General José Castro imported two "excellent teachers", Señor Enrique Cambuston, a Frenchman of long Spanish training, and Don José Campina, a Cuban. They opened a school in Monterey in 1840, and soon had the best school north of Los Angeles and the most advanced one in the Province. It was held in an old adobe building near the Presidio, and had about one hundred pupils, some of whom came twenty miles on horseback every day. Their textbooks were mostly manuscript, made by the teachers and their pupils. C. H. Shinn tells us that the Castro family of Monterey County had in an attic an old rawhide sack strapped to a rafter, and that among the old papers found in this sack were some fragments of manuscript texts, written between 1835 and 1845. Most of them had been prepared under the direction of Cambuston. In the set were found three classes of school work, roughly classified as follows:

1. Drawing.

Parts of faces and hands.

Drawing of statuary from some classical dictionary.

Simple architectural forms.

2. Maps.

Of Europe, Spain and Mexico in outline. 3. Text-books.

Grammar, definer, arithmetic, geography and Ancient and Modern history.

The most interesting of these text-books was the Historia, which in thirty pages gave accounts of Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar and other celebrities. The geography was a catalog of gulfs, rivers, bays, lakes, mountains, islands, countries and cities. They were mostly South American and Mexican names, as we would be led to expect. The author states that the maps from which they were compiled must have been very old and meagre, as the mountains of Africa were given as Luna, Kong, Atlas, Lupata, Camerons and "Los Montes del Sol". The oceans were given as: Pacific-El Grande Oceano; Arctic-Mar Glacial del Norte; Antarctic-Mar Glacial del Sur.

Among the countries, Canada was spoken of as Nueva Bretana. The definer contained a few hundred words and their translations into English. Just why this should be does not seem clear, as English was not the familiar language of the people. There were no sentences in the definer, and the definitions were very crude.

General Castro, in whose home these remnants of school books were found, had whole rooms full of scraps which he had saved. This, according to the above author, was a Spanish custom, brought down from the days of necessity, when even wrapping paper was very precious. Every small fragment of paper was saved, and manuscripts were frequently written on scrap paper and on the fly leaves of books.

Pupils were frequently given the task of copying the text-book of some other pupil; and they would copy the mistakes as well as the correct portions of the books, and there would thus be perpetuated many childish blunders which should never have seen light. The writing on these old manuscripts is fair. Each name has a "rubrica" or flourish, the same being considered necessary to the legality of any document which the individual signed. This "rubrica" would sometimes be characteristic of a whole family.

We have to pass over the years 1845-46 as being practically barren of organized effort along educational lines in California. The war with the United States was on and the uncertainty of the future deterred the people from launching any new venture, or even supporting the old. After the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, there was still an uncertainty. The United States waited four years from the conquest to make California an integral part of the Union, and during all that time there was a corresponding waiting on the part of the people. They were anxious to know what the plans of the future were to be.

We are told that one Marston, a Mormon, started a school in San Francisco in 1847, but he did not continue at his task very long. Everybody was going to the "diggings" in those exciting days, and he could not be blamed for joining with the others. Monroe tells us that the Town Council of San Francisco ordered a school house to be built in that year, but we have no record of the work having been done. However, in 1848, they elected a School Board and employed a teacher. They began with six pupils, but the school soon increased to thirty-seven. Then came the gold strike. The school dwindled to eight and was soon closed. This school, like that of Marston, was private. The teacher was a Mr. Douglas, and the school was conducted in the Baptist Church.

In 1849, Mr. and Mrs. John C. Pelton arrived from Boston and opened a school in San Francisco on the New England plan. In a few months this was taken over as the first free public school of the city. They received a salary of $500 a month, it being during the gold excitement, and they conducted the school for about two years.

In 1850, a school committee was appointed from among the members of the City Council of Los Angeles, who were to act as School Board. They found it very difficult to find a teacher, owing to the disturbances of the times, but finally a Mr. Hugh Owens agreed to teach the school, but we have no record of the kind of school he conducted. Earlier in the same year, there had been a school conducted by Francesco Bustamente, the last to be conducted in the Spanish language. His contract was with Don Abel Stearns, and he agreed to teach the scholars to read and count, and so far as he was capable to teach them orthography and good morals. He

was to receive $60 a month and $20 a month for the rent of a school

room.

With the exception of the primitive schools of which we have written, there was very little opportunity for education in California during the pre-statehood period. These constituted the only educational facilities of the people of the middle class, and the poorer classes were quite neglected. Private tutors were employed by the more wealthy people when they could be found, and then there was always the possibility of such parents sending their sons abroad to be educated. Many were sent to Mexico City or to the Sandwich Islands, and a few found their way to the schools in the eastern part of our country. Among the families of Los Angeles who were able to employ tutors are mentioned the Sepulvedas, the Yorbas, and the Dominguez families. These must have been indeed the aristocracy of the land, and their lot, poor at the best, must have been far easier than that of their neighbors. Those days are gone and better and happier ones have come. Who could wish them back?

