“After leaving the Sink of Humboldt’s River, and crossing a desert of about fifty miles in breadth, the emigrants reached the streams which are fed from the Sierra Nevada, where they found good grass and plenty of game. The passes, however, were terribly rugged and precipitous, leading directly up the face of the great snowy ridge. As, however, these mountains are not quite 8,000 feet above the level of the sea, and are reached from a plateau of more than 4,000 feet, the ascent is comparatively short, while on the western side more than 100 miles of mountain country must be passed before reaching the level of the Sacremento Valley. Many passes in the Sierra Nevada were never crossed before the summer of 1849. All the emigrants concurred in representing this western slope of the mountains as an abrupt and broken region, the higher peaks of barren granite, the valleys deep and narrow, yet in many places timbered with pine and cedar of immense growth.”
The advance parties arriving at San Francisco, brought the news of the thousands who remained behind, and who, but for help, would probably perish either among the terrible passes of the mountains or in the great desert of the Sink. Relief companies were, therefore, despatched into the Great Basin to succour the emigrants remaining there, and who for want of provisions could not proceed. Not only did the authorities of San Francisco exert themselves for this purpose, but private individuals also. Major Rucker despatched a party with supplies and fresh animals by way of the Truckee River to the Sink of Humboldt’s River, while he himself took the command of the expedition to Pitt River and Lawson’s Pass. The first party, after furnishing provisions on the road to all whom they found in need, reached the Sink, and started the families who were still encamped there, returning with them, and bringing in the last of the emigration only a day or two before the heavy snows came on, which entirely blocked up the passes. Major Rucker also brought in his company of emigrants after immense labour, and Mr. Peoples, an auxiliary whom he had found it necessary to send out in another direction, accomplished also his work of mercy. A violent storm, relates this gentleman, came on as they were passing the mountains of Deer Creek, and the mules, unaccustomed to the severe cold, sank down and died one after another. The people, whose spirit of enterprise and power of endurance seemed in many deadened by their sufferings, were forcibly compelled to hurry forward with the remaining animals. The women, who seemed to have much more energy and endurance than the men, were mounted on mules, and the whole party pushed on through the bleak passes of the mountains in the face of the storm. By extraordinary exertions, they were all finally brought into the Sacremento Valley, with the loss of many wagons and animals.
“The greater part of those who came in by the lower routes,” continues Bayard Taylor, “started after a season of rest for the mining region, where many of them arrived in time to build themselves log-huts for the winter. Some pitched their tents along the river, to wait for the genial spring season, while others took their axes and commenced the business of wood-cutting in the timber on its banks, and which wood, when shipped to San Francisco, paid them well.”
“By the end of December, the last man of the overland companies was safe on the western side of the Sierra Nevada, and the great interior wilderness resumed its ancient silence and solitude until the next spring; when again it would become populous with these modern crusaders.”
Nor was the emigration to California confined alone to those who reached it by land. Ships thronged the beautiful harbour of San Francisco, bringing in their thousands likewise. So great was the concourse, that between the 7th of December, 1848, and the 20th of January, 1849, ninety-nine vessels left the ports of the United States alone for California, and from Oct. 1849, to Oct. 1850, nearly 49,000 emigrants arrived by sea at San Francisco, and about 20,000 by land.
At the presidential election of 1848, General Zachary Taylor, the hero of the Mexican war, was chosen president, and Millard Fillmore, of New York, vice-president. The following year, Minnesota, adjacent to the head waters of the Mississippi, was admitted into the Union.
The vast growth of the national territory, and the consequent increase of states governments which would sooner or later take place, gave rise to the most violent contests between the slavery and the non-slavery parties which as yet had been known. The north and the south were again arrayed against each other, and the secession from the Union was the threat to which South Carolina again resorted. Whilst this great political battle was being fought in congress during the sessions of 1849–50, California, which had so suddenly acquired a population far exceeding that required by the Constitution for the establishment of a territorial government, could obtain no guidance or aid from congress, excepting merely a law regarding the revenue. Amid this perplexing and difficult state of affairs, however, the sagacity and prudence of the Californians themselves saved them from anarchy and ruin, and proved how true is the assertion that the American citizen is gifted with the innate power of self-government. The wisest senate that ever sat could not have reduced a social and political chaos into a state of more perfect harmony and order, than did these legislators of the far west by their simple and constitutional laws.
Again we turn to Bayard Taylor, whose work on California possesses all the merits and intrinsic value of the early annalists of the Puritan states. We will briefly follow him in his account of the state organisation of California.
“In the neglect of congress,” says he, “to provide for the establishment of a territorial, it was suggested that a convention should be called for the framing of a state constitution, and that California should be admitted at once into the Union, without passing through the territorial stage, leaping with one bound, as it were, from a state of semi-civilisation to be the thirty-first sovereign state of the American Confederacy.
“On the 4th of September, the convention met at Monterey, when Dr. Robert Semple, of the Sonoma district, was chosen president, and conducted to his seat by Captain Sutter and General Vallijo. Captain William G. Marey, of the New York volunteer regiment, was elected secretary, after which the various posts of clerks, assistant secretaries, translators, doorkeepers, sergeant-at-arms, etc., were filled. The day after their complete organisation they were sworn to support the Constitution of the United States.