Chapter XII
The Back Country and the Admiral
For seventy years after its founding in 1781 Los Angeles was the only pueblo, as distinguished from presidio or mission, in the southern part of this state; and until the sudden growth of San Francisco during the gold excitement, it was the largest city in California, boasting about twenty-five hundred inhabitants when it came under American rule. Of the three neighboring missions, San Gabriel and San Juan Capistrano antedate Los Angeles by a few years, while San Fernando was founded about twelve years later.
During the Spanish and Mexican regimes California’s population was largely scattered upon the ranchos, and this condition remained for nearly a generation after the settlement of the northern counties. The story of the life in this grazing land is familiar,—the story of its leisureliness and hospitality; of its life on horseback, of the great herds of black, lean, long-horned cattle, the offspring of the few animals brought in by the padres; of the devotion of the founders of the missions, of their prosperity and then of their decline under the secularization of the Mexican law. Even as late as the time of my childhood the country was still very empty and Los Angeles was a little city set in gardens and orchards, a
