of five per cent of its taxable property. To all appearance there was a difference in the policy of subsidies according to the amount of them.1

The legislature of 1869-70, after a session of one hundred and twenty days, closed at midnight on Monday, April 4, 1870. There was in the senate before the gavel fell, in accordance with a custom of exceeding ill-taste, not uniform and much more. honored in the breach than in the observance, a presentation of plate or something of that kind to the president and some of the officers. In the assembly, there was a remarkable valedictory by the speaker, George H. Rogers, who as he had commenced the session with condemning the fifteenth amendment to the constitution of the United States also closed it with condemnation still more pronounced and evincing what was usually known as an "unreconstructed disposition." After a few words of introduction about what had been accomplished by the session, he came to his main subject. "We have sent on our protest against the so-called fifteenth amendment," he exclaimed, “but, despite our efforts, it has been promulgated as a part of the supreme law of the land. I do not look upon this as an amendment to the constitution, but as a radical change in the constitution itself. Many of the states which have given their consent to this measure have been forced to do so by congress at the point of the bayoneta power used and a consent given which was not contemplated by the constitution which our fathers made. It remains to be seen what effect this change in our form of government will have upon our people. Free and independent states were never created for such a purpose as this; and, when the centralized government absorbs all the rights which the states now possess, then will our liberties end or a new struggle begin." "

While the legislature of 1869-70 was thus busying itself with its vain fight against the fifteenth amendment and its opposition to almost everything that had been done by the United States for the preservation of the Union, the federal government was preparing a very interesting spectacle for the people of the state. This was the blowing up of Blossom rock in the harbor of San 1 Stats. 1869-70, 746.

Francisco. The so-called rock, which derived its name from the British ship Blossom that visited San Francisco in 1826, consisted of an isolated submerged mass of hard sand-stone situated nearly in a line between Yerba Buena and Alcatraz Islands and about three-quarters of a mile northeast from the northeasterly extremity of Telegraph Hill. Being only about five feet below the water level at low tide, it presented a very serious obstruction to navigation, and a number of vessels had from time to time been injured by incautiously getting too near it. A buoy had at an early period been anchored there; but this afforded inadequate protection; and the government, as soon after the civil war as it could turn its attention to the subject, determined to remove so much of the obstructing body as would allow vessels of twenty-four feet draft to pass safely at mean low water. It accordingly contracted with Alexis W. Von Schmidt, a skillful civil engineer of San Francisco and the same person who in 1867 had excavated in the solid rock of Hunters' Point in the southern portion of the city one of the largest and finest dry docks in the world, to undertake the job-he binding himself to remove enough of the mass to make a depth of at least twenty-four feet at mean low water, and the government agreeing to pay him seventy-five thousand dollars when he had accomplished the task.

Von Schmidt immediately went to work by sinking a hollow metal cylinder six feet in diameter upon the rock, surrounded with a coffer-dam and outworks to protect it from the waves and so constructed and fitted upon the mass as to allow it to be pumped dry and kept water-tight. He then sunk a shaft of the same diameter down into the rock and excavated galleries for a distance, counting from end to end, of one hundred and forty feet in one direction and forty in the other transversely, and at a depth of about thirty feet below low tide. This part of the work having been completed, he placed twenty-three tons of black blasting powder in the drifts, so arranged that they could all be exploded at the same moment by an electric wire. When everything was ready, public notice of the spectacle having been given in the newspapers, Von Schmidt on May 23, 1870, in the presence of an immense concourse of people covering the hills and wharves and vessels and in fact almost every point from which

a view could be obtained, touched the button of his battery and sent the spark into the explosives. In an instant a column of water several hundred feet in diameter, carrying fragments of stone and pieces of timber used in the galleries and other constructions and accompanied by dense masses of smoke, was thrown into the air-the central portion of it at least a hundred and fifty feet—and presented a sight rarely ever witnessed and the like of which had never before been seen on the Pacific coast. The plan of blasting thus adopted proved entirely successful. Upon subsequent examination, after the easy removal of a few loose stones with an immense and powerful rake constructed for the purpose, the required depth of water was secured. Blossom rock as a dangerous obstruction to the ordinary commerce of San Francisco and California no longer existed; and the engineer in due course of time received the reward of his skill in the thanks of an appreciative people and the money of a well-pleased government.'

