fourteen persons not of Mexican or Spanish blood in all the province. In
the early '40's emigrants from the "States" began to come in parties,
but so slowly that by January 1, 1848, the entire population (not
including Indians) numbered only 14,000, and Yerba Buena (San Francisco)
the only Pueblo of any size contained barely 900 inhabitants. This be it
noted was but twelve years before the arrival of Starr King, so close
was the old aristocratic rule of Spain to that stirring conflict in
which he was to become a central figure.

As we have already observed it is the unexpected that happens in
California history. In this same month of January, 1848, gold was
discovered in the upper Sacramento Valley, an event that rivals the
discovery of America by Columbus, if regarded in the light of results
affecting the development of modern society. "The Gold that Drew the
World" so Edwin Markham heads his story of that strange hegira which
converted far-away California into a new Mecca and made of San
Francisco, that sleepy Spanish Pueblo, in a few months' time a
cosmopolitan city of fifty thousand people. Two years earlier, as a
result of the Mexican War, California had been declared an American
Territory, though not formally ceded to the United States until February
2, 1848. It was generally believed that the Mexican War had been waged
and California acquired in the interest of negro slavery. James Russell
Lowell voices this belief in the Bigelow papers as follows:

"They just wanted this California
So's to lug new slave states in,
To abuse ye and to scorn ye,
And to plunder ye like sin."

However this may have been, it is certain that among the immigrants of