Page:EB1911 - Volume 05.djvu/34

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CALIFORNIA, UNIVERSITY OF

near the terrestrial paradise.” The name must have been given derisively, as the barren coasts of Lower California could not have suggested the proximity of a “terrestrial paradise.” The exploration of the coast did not extend above the peninsula until 1842. The name California was at first applied exclusively to the peninsula; later, on the supposition that a strait connected the Pacific with the head of the Gulf of California, the name Islas Californias was frequently used. This erroneous theory was held as late as 1721. The first settlement was made in 1597, but was abandoned. From 1633 to 1683 five unsuccessful attempts were made to establish a settlement at La Paz. Finally the Jesuits succeeded in founding a mission at Loreto on the Gulf coast, in about 26° N. lat., in 1697, and at La Paz in 1720. At the time of their expulsion (1767) they had sixteen missions which were either self-supporting or were maintained by funds invested for that special purpose. The settlement of Upper California began in 1769, after which the two provinces were distinguished as California Baja or Antigua, and California Alta, the seat of government remaining in the former for a short time. The two provinces were separated in 1804, were united under one governor residing in California Alta in 1825, and were then reunited in a single department through the political changes of 1836, which lasted no later than 1847. Lower California was only slightly disturbed by the struggle for independence among the Spanish-American colonies, but in 1822 Admiral Lord Cochrane, who was in the service of the Chilean revolutionists, appeared on the coast and plundered San José del Cabo, Todos Santos and Loreto. In the war between Mexico and the United States La Paz and other coast towns were occupied by small detachments from California. In 1853 a filibustering expedition against Sonora under William Walker took possession of La Paz and proclaimed a republic consisting of Sonora and the peninsula. Fearing an attack from the mainland, the filibusters first withdrew to La Ensenada, near the American frontier, and then in the following year broke up altogether during an attempt to invade Sonora by land. A revolution under the leadership of Marquez de Leon in 1879 met with some temporary success, but died for want of material support in 1880. The development of mining and other industries since that time, together with vigorous efforts to found colonies in the more favoured localities, have greatly improved the situation in the territory.

See the two volumes of H. H. Bancroft’s North Mexican States and Texas, lettered vols. 15 and 16 of his Works; also Arthur Walbridge North, The Mother of California (San Francisco, 1908).

CALIFORNIA, UNIVERSITY OF, one of the largest and most important of state universities in America, situated at Berkeley, California, on the E. shore of San Francisco Bay. It took the place of the College of California (founded in 1855), received California’s portion of the Federal land grant of 1862, was chartered as a state institution by the legislature in 1868, and opened its doors in 1869 at Oakland. In 1873 it was removed to its present site. In the revised state constitution of 1879 provision is made for it as the head of the state’s educational system. The grounds at Berkeley cover 270 acres on the lower slopes (299–900 ft.) of the Berkeley Hills, which rise 1000 ft. or more above the university; the view over the bay to San Francisco and the Golden Gate is superb. In recent years new and better buildings have gradually been provided. In 1896 an international architectural competition was opened at the expense of Mrs Phoebe R. Hearst (made a regent of the university in 1898) for plans for a group of buildings harmonizing with the university’s beautiful site, and ignoring all buildings already existing. The first prize was awarded in 1899 to Emile Bénard, of Paris. The first building begun under the new plans was that for the college of mines (the gift of Mrs Hearst), completed in 1907, providing worthily for the important school of mining, from 1885 directed by Prof. S. B. Christy (b. 1853); California Hall, built by state appropriation, had been completed in 1906. The Greek theatre (1903), an open-air auditorium seating 7500 spectators, on a hill-side in a grove of towering eucalypts, was the gift of William Randolph Hearst; this has been used regularly for concerts by the university’s symphony orchestra, under the professor of music, John Frederick Wolle (b. 1863), who originated the Bach Festivals at Bethlehem, Pa.; free public concerts are given on Sunday afternoons; and there have been some remarkable dramatic performances here, notably Sudraka’s Mricchakattika in English, and Aeschylus’s Eumenides in Greek, in April 1907. There are no dormitories. Student self-government works through the “Undergraduate Students’ Affairs Committee” of the Associated Students. The faculty of the university has its own social club, with a handsome building on the grounds. At Berkeley is carried on the work in the colleges of letters, social sciences, natural sciences, commerce, agriculture, mechanical, mining and civil engineering, and chemistry, and the first two years’ course of the college of medicine—the Toland Medical College having been absorbed by the university in 1873; at Mount Hamilton, the work of the Lick astronomical department; and in San Francisco, that of dentistry (1888), pharmacy, law, art, and the concluding (post graduate or clinical) years of the medical course—the San Francisco Polyclinic having become a part of the university in 1892. Three of the San Francisco departments occupy a group of three handsome buildings in the western part of the city, overlooking Golden Gate Park. The Lick astronomical department (Lick Observatory) on Mount Hamilton, near San José, occupies a site covering 2777 acres. It was founded in 1875 by James Lick of San Francisco, and was endowed by him with $700,000, $610,000 of this being used for the original buildings and equipments, which were formally transferred to the university in 1888. The art department (San Francisco Institute of art) was until 1906 housed in the former home of Mark Hopkins, a San Francisco “railroad king”; it dated from 1893, under the name “Mark Hopkins Institute of Art.” The building was destroyed in the San Francisco conflagration of 1906; but under its present name the department resumed work in 1907 on the old site. At the university farm, of nearly 750 acres, at Davisville, Yolo county, instruction is given in practical agriculture, horticulture, dairying, &c.; courses in irrigation are given at Berkeley; a laboratory of plant pathology, established in 1907 at Whittier, Riverside county, and an experiment station on 20 acres of land near Riverside, are for the study of plant and tree diseases and pests and of their remedies. A marine biological laboratory is maintained at La Jolla, near San Diego, and another, the Hertzstein Research Laboratory, at New Monterey; the Rudolph Spreckels Physiological Laboratory is in Berkeley. The university has excellent anthropological and archaeological collections, mostly made by university expeditions, endowed by Mrs Hearst, to Peru and to Egypt. In 1907 the university library contained 160,000 volumes, ranking, after the destruction of most of the San Francisco libraries in 1906, as the largest collection in the vicinity. The building of the Doe library (given by the will of Charles Franklin Doe), for the housing of the university library, was begun in 1907. The university has also the valuable Bancroft collection of 50,000 volumes and countless pamphlets and manuscripts, dealing principally with the history of the Pacific Coast from Alaska through Central America, and of the Rocky Mountain region, including Montana, Utah, Wyoming, Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico and Western Texas. This collection (that of the historian Hubert Howe Bancroft) was acquired in 1905 for $250,000 (of which Mr Bancroft contributed $100,000), and was entrusted (1907) to the newly organized Academy of Pacific Coast History. The library of Karl Weinhold (1823–1901) of Berlin, which is especially rich in Germanic linguistics and “culture history,” was presented to the university in 1903 by John D. Spreckels. The university publishes The University of California Chronicle, an official record; and there are important departmental publications, especially those in American archaeology and ethnology, edited by Frederic Ward Putnam (b. 1839), including the reports of various expeditions, maintained by Mrs Hearst; in physiology, edited by Jacques Loeb (b. 1859); in botany, edited by William Albert Setchell (b. 1864); in zoology, edited by William Emerson Ritter (b. 1859); and in astronomy, the publications of the Lick Observatory, edited by William Wallace