hubert howe bancroft - Central Pacific Railroad Photographic History ...

452 MILITARY.
merce California had at this period none that would
have been effectual in case of attack from a foreign
foe. At San Francisco Major Hardie of the New
York regiment had occupied two companies during
the summer of 1847 in repairing the presidio and removing
to it the ordnance and military stores broughc
out in the Lexington and landed at the town of Yerba
Buena; but the guns, mortars, and carriages, with
the heavy shot and shell, could not be moved across
the hills, and remained near the landing. There
were some guns mounted at San Pedro, and a fieldbattery
kept at the fort in Los Angeles. At Monterey
Colonel Mason had caused to be constructed,
under the superintendence of Lieutenant Halleck, a
redoubt in the form of a bastion, on a hill commanding
the anchorage and the town, mounting upon it 20
guns carrying 24-pound shot, and four 8-inch mortar
guns on platforms. Quarters for the artillery companies,
consisting of two large two-story log houses,
There was great need of lighthouses and buoys on the coast, and the government,
aware of this necessity to a rapidly growing commerce as well as
to its own vessels, authorized Professor Bache in 1848 to organize two parties
for a coast survey, the party for shore duty being in charge of Captain James
S. Williams, assistant, and Joseph S. Ruth, sub-assistant. The hydrographical
party was in charge of Lieut William P. McArthur of the navy,
in command of the schooner Ewing. The Ewmg arrived at S. F. in the spring
of 1849, but there was little work accomplished. The men attached to the
topographical work ran a way to the mines, and those on board the Ewing
had to be placed in irons, and some were hanged for attempting the drowning
of Lieutenant Gibson in order to desert. The Ewmg ran over to the Soe.
isl. in winter in order to prevent the entire failure of the survey, which in the
spring of 1860 was removed to the Columbia bar and river, in June of that
year a third party under sub-assistant George Davidson, whose services to
California, begun in those uneasy terms, have been continued through a
generation, was in every way successful after its first hard struggle with
the difficulties besetting science in the gold period.
About the 1st of November there arrived the United States brig C. W.
Lawrence, Captain Alexander V. Fraser, all of whose officers and seamen resigned
or deserted within a month, being unable to live upon their pay. A
naval recruiting station was opened at San Francisco in December, but without
much relief to the service. In November also there arrived a collector
for the port of San Francisco, James Collier, who relieved the military
authorities of the care of the customs. He was escorted by a dragoon com*
pany commanded by Captain Thorn, who with three of his men was drowned
at the crossing of the Bio Colorado. Collector Collier found some things
that surprised and some that displeased him. The surprise was occasioned
by the amount of business, and the displeasure at finding the goods with
which he had to do stored in nineteen dismantled hulks of vessels in the