To many, the most interesting class among minerals is the gems, of which California yields a variety. The beautiful lilac stone, Kunzite, was discovered near Pala, San Diego County. This county has also some fine specimens of garnets, and beautiful tourmalines are being mined at a profit. San Bernardino County yields a superior grade of turquoise from which has been realized as much as eleven thousand dollars a year. Chrysoprase is being mined in Tulare County, also the beautiful new green gem something like clear jade, called Californite. Topaz, both blue and white, is being found, and besides these, many diamonds of good quality have been collected, principally from the gravels of the hydraulic mines. In 1907 there was discovered in the mountains of San Benito County a beautiful blue stone closely resembling sapphire, more brilliant but less durable. It was named, by professors of mineralogy in the state university, Benitite, from the place where it was discovered.
Perhaps the most valuable of all the products of California is its water supply, either visible as in springs and streams, or underground as in artesian water. Of its use in irrigation, we have already spoken. In the production of electricity it is coming to be of the greatest importance, making possible the most stupendous works of modern times. Such is the undertaking of the Edison Electric Company in bringing down to Los Angeles, over many miles of the roughest country, power from the Kern River, tapping the tumultuous stream far up in the Sierras. The taking of the necessary machinery to those heights was in itself a wonderful labor. The power thus created is a blessing to a wide region.
Chapter XVII. — From La Escuela of Spanish California to the Schools of the Twentieth
Century
In no line has California advanced so far beyond the days of the padres as in her schools. In the early settlements there were no educated people but the priests at the missions and the Spanish officers with their families at the presidios. Later, clever men of good families came into the territory, took up land, and made their homes on the great ranchos, but among these there were few who would take the time or trouble to teach the children; so life to the young people was a long holiday. The sad result was that they grew up so ignorant as to astonish the educated strangers who visited the coast.
At the missions the padres had schools where they taught the young Indians something of reading and writing, religious services and songs, and the trades necessary for life. This, with their duties in the church and the extensive building and planting of the mission settlements, took all the time of the hard-working priests. Occasionally, an educated woman would teach her own children and those of her relatives, but like most attempts at home education, it was so interrupted as to amount to little.
In 1794 a new governor came from Spain who was so shocked at this state of affairs that he at once ordered three schools opened. The first, December, 1794, was held in a granary at San Jose and was in charge of a retired sergeant of the Spanish army. The children had been so long free from all restraint that they did not like to go to school, and their parents did not always take the trouble to insist. There were some reasons for this, as the masters did not know much about what they were trying to teach, and the use of the ferule and scourge (the latter a whip of cords tipped with iron) was frequent and cruel. There were no books but primers, and these were hard to obtain. The writing, paper was furnished by the military authorities and had to be returned when the child was through with it, that it might be used in making cartridges. These schools were for boys only, girls not being expected to learn anything except cooking, sewing, and embroidery.
Slowly the state of things improved, and in 1829 in the yearly report to the Mexican government, it was stated that there were eleven primary schools in the province with three hundred and thirty-nine boys and girls. One of the best of these schools was that of Don Ignacio Coronel of Los Angeles.