TRANSPORTATION IN CALIFORNIA BEFORE THE
RAILROADS, WITH ESPECIAL REFERENCE
TO LOS ANGELES

BY ROBERT G. CLELAND, PH. D.

One of the most serious problems of early California life was the lack of local and transcontinental transportation facilities. While this situation was naturally most acute during the abnormal period of the gold rush, yet even with the coming of a more settled and regular order of society the convenience and economic development of the people of the State suffered for many years because of inadequate means of communication.

To ameliorate these conditions, efforts of various kinds were put forth from time to time, sometimes on individual initiative, sometimes through state or national legislation. Road building was naturally regarded as one of the essential elements in solving the difficulty, and was undertaken both at private and public expense. In September, 1854, for instance, some of the people of Los Angeles raised $6,000 for the construction of a wagon road between Fort Tejon and Los Angeles. The work was completed in December of the same year. In 1855 the California Legislature appropriated $100,000 for a road through Johnston's cut-off in the Sierra Nevada Mountains; $20,000 for a road from San Pedro through Cajon Pass to the State line, in the direction of Salt Lake City; and $7,000 for a road from San Diego over the desert to the Colorado River.2

About the same time the Federal Government voted $50,000 for the Los Angeles-Salt Lake road, upon which one of the earliest overland mail services was afterward inaugurated.3

As the State grew in population and cities increased both in number and size, travel necessarily became greater and a very marked commercial development took place. To meet these growing needs, local transportation companies sprang up like mushrooms. Nearly all of these carried freight, passengers, express or mail, as the opportunity arose. Many of them grew into large and flourishing companies, and played a very vital part in the upbuilding of the State.

The most important of these local transportation companies, with headquarters in Los Angeles, was that of Alexander and Banning. As early as 1854 this firm had 500 mules, 30 or 40 horses, 40 wagons, and 15 stages running between Los Angeles and San

1. Hayes Collection (Bancroft Library, University of California), Southern California Local History, II. 86. 2. Ibid., V, 301.

3. California Star, December 13, 1856 (Hayes Collection)

1

Pedro. Two other lines were also operated between the same cities, one by Lanfranco and Sepulveda, and the other by Banning's chief rival, A. W. Timmes.*

The fastest time on record over this route is said to have been 1 hour and 18 minutes for the entire twenty-seven miles, including three changes of horses. It was made by an express rider bringing the news of Buchanan's election from the mail steamer at San Pedro to Los Angeles in 1856.5

Besides San Pedro, Salt Lake was another city with which Los Angeles had important commercial relations. In 1854 the Adams Express Company began a monthly service between San Francisco and Salt Lake, by way of Los Angeles. From the latter city the route, according to the company's advertisement, included the following settlements: El Monte, San Bernardino, Cold Creek, Johnston's Springs, Parowan, Ked Creek, Fillmore City, Nephi City, Summit Creek, Payson's, Provo City, and American Fork." The following year the California Stage Company added a line of stages to this route; and of more importance still, a very considerable freight business sprang up between the two cities. This was rendered all the more important because heavy winter snows ordinarily shut off communication between Salt Lake and St. Louis on the one hand, and San Francisco on the other, during a large part of the year, leaving the Los Angeles-Salt Lake route the only available source of supply for the Mormon settlements. To take advantage of this "natural monopoly", Hopkins and Robbins of San Bernardino set out on April 15th, 1855, with several wagons and a very considerable amount of freight for Salt Lake; while twelve days later Alexander and Banning, with W. T. B. Sanford, left Los Angeles with fifteen ten-mule teams and some thirty tons of merchandise, valued at about $20,000. Freight charges ranged from 18 to 25 cents a pound.'

As trade developed, large amounts of goods were sent from San Francisco by water to San Pedro for trans-shipment overland to Salt Lake. A hundred tons of such freight, it is said, were stored in Los Angeles warehouses at one time awaiting transportation to the Utah settlements.R

Other local routes were opened from time to time in addition to those just mentioned. Wells-Fargo & Company operated between Los Angeles and the Tejon. Alexander and Banning ran freight wagons from Mojave and Yuma to Los Angeles, and in 1855 put on a weekly stage from the latter city to the newly discovered mining fields of the Kern River."

Important, however, as these local lines were to the economic

6. Hayes Collection, So. Cal. Local Hist., II; III; V; 355.

7. Star, April 14, 28; May 2, 30; Nov. 2, 1855.

8. Hayes Collection, So. Cal. Local Hist., V, 78.

9. Southern California, Feb. 1, 8, 1855.