Category: Children & Young Adult Reading
Once upon a time, about four hundred years ago, there was published in old Spain a novel which soon became unusually popular. The successful story of those days was one which caught the fancy of the men, was read by them, discussed at their gatherings, and often carried with t...
The kings highway which led up from Vera Cruz, the chief port of the eastern coast of Mexico, to the capital city of New Spain had in the eighteenth century more history connect...
2. Chapter 2“Run, Cleeta, run, the waves will catch you.” Cleeta scudded away, her naked little body shining like polished mahogany. She was fleet of foot, but the incoming breakers from th...
3. Chapter 3One afternoon in September, in the year 1542, two broad, clumsy ships, each with the flag of Spain flying above her many sails, were beating their way up the coast of southern C...
11. Chapter 11About the time that the people of California were beginning to feel the trouble arising from the unlimited wealth and power of the great railroad corporation, they discovered wh...
5. Chapter 5For hundreds of years poets have written and singers have sung of the loveliness of a country life, where there is no gathering together of the inhabitants in great cities, no s...
6. Chapter 6At no point does the early history of California come in contact with that of the colonies of the Eastern coast of the United States. The nearest approach to such contact was in...
18. Chapter 18The state of California lies between the parallels 32¡ and 42¡ north latitude, extending over a space represented on the eastern coast by the country between Edisto Inlet, South...
9. Chapter 9The birth of the Golden Baby, in other words, the coming of the Golden State into the Union, was a time of struggle and uncertainty, when feelings were deeply stirred and hope d...
7. Chapter 7Juan Lopez, foreman of the little ranch of St. Francis in Los Angeles County, one morning in March, 1842, while idly digging up a wild onion, or brodecia, discovered what he tho...
10. Chapter 10Boom! Boom! Boom! Never in history did the firing of a gun have such a powerful effect as that which sent the first shot at the flag of the Union, as it floated over Fort Sumter...
8. Chapter 8The rush of people to the Pacific coast after the gold discovery may well be called a stampede. The terrible overland journey, over thousands of miles of Indian country, across...
15. Chapter 15By 1874 people in the Eastern states had begun to talk of California canned fruits. Apricots and the large white grape found ready sale, but California raisins, though on the ma...
16. Chapter 16Thousands of years ago, before the time of which we have any history, there were rivers in California,--rivers now dead,--whose sides were steeper and whose channels were wider...
14. Chapter 14The orange, like many other of California’s most valuable products, was brought into the country by the patient, far-seeing padres. Orange, lemon, and citron, those three gay co...
17. Chapter 17In no line has California advanced so far beyond the days of the padres as in her schools. In the early settlements there were no educated people but the priests at the missions...
13. Chapter 13In all but savage countries, wheat is the most important product of the soil, A large proportion of human beings living on the earth to-day are so poverty-stricken as to make th...
1. Chapter 1Once upon a time, about four hundred years ago, there was published in old Spain a novel which soon became unusually popular. The successful story of those days was one which ca...
12. Chapter 12If the people of this century continue the destruction of trees as they are doing at present, a hundred years from now this will be a world without forests, a woodless, treeless...