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expectations, California would probably have passed under the dominion of the Czar. In Mexico and California, England’s consular agents, watchfully alert, were urgently recommending to their home government the acquisition of California from Mexico as an equivalent for the forty or fifty millions of dollars owed by the Mexican government to subjects of Great Britain. The United States had approached the Mexican government with a proposition of purchase, with negative results. All these international longings and rivalries were, of course, brought to an end by the war between the United States and Mexico, and the resulting treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. Again may the fatalist declare that California was destined to become American.
The social and industrial changes were slowly wrought. Cattle raising continued the principal industry, and hides and tallow the only exports. Love-making and merry-making went happily on without apparent abatement or diminution. Hospitality knew no lessening, and the horse remained supreme in the field of passenger transportation. The Californians did not seem to realize that important history was in the making. They saw their Missions go. They saw an occasional stranger of an alien race take up his residence among them. They felt vaguely the political sins of Mexico. They had an idea that all was not quite as it should be. But four decades of quiet isolation and peaceful content had unfitted them keenly
