From the above announcement, it must not be inferred that these Los Angeles tradesmen brought to this port the whole shipload of merchandise. Such ships left but a small part of their cargo here, the major portion being generally consigned to the North.
The dependence on San Francisco continued until the completion of our first transcontinental railway. In the meantime, Los Angeles had to rely on the Northern city for nearly everything, live stock being about the only exception; and this relation was shown in 1855 by the publication of no less than four columns of San Francisco advertisements in the regular issue of a Los Angeles newspaper. Much of this commerce with the Southland for years was conducted by means of schooners which ran irregularly and only when there was cargo. They plied between San Francisco and San Pedro, and by agreement put in at Santa Bárbara and other Coast places such as Port San Luis, when the shipments warranted such stops. N. Pierce & Company were the owners. One of these vessels in 1855 was the clipper schooner Laura Bevan, captained by F. Morton and later wrecked at sea when Frank Lecouvreur just escaped taking passage on her; and another was the Sea Serpent, whose Captain bore the name of Fish.
I have said that in 1849 the old side-wheeler Gold Hunter had commenced paddling the waters around here; but so far as I can remember, she was not operating in 1853. The Goliah, on the other hand, was making two round trips a month, carrying passengers, mail and freight from San Francisco to San Diego, and stopping at various Coast points including San Pedro. In a vague way, I also remember the mail steamer Ohio under one of the Haleys, the Sea Bird, at one time commanded by Salisbury Haley, and the Southerner; and if I am uncertain about others, the difficulty may be due to the fact that, because of unseaworthiness and miserable service, owners changed the names of ships from time to time in order to allay the popular prejudice and distrust, so that during some years, several names were successively applied to the same vessel. It must have been about 1855 or 1856 that the Senator (brought to the Coast by Captain Coffin, January 28th, 1853) was put on the Southern run, and with her advent began a considerably improved service. As the schooners were even more irregular than the steamers, I generally divided my shipments, giving to the latter what I needed immediately, and consigning by the schooners, whose freight rates were much lower, what could stand delay. One more word about the Goliah: one day in the eighties I heard that she was still doing valiant service, having been sold to a Puget Sound company.
Recalling these old-time side-wheelers whose paddles churned the water into a frothing foam out of all proportion to the speed with which they drove the boat along her course, I recall, with a feeling almost akin to sentiment, the roar of the signal-gun fired just before landing, making the welcome announcement, as well to the traveler as to his friends awaiting him on shore, that the voyage had been safely consummated.
Shortly after my arrival in Los Angeles, the transportation service was enlarged by the addition of a stage line from San Francisco which ran along the Coast from the Northern city to the Old Town of San Diego, making stops all along the road, including San José, San Luis Obispo, Santa Bárbara and San Buenaventura, and particularly at Los Angeles, where not only horses, but stages and supplies were kept. The stage to San Diego followed, for the most part, the route selected later by the Santa Fé Railroad.
These old-time stages remind me again of the few varieties of vehicles then in use. John Goller had met with much skepticism and ridicule, as I have said, when he was planning an improvement on the old and clumsy carreta; and when his new ideas did begin to prevail, he suffered from competition. E. L. Scott & Company came as blacksmiths and carriage-makers in 1855; and George Boorham was another who arrived about the same time. Ben McLoughlin was also an early wheelwright. Among Goller's assistants who afterward opened shops for themselves, were the three Louis's—Roeder, Lichtenberger and Breer; Roeder and Lichtenberger[14] having a place on the west side of Spring Street just south of First.
Thomas W. Seeley, Captain of the Senator, was very fond of Los Angeles diversions, as will appear from the following anecdote of the late fifties. After bringing his ship to anchor off the coast, he would hasten to Los Angeles, leaving his vessel in command of First Mate Butters to complete the voyage to San Diego and return, which consumed forty-eight hours; and during this interval, the old Captain regularly made his headquarters at the Bella Union. There he would spend practically all of his time playing poker, then considered the gentleman's game of chance, and which, since the mania for Chemical Purity had not yet possessed Los Angeles, was looked upon without criticism. When the steamer returned from San Diego, Captain Seeley, if neither his own interest in the game nor his fellow-players' interest in his pocketbook had ebbed, would postpone the departure of his ship, frequently for even as much as twenty-four hours, thus adding to the irregularity of sailings which I have already mentioned. Many, in fact, were the inconveniences to which early travelers were subjected from this infrequency of trips and failure to sail at the stated hour; and to aggravate the trouble, the vessels were all too small, especially when a sudden excitement—due, perhaps, to some new report of the discovery of gold—increased the number of intending travelers. It even happened, sometimes, that persons were compelled to postpone their trip until the departure of another boat. Speaking of anchoring vessels off the coast, I may add that high seas frequently made it impossible to reach the steamers announced to leave at a certain time; in which case the officers used to advertise in the newspapers that the time of departure had been changed.
