ago from the pen of the pioneers, but there has been
no book published as a standard work for the present
and future, and the participants in it are passing
away, for it is forty-five years since they occurred.
California is three times larger in territory than
the State of New York. Its population before the
discovery of gold, including Indians and all, was but
a few thousand. Cattle could be bought for $1
per head, and all the land they ranged upon thrown
in the bargain for nothing. They were killed for
their hides, and the meat thrown away, as there was
no one to eat it.
A FEW HISTORICAL ITEMS.
San Francisco bay, first discovered the 25th of October,
1769. The first ship that ever entered the harbor
was the San Carlos, June, 1775. The mission
of Dolores founded by the Jesuit Fathers in 1769.
Colonel Jonathan Stevenson arrived at California with
one thousand men on the 7th of March, 1847. The
treaty of Hidalgo ceding California to the United
States by Mexico, officially proclaimed by the president,
July 4, 1848. Gold first discovered by Marshall,
January 9, 1848. January, 1848, the whole white
population of California was fourteen thousand, January,
1849, the population of San Francisco was two thousand.
The three most prominent publicmen at the time of
my arrival in California were Colonel Freemont, who
had conducted an expedition overland; Colonel Stevenson,
who came by sea with one thousand men, appointed by
William L. Marcy, who was secretary of war during
the conflict with Mexico, from whom I had a letter
of introduction as a family connection of Governor
Marcy, similar to the following letter to Brigadier
Major-General P.F. Smith, which was not delivered:
ALBANY, June
24, 1849.
My Dear Sir—I desire to
present to your favorable notice, the bearer
hereof, Dr. Daniel Knower. He is on the eve of
departing for California. He is a family
connection of mine, a gentleman of talents and
respectability, and I commend him to your favorable
notice.
Yours truly,
WILLIAM L. MARCY.
BRIG.-GEN. P.F.
SMITH.
I soon found the colonel one of the warmest of friends.
Captain John A. Sutter, who was a captain in the Swiss
Guards of Charles the Tenth of France, after the revolution
of 1830 in that country, came to the United States,
who some years previous had wandered across the country
to Oregon, and the Russian Fur Company secured for
him a large grant of land from Mexico in California,
on which the city of Sacramento now stands, extending
back from that city many miles to where the gold was
first discovered. He was having a raceway dug
on the American river for the purpose of erecting
a saw-mill, as there was no lumber in the country.
He had constructed a fort some miles back from the
Sacramento river, where he made his home. The
object of the Russian Fur Company was to have a place
where they could purchase grain, as there was none
raised there at that time, and they had a contract
with him, and that they were to send a vessel at such
a time, and he was to settle up the country and cultivate
it. Sutter was the most social and generous of
men. The latch-string of his cabin was always
on the outside, and all callers were welcome, and
the hospitalities of the fort extended to all callers.
