, and
built their dingy, thick-walled adobe
mansions on points of vantage from San
Diego to Sonoma; always choosing,
with some hereditary instinct of the
race, the picturesque and beautiful out
looks, or nesting in the most sheltered
of wales, or in the widest of ravines
The life they lived, in its freedom from
care, and its glorious physical health
somewhere speaks of the Californians
as a people upon whom a curse had
fallen, and stripped them of everything
but their pride, their manners, and
their voice. But he had only seen
them in their pueblos near the coast;
he had not visited their wide rooted
homes, when all the descendants of the
Castilian pionerr of 1853 gathered
under one roof-tree in harmony and
affection. Horses could be had for the
asking; cattle were only of value for
their hides, worth only two dollars
apiece, and called California bank
notes. There were no fences anywhere,
except hedges of napal Cor prickly
pear, walls of brush, and bitches form
erly dug by the mission Indians about
the adobe ranch-houses. There were
no roads, except, near the towns, the
occasional track OF slow, wooden
wheeled carreta, or ox-cart. Everyone
rode on horseback, and with an ease,
grace, vigor, and fearlessness which
have never been surpassed by any race.
This was the people whose focks and
sides once claimed by the missions, and
into whose untroubled life the Amer
lean pioneers brought elements OF
change and confusion. This was the
era of CALIFORNIA; eventful existence,
that coming artists of language will de-
light to portray. It's saints are such as
that high-born maiden, Conception
Arguello, of whose faithfulness Bret
Harte's poem tells its shrines are most
.ly ruined walls of sunburned clay, the
oldest architectural remains on the
| Pacific coast of the United States; its
heroes are dark and naughty vaqueros,
storming across broad mesa, wild canon
and steep baranca. An old Spaniard
dying in rude hui near San Luis
Obispo, in the winter of 1874, sprang
to his feet in the delirum of fever, and
cried out. 4 hear the ringing of their
spurs on the mountain, the trample of
their horsesr and so repeating the
names of his companions of fifty years
before, he sank back into an uncon-
seriousness from which death soon re-
leased him. Mining Camps.