weight justly due to his conclusions.

"When he came to the bench, from various unavoidable causes
the calendar was crowded with cases involving immense
interests, the most important questions, and various and
peculiar litigation. California was then, as now, in the
development of her multiform physical resources. The judges
were as much pioneers of law as the people of settlement.
To be sure something had been done, but much had yet to be
accomplished; and something, too, had to be undone of that
which had been done in the feverish and anomalous period that
had preceded. It is safe to say that, even in the experience
of new countries hastily settled by heterogeneous crowds of
strangers from all countries, no such example of legal or
judicial difficulties was ever before presented as has been
illustrated in the history of California. There was no general
or common source of jurisprudence. Law was to be administered
almost without a standard. There was the civil law, as
adulterated or modified by Mexican provincialism, usages, and
habitudes, for a great part of the litigation; and there was
the common law for another part, but _what that was_ was to be
decided from the conflicting decisions of any number of
courts in America and England, and the various and diverse
considerations of policy arising from local and other facts.
And then, contracts made elsewhere, and some of them in
semi-civilized countries, had to be interpreted here. Besides
all which may be added that large and important interests
peculiar to the State existed--mines, ditches, etc.--for which
the courts were compelled to frame the law, and make a system
out of what was little better than chaos.