DAWN AND THE DONS 110
There are probably no better riders in the world. They are put on a horse when only four or five years old, their little legs not long enough to come half way over the sides, and may almost be said to keep on him until they have grown to him.” And Colton confirms in his diary, written at the time, “A Californian is most at home in his saddle. His horse with long, flowing mane, arching neck, full flanks and slender legs is full of fire. He seldom trots, and will gallop all day without seeming to be weary. On his back is the Californian’s home. Leave him this home and you may have the rest of the world. When a child is born on a California ranch, it is at once
taken by a man on horseback, accompanied by godfather and godmother, to the nearest Mission for baptism. He is much on horseback during infancy, and by the time a boy is ten or twelve years old, he becomes an
expert rider. He literally rides from his cradle to his grave.” California’s pastoral period reached full flower only a short century ago; but so filled with history making events have been the intervening years that the story of those pastoral days reads like the pleasing and restful romance of some olden time.
