SWORD AND GOWN IN CALIFORNIA.

California is the name[1] given in an old Spanish romance to a fabulous island of the sea lying out toward the Indies.

After a time, the Spaniards found out that what they had supposed to be a large island[2] was really a peninsula, so the name presently spread to the mainland.

Cabrillo[3] sailed yet higher up, and others higher still, till the work of tracing the coast as far as Cape Mendocino[4] itself was completed.

Spanish power in the New World received now and here its first serious check, though possibly little was thought of it at the time, in Europe. Like David before Goliath, little England confronted the bully of Europe where least expected, with menace to her great and growing empire of the West.

The greatest seaman of his age, Francis Drake, whose name was the terror of Spaniards everywhere, had passed the Straits of Magellan with one little vessel, into the Great South Sea, which Balboa discovered and claimed for Spain. Stopping at no odds, one day fighting and the next plundering, Drake kept his undaunted way a thousand leagues up the coast. His ship being already full-freighted with the plunder of the ports at which she had called, Drake thought to shorten the way back to England by sailing through the North-east Passage,[5] so outwitting the Spaniards who were keeping vigilant watch against his return southward,—for his men were but a handful against a world of foes, and his ship too precious to be risked in fight. So Drake sailed on into the north. He sailed as far as the Oregon coast, when the weather grew so cold that his men, who were come from tropic heats, began to murmur. Drake was therefore forced to put his ship about and steer south again, along the coast, looking for a harbor as he went, to refit his ship in. Finding this harbor[6] in 38°, the Golden Hind dropped anchor there on the 17th of June, 1579, showing a flag which had never before been seen in that part of the world.

Drake lay quietly at anchor in this port for five weeks. During all this time the natives came in troops to the shore, drawn thither to see the strange bearded white men who spoke in an unknown tongue, and kept the loud thunder hid away in their ship. It is even said that the king of that country took the crown off his own head, and put it on Francis Drake's in token of submission. All this and much else is fully and quaintly set forth in the narrative of Master Fletcher, who was Drake's chaplain on board the Golden Hind.

Before leaving this friendly port, Drake took formal possession of the country by setting up a post, to which a plate of brass was fixed, with Queen Elizabeth's name engraved on it.

The white cliffs of the coast that rose about him, would seem to have recalled to Drake's mind those of Old England, for he gave the name of New Albion to all this great land he had merely coasted. We should not forget that Elizabeth herself afterwards said of such acts that "discovery is of little worth without actual possession."

Having planted this thorn in the side of the Spanish Empire of the West, Drake merrily sailed away for England by way of the Cape of Good Hope.[7]

Spain complained. Elizabeth listened with impatience. When the Spanish ambassador insisted on his master's sole right to navigate the western ocean, the Queen lost her temper. She roundly told Mendoza that "the sea and air are common to all men." Yet the claim itself shows what mighty hold Spain had on the other powers. In eight years the question was fought out in the English Channel with all Europe for spectators. Spain was so sure of victory, that the popular feeling even got into the nursery rhymes of the day. A child is supposed to be saying,

Drake had perhaps done as much as any man to bring about the issue. He was there in the thick of the fight.[8]

So the spell of Spanish invincibility was broken at last. Spain was no longer mistress of the seas.

Next on her brilliant roll of navigators, comes Juan de Fuca, who (1592) discovered the straits that now bear his name. Spain still wanting a harbor in which the Manila galleons could refit when homeward bound, Sebastian Vizcaino (1602-1603), sometimes called "the Biscayner," entered the haven of San Diego, and that of Monterey,[9] which he then named, as he also did the one lying within Point Reyes, called by him Port San Francisco.[10] Exploration of this coast then ceased for a century and a half.

The real advance into California (1768), like all other Spanish movements on this continent, originated in a half-monkish, half-military plan for the conquest, conversion and civilization of the country. Enough was known of its soil and climate to show how far both exceeded the sterile steppes of New Mexico, where Spanish advance had already reached its farthest limit, and like a stream that meets an obstacle in its path, was turned into another channel. For where plants grow and rivers flow, God has fixed the abodes of men.

This movement began[11] from the missions of Lower California. It was designed to extend the system by which Spain had first conquered, and since ruled, Mexico into the unoccupied and little-known province of Alta, or Upper, California. The viceroy was to furnish soldiers, the president-prelate of the Franciscan order, missionaries.

