Moncada had spent eight years in California, and, naturally, was favorably impressed with the climate and scenery. Notwithstanding his praises of the new Eden, it was about a year before he could secure, even with this liberal endowment, the twelve families. And these, evidently, were not selected from the "blue book." The original settlers of the pueblo that expanded into a city of 700,000 people were: Pablo Rodriguez, Indian, aged 25 years, Indian wife and one child; Jose Venegas, Indian, aged 28 years, Indian wife and one child; Jose Moreno, mulatto, aged 22 years, mulatto wife; Antonio Villavicencio, Spaniard, aged 30 years, Indian wife and one child; Jose de Lara, Spaniard, aged 50 years, Indian wife and three children; Antonio Mesa, negro, aged 38 years, mulatto wife and five children; Basillo Rosas, Indian, aged 68 years, mulatto wife and six children; Alejandro Rosas, Indian, aged 19 years, Indian wife; Antonio Navarro, Spanish-Indian, aged 36 years, mulatto wife and three children; Manual Camero, Mexican Indian, aged 39 years, mulatto wife; Luis Duintero, Mexican, aged 35 years, Indian wife and two children. Notwithstanding the liberal subsidy offered, one of the selected colonists, Antonio Miranda, proved to be a slacker, fell out of the ranks and returned to Loretto. He was described as a "Chino," or halfbreed, "good for nothing." Recapitulation: 11 men, 11 women and 22 children. Total, 44. Population now, 700,000.

Arriving at San Gabriel, the colonists were quarantined for a few days owing to one of them having the smallpox. However, on the morning of the 4th day of September, 1781, they started for their new home. The governor was in the lead, followed by a detachment of soldiers, the color bearer carrying the broad banner of Spain. The colonists were strung out in line-eleven men, their wives and twenty-two children, forty-four persons being the sum total of the future metropolis of the Pacific Coast. Several priests from San Gabriel and a number of Indian acolytes, displaying the banner upon which was painted a picture of the Virgin Mary, accompanied the expedition. Arriving at the spot which had been selected the plaza was marked off. The plaza, at that time, was an oblong space, with its corners turned towards the four points of the compass, the longer sides running northwest and southeast. The procession marched around the plaza and forming a dark background of interested and alarmed spectators were the Yang-na Indians, the original settlers. When the circuit was made, the priests blessed the site, and Governor De Neve made a formal address, followed by prayers and the benediction. The original plaza is not the one of today, as is generally believed. The first plaza was north of the present one, and the sites touch at the northwest corner of the present plaza.

The land was distributed to the settlers by lot, and it was required that each should build a "comfortable adobe house within five years," after which time he would be given a title. The first houses were built of light stakes driven into the ground, with poles stretched across for framework, thatched with tules and plastered with mud. These were the houses of our first citizens. The next civic improvement was a dam run out into the river with the winding name for a water supply. Then patches of wheat and maize were planted to the north of the pueblo and to the east on the site now occupied by our Celestial fellow-citizens and known as Chinatown. A stockade was put up to keep out the cattle and incidentally the neighborly Indians. The governor appointed Corp. Vincente Felix as mayor, policeman and general commander of the pueblo. He did not believe that these first citizens were yet capable of "selfdetermination."

Within a few months the settlers found it necessary to "clean up the town." Jose de Lara, Antonio Mesa and Louis Quintero, with their families, were expelled, on the grounds that they were "useless to the pueblo and to themselves."

The houses were ranged around three sides of the plaza, leaving the west end open, in front of which were to be a church building, jail, granary and alcalde's office. A chapel was built in 1784 and a church building was begun in 1812, on the east side of the plaza, but owing to the encroachments of the river, work was stopped and the present site chosen. The present church was built in 1861, and much of the former building was used in its construction.

CHAPTER VIII

THE NEW CALIFORNIA-THE TRANSITION

In December, 1870, when I first saw Southern California, the plains south by Santa Ana and Orange were covered with thousands of wild geese, which were feeding on the young grass and clover. The last of the great herds of cattle, sheep and horses were fast passing away to make room for the coming of the vast throng of homeseekers who were in after years to occupy the land under the new system of homes with small tracts of land in a high state of cultivation under the stimulating influence of water. During the time, since the American occupation, the Californian, as the inhabitants under Mexican rule were called, were to a great extent getting rid of their large grants of land to Americans. The Californians seemed as if their experience under Mexican rule, where everything in the line of eatables were so plenty that none, no matter how humble in station, need go hungry, unfitted them to be partakers in the newer civilization and to appear as if out of place on their native soil. They had very little education and had not been trained to active physical labor (the Indian had done all of that), and pretty much all that he knew was to ride a horse, and a saddle was about his most precious possession. Money he hardly knew what to do with, so little had he been accustomed to the use of it. In the smaller settlements there was grown a little barley hay in the winter, with a little patch of alfalfa for summer use. A small patch of corn and beans with other vegetables served to eke out his daily life. Some of the better class had a few sheep which they grazed on the public lands which in a measure disappeared as these lands were being gradually appropriated by the incoming settlers. They were at a great disadvantage on account of not being able to talk English. Fortunately for them, wherever the Stars and Stripes go there also goes the "little red schoolhouse," and the younger generation grew up educated and able to talk English fluently and to take lessons in farming from their new neighbors, and in course of time grew up to be industrious and good citizens, owning their own homes and their little tracts of land.

The change from the old to the new was gradually and slowly coming about. The means of communication were but limited, but from time to time experiments were being carried out in the line of fruits, vegetables and grains that showed the possibilities. The missions showed that the orange would succeed, although the padres rather discouraged planting orange trees elsewhere. Grapes grew well and wine was a staple product wherever the grape was grown and little settlements were springing up where water could be easily applied to the land.

