EARLY COIN.
By the beginning of the new year (1849) the population of California had run up to twenty-five thousand. The winter months, or, as we should say of this region, the rainy season, everywhere brought great suffering to the badly-housed and ill-fed emigrants, many of whom reached the mines in a state of destitution. There were many things even gold could not buy or wealth command. Men who had both were glad to get acorns to live on. Many died this first winter. With the coming of spring the depleted ranks were more than filled by new arrivals, and when January came round again the pioneers of 1849 were a hundred thousand.
FOOTNOTES
[1] Two Thousand Americans. "In settling an island the first building erected by a Spaniard will be a church; by a Frenchman, a fort; by a Dutchman, a warehouse; and by an Englishman, an alehouse." To this it should be added that an American would start a newspaper. The detained Americans having found at Panama an unused printing-office started a paper called the "Star," of which John A. Lewis of Boston was editor.
[2] When They did reach it. The schooner Phœnix was a hundred and fifteen days making the passage; the Two Friends, five and a half months going from Panama to San Francisco.
[3] San Francisco: named for St. Francis of Assisi, founder of the Franciscan order, which founded the California missions. See legend of his preaching to the birds. The Mission of San Francisco was situated two miles from the landing-place on the bay, where the present city of the name was begun. At this landing a custom-house was established, and the place called Yerba Buena (see [Note 4]). The missionaries chose the little Dolores Valley because it was the sunniest and warmest part of the peninsula.
[4] Yerba Buena; first name of San Francisco (see [Note 3]); meaning good herb: now continued in the island. A vine with a small white flower, common to California.
CALIFORNIA A FREE STATE.
The United States did not set up a Territorial government in California at once, but put military governors over it, who continued the old laws of Mexico in force. What these were, only the native people could know. They had not yet been translated into English. Many, indeed, derided the idea of being governed by laws made for Spaniards. Instead, then, of being clothed with power to enact laws suited to the new and strange conditions growing out of the gold discovery, with society unformed, or breaking to pieces about them, the people of California found themselves living almost without law, except such as imperative need compelled them to make and enforce for themselves. This state of things could have but one result among a people hastily thrown together from all parts of the earth, most of whom were law-abiding, but many the outcasts of society. It led to confusion, lawlessness, and crime. In the annals of the State it is usually called the interregnum, from the Latin word signifying a suspension of the regular functions of government.
Therefore, as the actual laws remained either mostly unknown, or were held in little esteem, the people conformed to them only so far as to give the officers or courts they chose among themselves Spanish names. They everywhere took the law into their own hands, establishing such local laws, or usages having the force of laws, as their situation would seem to give warrant for.