our State is concerned, this is true; the Mission period had no part in
it, and its heroes have left no imperishable monuments.

But in one respect our Spanish predecessors have had a lasting
influence, and the debt we owe to them, as yet scarcely appreciated, is
one which will grow with the ages. It is said that Father Crespi, in
1770, gave Spanish names to every place where he encamped at night, and
these names, rich and melodious, make the map of California unique
among the States of the Union. It is fitting that the most varied,
picturesque, and lovable of all the States should be the one thus
favored. We feel everywhere the charm of the Spanish language--Latin
cut loose from scholastic bonds, with a dash of firmness from the
Visigoth and a touch of warmth from the sun-loving Moor. The names of
Mariposa, San Buenaventura, Santa Barbara, Santa Cruz, and Monterey can
never grow mean or common. In the counties along the coast, there is
scarcely a hill, or stream, or village that does not bear some
melodious trace of Spanish occupation.

To see what California might have been, we have only to turn away from
the mission counties to the foothills of the Sierras, where the
mining-camps of the Anglo-Saxon bear such names as Fiddletown, Red Dog,
Dutch Flat, Murder Gulch, Ace of Spades, or Murderer's Bar; these
changing later, by euphemistic vulgarity, into Ruby City, Magnolia
Vale, Largentville, Idlewild, and the like. Or, if not these, our
Anglo-Saxon practically gives us, not Our Lady of the Solitude, nor the
City of the Holy Cross, not Fresno, the ash, nor Mariposa, the
butterfly, but the momentous repetition of Smithvilles, Jonesboroughs,
and Brownstowns, which makes the map of the Mississippi Valley a waste
of unpoetical mediocrity.