San Bernardino and Old San Bernardino were thriving settlements that showed what could be done. Cucamonga had a large vineyard and Cucamonga wine had a good reputation wherever it was known. But all of these places were located where conditions were the best for success.

Anaheim was founded in 1857 by a company of Germans in San Francisco and that proved a success for what it was designed, the planting of vines and the making of wine. This was probably the first settlement in Southern California that required the expenditure of much money before water could be put on the land, but there were no physical obstacles to be overcome. All they had to do was to get to the Santa Ana River with a ditch and turn the water in and the thing was done. All of the mission settlements in Southern California provided for irrigation. The

Moors while in Spain showed the Spaniards how to apply water, and from there irrigation came to Southern California.

There was but little market for anything. The steamers sailing between San Francisco and Los Angeles easily took what surplus there was in wool, grain and oranges to San Francisco. Such was the condition of things in 1870 when Judge J. W. North and his party came to Southern California in search of a location for a colony which was a new feature in settlement, but that merits another chapter as the introduction of a new era―the dividing line between the old and the new. All settlements heretofore had been individual, not requiring the expenditure of much capital, nor weary waiting for years to attain success. It was comparatively an easy matter in the past to go forth with the team and what few tools were requisite and on a virgin soil sow and reap in due time. The hardly settler on the rich lands of the West had his own difficulties to overcome-lack of ready means of communication and market. The crops were there for the reaping a few months after sowing, but Southern California with its rich soil and dry climate presented something different from anything the Anglo-Saxon had heretofore encountered.

Here came in again the old New England Yankee spirit of thrift and the principle of co-operation in its best sense laid down in the first circular sent out by Judge North-the spirit of freedom and independence: "It is expected that every subscriber will reside upon and improve his property within one year of the time of subscribing, otherwise he will lose his rights as a member of the colony." The call was for "at least 100 good families who can invest $1,000 each in the purchase of land." Here were the conditions for successful colonists-men who had some capital who were able and willing to do their own work. A colony composed of 10,000 persons who were to be provided with and enjoy "all the advantages which a first-class town affords-schools, churches, public library, reading room, etc., at a very early day, and we invite such people to join our colony as will esteem it a privilege to build them." Here was prophetic vision on the part of Judge North that shows him at once to be a very remarkable man. It is subject for regret that Judge North was not privileged to live to our day and to see what he had in a measure foreseen.

Looking at what Riverside has after fifty years of growth, if Judge North or any other man could have foreseen and told all that we have today in Riverside he would have been looked on as a sort of a mild lunatic. At the founding of Riverside the whole of what is now the county had but a handful as it were of sheep men on the outlying plains with a few scattering settlers on our bottom lands in close touch with what few streams of running water there were during the long, dry, rainless summer. Today within the limits of Riverside County we have a population of over 50,000, with an assessed valuation of $42,604,760, with an actual value of not less than $100,000,000 in city and county and in city alone $15,000,000.

Looking back at conditions in the past there are three things that may be called wonders, viz., the Riverside Water System, the Gage Canal and the Glenwood Mission Inn. How these and a host of other things came to be accomplished facts will be unfolded as this history proceeds.1

1 Heretofore in speaking of the Spanish people they have been designated according to their own nomenclature as Californians. In future when they may be referred to, the common people will be known as Mexicans and the better class of educated Californians as Spaniards. Under the terms of the treaty with Mexico, all were given the privilege of citizenship, except Indians.

In writing this history it would seem that undue importance and space has been given to the early history of California, but to the writer it would appear that to get a proper understanding of the great developments that prevail in our present days a review of the past even if somewhat long and perhaps tedious is necessary. Here was in the first place the non-progressive Indian who from time immemorial had stood still in his tracks, content with things as they were, with no need to take thought for the morrow, for he dwelt in a land in which nature provided lavishly for his every want.

Then came the Spaniard on his voyages of discovery and quest of gold, followed up closely by the missionary, anxious to save the souls of the heathen with his squad of soldiers as bodyguards. Gradually but slowly California was reached and enough learned to show that it was a goodly land in which a living could be easily attained, a land of promise and a life of ease and pleasure-a land that was in a great measure outside of the great world.

Then came the transition period under the Government of the United States, in which much information was disseminated about this new land and people began to come in straggling parties. The discovery of gold and the great rush of gold seekers in the upper part of the territory necessitated the formation of a new state and California was added to the number of stars in our flag. But this did not add much to the population of Southern California. Considerable additions were made by Southern people, after the war, who were dissatisfied with conditions in the South after the freedom of the negro. The great problem was how to get to this promised land that lay so far away. The building of the railway across the Isthmus of Panama helped somewhat, but the trip across the isthmus took time and money to get here.

The importance of California, with its gold production, and of the Pacific Coast with its great agricultural promise, demanded closer communication than ever, and the railroad across the continent, completed in 1869, put the East and West in comparatively close communication and the people of the East and the West began to cast longing eyes to California, which was reputed to have a healthy and mild climate-"a land flowing with milk and honey," in which all the fruits of the temperate and semi-tropic zones could be grown to perfection. Again there were many families in which one or more members had either to seek a milder climate or in a short time pass on to the "great beyond." This class of people who were more or less ailing, composed the bulk of the great army of seekers after better conditions of soil and climate and who came mainly from the New England states and the great prairies of the West, hardy descendants of the old Puritans and Pilgrim Fathers. Subsequent events have shown the wisdom of their choice. They were all workers, bright, intelligent, religious and lovers of freedom. Their progressive spirit and enterprise in the new fields of industry ushered in what may be called the new era by virtue of which California is known in the markets of the whole world.