Book Description

Excerpt from Its Products, Resources, Industries and Attractions: What It Offers the Immigrant, Homeseeker, Investor and Tourist Many and diverse are the elements which have gone into the making of the "Golden State." Strangely different actors have played their part and left their impress. The country itself and its aboriginal inhabitants were long a source of attraction to the Spanish conquerors. In 1536, Cortes and his followers superficially inspected Lower California. They likened the land to the famous island of Amazons, described in the old Spanish romance, "Sergas de Espladian," in which the author speaks of "the great island of California, where an abundance of gold and precious stones is found." With the inherent poesy of the Spanish race they named the territory California. In 1542, Cabrillo sailed along the coast, and over a century later Viscaino explored it, mapping the bays of San Diego and Monterey. Sir Francis Drake, Queen Elizabeth's daring buccaneer, in cruising the Pacific for Spain's treasure ships, discovered, in 1579, the bay which bears his name. He called the land "New Albion." Spain's desire for new possessions and the missionary zeal of the Franciscans under the leadership of Father Junipero Serra led to the colonization of California in 1768. This fervid religious enthusiast, and Jose Galvez, visitador-general to Mexico from Spain, fitted out four expeditions which set out by land and sea. The vicissitudes of travel were many. Finally, the travelers reached San Diego, and on July 16, 1769, they founded the mission of that name. Despite their exhausted condition, a detachment was sent northward to find the bay of Monterey, which had been mapped out by Viscaino. It was this party that missed its objective point and found instead the important bay of San Francisco. This discovery led to the establishment of the mission of San Francisco, in the year our national independence was declared. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.