Page 10 - lareina1929

6 LA REINA LOS ANGELES IN THREE CENTURIES

The carreta was the only vehicle in use in Los cAngeles until Temple and cAlexander
imported a carriage in the middle forties
The First Caucasian Looks Upon Los cAngeles

OST American cities just happened. Some pioneer seeking a new homesite,
M finds wood and water contiguous and available without too great exertion,
builds a log hut and settles down. Others, like minded, come one by one and build
near the first settler and the seething metropolis of the future presently adopts a
name. But Los Angeles started in a very different way; Los Angeles was deliber-
ately founded. A group came in a body and established it.
Its location came about in this fashion, according to Father Crespi, who, with
Portola, was trudging along through the cactus and sage and wild mustard toward
the north, in search of the much-wanted Monterey Bay He wrote about it from
somewhere in the vicinity of the site of the future Mission San Gabriel in the year
17 69 His daily notes run as follows:
"Tuesday August I This day was one of rest, for the purpose of exploring,
and especially to celebrate the jubilee of Our Lady of Los Angeles de Porciuncula.
We said mass and the men took communion, performing the obligat10ns to gain the
great indulgence. The soldiers went out this afternoon to hunt, and brought
an antelope, with which animals this country abounds; they are like wild goats, but
have horns rather larger than goats. I tasted the roasted meat, and it was not bad.
Today I observed the latitude and it came out for us thirty-four degrees and ten
minutes north latitude.
"Wednesday August 2.-We set out from the valley in the morning and fol-
lowed the same plain in a westerly direction. After traveling about a league and a
half through a pass between low hills, we entered a very spacious valley well grown
with cottonwoods and alders, among which ran a beautiful river from the north-
northwest, and then, doubling the point of a steep hill, it went on afterwards to the
south. Toward the north-northeast there is another river bed which forms a spacious
water course, but we found it dry This bed unites with that of the river giving a
clear mdication of great floods in the rainy season, for we saw that it had many
trunks of trees 011 the banks. We halted not very far from the river, which we