TITLE TO THE REGION—MISSIONARY SETTLEMENT, ITS PURPOSES—CHARACTER OF CALIFORNIA—SECULARIZATION OF MISSIONS—POPULATION IN MISSIONS—AGRICULTURAL STATISTICS—CATTLE—HIDES—TALLOW—HERDSMEN—TRADE—THE WAR—CONDITION OF CALIFORNIA AT ITS CLOSE—PROGRESS OF SETTLEMENT AND LAW—CONSTITUTION ADOPTED—ADMISSION AS A STATE—FORMER BOUNDARIES—THE GREAT BASIN—UTAH—GREAT SALT LAKE—PYRAMID LAKE—RIVERS—PRESENT STATE BOUNDARIES—AREA—GEOGRAPHY—SACRAMENTO—SAN JOAQUIN—SHASTL PEAK.
THE Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo confirmed the title to Upper California which the United States had gained by war. Although the geographical position of that region, the security of its harbors, and the supposed value of its soil, had attracted the attention of our people at an early day, it was not imagined, at the period of the cession, that the new territory would so soon become the nucleus of the first Anglo-Saxon empire on the shores of the Pacific. Its rapid development was owing rather to circumstances of an extraordinary character, than to the commercial and progressive spirit of our citizens; but the national energy which is always alive to individual interests, was never more completely illustrated than by the alacrity with which all classes rushed to the new scenes of labor, and turned to gold the soils that Indians and Mexicans had trodden for centuries as worthless sand.
Lower California was discovered, visited, and partly settled by the Spanish adventurers soon after the Mexican conquest, and although the