Thus coast batteries and forts were to be built for the defence of the best harbors, as well as to sustain the missions themselves, so forming a line of military strength along the coast sufficient to repel assault by sea or land, while the mountains behind them would be a barrier between the missions and the wild tribes who lived in the great valleys beyond. One arm was to seize upon and firmly hold the country in its grasp, while the other should gradually bring it into subjection to the Catholic faith. Then, with clerical rule once established, civil order was to come in. Therefore the first essential thing was to build a fort, and the second a church. In this way it was proposed to make rallying-points for civilization of these missions,[12] although the plan founded an oligarchy and nothing else.

The Spaniards did not mean to till the soil themselves, but to make the Indians do it for them. Setting this scheme at work, a Franciscan mission was begun at San Diego in July, 1769. The next year another was established at Monterey. From these missions explorers presently made their way out to the valley of the San Joaquin, and even as far north as the great bay of San Francisco (1772), which took to itself, a little later, the name of the old Port San Francisco, with which it must not be confounded.

In 1776 the Mission of San Francisco was founded. Monterey being the chief settlement, the governor's official residence was fixed there; and now, so late as the period of American Independence, we have the machinery for civilization in California fairly set in motion.

The plan which the founders had proposed to themselves also included the building-up of pueblos, which should be located in suitable places outside the missions, though actually meant for their support, and therefore in a sense dependencies of them. But these pueblos were to be inhabited by Spanish colonists only. One was thus begun (1777) at San José, and a second (1781) at Los Angeles. Here then are plants of two distinct types in the growth of the country,—native vassals and foreign freemen.

As, one by one, missions were created, the native Californians were told they must come and live in them, and submit themselves to the fostering care of the fathers, who would teach them how to live as the whites did, and make known to them the blessings of Christianity, so that their children might exceed their fathers in knowledge, and as they were a docile, submissive and indolent people, they mostly obeyed the order unresistingly, and were set to work building houses, tilling the soil, or tending flocks or herds belonging to the missions, into which it was the aim of the fathers to draw all the wealth of the country.

These pious fathers, however, thought more of converting the Indian than of making a man of him. It is true they baptized and gave him a Christian name, but they held him in servitude all the same. The system looked to keeping him a dependant rather than rousing his ambitions, or showing him how he might better his condition. For instance, the Indian could hold no land in his own right. His labor went to enrich the mission, not himself. He was fed and clothed from the mission. He was a mere atom of society, a vassal of the Church, and was so treated. Men and women were put in the stocks or whipped at the pleasure of their masters, just the same as in slave plantations. If an Indian ran away, he was pursued and brought back by the military. The missionaries found him free, but took away his liberty. In short, spite of all the romance thrown round him, and though his condition was somewhat better than it had been in times past, yet when all is said, the mission Indian was hardly more than a serf. Still the work of the missions so prospered that by the end of the century there were eighteen of them with 13,500 converts. But at this time there were 110 more than 1,800 whites in the country, or only one hundred to a mission.

Such, briefly, were the Spanish missions of California, which undertook a noble work, not nobly done, which kept the word of promise to the ear and broke it to the hope.

If we look at the commercial policy of the province, and it is what we should most naturally turn to next, we shall find almost no business transacted with the outside world. Once a year the Manila galleon came to Monterey and took away the furs that had been collected there. Spain's policy shut out all other nations from her colonies, and to the same extent shut the colonies in. So foreign vessels were forbid to enter her ports at all. To this fact we owe the meagre and unfrequent reports of what was going on in the country, nor was it till 1786 that the world learned something of its true condition and worth.

In that year a French discovery ship put into Monterey. Her commander was La Peyrouse,[13] whom Louis XVI. had sent to the Pacific to look into the fur trade of the north-west coast, and who, after touching there, had come down the coast to refit in a Spanish port. La Peyrouse used the six weeks of his stay in Monterey to such purpose that we owe to him the first and only intelligent view of California had up to this time.

As a matter of course, communication with the neighbor provinces was mostly carried on by sea. There was a little trade with San Blas, and so with Old Mexico, but it was long before the way was opened to New Mexico by crossing the Colorado desert. One of the fathers, in 1776, set out from San Gabriel for the Colorado River, passing safely over the route now followed by the Southern Pacific Railway. Afterwards, a little trade sprung up between the provinces, but the way was long and the road beset with dangers.

The first American vessel to enter a California port was the ship Otter of Boston, in 1796. She was an armed trader, carrying a pass signed by Washington, of whom it was doubtful if the Californians had even so much as heard, though they admitted the Otter to trade with them.

The Spaniards had found the natives singularly free from the vices of civilization, but intermingling of the two races soon led to mingling of blood, and subsequent growth of an intermediate class half Spanish and half Indian, so combining certain traits of both without the native vigor of either.