At the next general election, as will be shown more specifically hereafter, Haight ran again for governor but was defeated by Newton Booth. He had still to serve until the inauguration of his successor by the legislature of 1871-2; and it was his duty upon the organization of that legislature to transmit to it his second biennial message. This he did on December 7, 1871; and it proved to be his farewell to political office. In it, he remarked that there had been too little rain for two seasons, though he considered the future promising. He spoke of the state finances as being in reasonably good condition, and said that a fair start had been made in the equalization of assessments throughout the state. He thought Yosemite Valley as a place of public resort should be preserved and sustained; spoke of the fact, reported by the attorney-general, that James M. Hutchings, a settler in the valley, had been defeated in the suit against him by the state, and recommended that Hutchings and other settlers should be paid a liberal compensation for their improvements.2

He next called attention to the censurable course pursued by

1 San Francisco newspapers of May 24, 1870; statement of Alexis W. Von Schmidt.

2 Senate Journal, 1871-2, 35-38.

United States government officers of Mare Island at Vallejo, in the recent election, by compelling men employed there to vote a particular ticket, without the chance of scratching it, by threats of discharge and other means of coercion. It appeared that these officers, with an originality deserving of a better cause, had succeeded in preparing a Republican ticket, closely printed in diamond type on pieces of pasteboard five-eighths of an inch wide-so small that it was impossible to write any other names on, or in any way alter it. With tickets such as this placed in their hands, fourteen or fifteen hundred laborers were marshaled to the polls and watched while they voted, with a certainty on the part of the scurvy manipulators that so far as they were concerned at least there were no scratched tickets thrown. There was nothing in the law at the time to prevent such fraud; and the governor properly recommended that a repetition of the abuse should be prevented by the necessary legislation. A few specimens of this so-called "Mare Island election ticket" still remain as curiosities and are to be found in museums. He also took occasion to repeat what he had said before in opposition to grants of public lands to railroads, and instanced as an objectlesson the fact that a body of public land, comprising over fifty millions of acres and embracing nearly the whole of what was then Washington territory, destined one day to become a great state, had been granted to a corporation composed of a few capitalists. He added that the public lands belonged to the people and that it was not improbable that such legislation, if no other remedy should avail, might in the future provoke revolutionary resistance on their part against being thus defrauded of their rightful patrimony.'

He expressed himself against the killing of small birds and especially singing birds, which he pronounced of great importance to agriculture, and in favor of the repeal of what was known as the system of "lawful fences." He maintained that every man ought to be compelled to take care of his own stock or suffer the consequences. It was manifestly unjust to compel every farmer, who purchased or took up a quarter section, to expend more than the price of his land to protect himself against his neighbor's 1Senate Journal, 1871–2, 39, 40.

cattle. The fence system, he said, had been an incubus upon agriculture and was becoming each year more and more intolerable. He took occasion again to recommend fish culture and said that an experiment, which had just been made in stocking the upper Sacramento with shad, promised good results. After next touching upon the common schools, the militia and the state prison, he spoke of the asylums for the insane and for the deaf, dumb and blind and said: "It is a source of gratification to know that the polluting influence of party politics has not invaded the charities of the state during the past four years. If the prison could be rescued from this influence also, and these institutions could be kept free from this contamination, there would be a great gain to the cause of humanity as well as to the public revenues." After next reviewing the progress of the state harbor commissioners in the construction of the San Franciso sea-wall, what had been done in the disposition of the state tide lands in San Francisco bay, the promising success of the state university and recent work by the state geological survey, he spoke of the great improvement over the original plan of the state capitol accomplished by omitting the steps which were to have ascended in front of the building to the second story. He said that the cost up to that time had been about two millions of dollars and estimated what would still be required as about a quarter of a million-which figure he should have raised to upwards of half a million, as has been already stated. In speaking of the executive mansion, which never became a mansion, he said that a quarter of a million had been appropriated for it, of which about one-third had been expended and about one-sixth more was necessary to protect it from the weather.'

In continuation of his review, he said that the code commission, appointed under an act of the last session, had not yet completed their labor. He was however favorably impressed with what they had done. They had arranged the statute law into four codes—a penal code, a code of civil procedure, a civil code, all of which were finished, and a political code, which would soon be ready. For the civil code they had adopted in substance a 1 Senate Journal, 1871–2, 40-50.