95
world controversies, and fought another war with England; while in South America the fires of revolution were kindled in the colonies of Spai, to spread their conflagration northward to the land of the ancient Aztecs. Nothing they cared, for little did they know of the happenings of a world beyond their own California. At the beginning of this period, in 1781, according to the most competent and dependable authorities, there were about six hundred white people in California, a majority of whom were in and about Monterey. A few had come in the little sailboats from Mexico, but most of
them over the difficult and dangerous Anza trail. By this route, too, through waterless deserts and across moun-
tain ranges, had been driven the live stock, that in this
land of favoring clime and fruitful soil, had multiplied with such astonishing rapidity. The white population during these four decades increased from six hundred to thirty-two hundred seventy in 1820. The most reliable estimates are, 1780, 600; 1790,
970; 1800, 1200; 1810, 2130; 1820, 3270. And almost entirely by births, for immigration practically ceased when the Anza trail was closed by the Yuma massacre in 1781. Isolated from the rest of the world, these happy adventurers of Spanish descent and their rapidly increasing progeny, under a genial sky, and amid surroundings the most delightful that nature had ever prepared for man, recked little of the world beyond their imperial and fruitful domain. This was the Spanish period— Mexican independence came in 1821—and California
