Page:The Tourist's California by Wood, Ruth Kedzie.djvu/96

 72 THE TOURIST'S CALIFORNIA had, too, when, by good luck, a grizzly could be enticed from the mountains. Usually the bear won, unlike the tiger in similar contests held in Mexico. Scenes of lariat- thro wing, horse-breaking, branding may still be witnessed on the cattle- ranges of Saint Louis the Bishop County, near Salinas. Wild steers are ridden by daring cow- boys ; feasts upon the roast ox follow in the even- ing, and flirtation and dancing. Many California communities celebrate days writ red in their history with pageantry which recalls brave events in the past, and the progress of the commonwealth during seven decades. Admission Day, September 9th, is a State festival. San Diego commemorates the landing of Cabrillo ; San Francisco, the discovery of its bay. This feat being popularly attributed to Portola, first Gov- ernor of California, the October carnival bears his name. But if history is exact, it was not Don Caspar, late Captain of Dragoons in the army of Charles III, who on October 30, 1769, first beheld the bay from a height above Montara, twenty miles south of San Francisco, but a party of his soldiers who, while deer hunting, came upon this prospect. The spot from which they viewed it is marked by a monument. Portola, never a heroic figure, accepted the discovery with pas- sivity thinking it to be but the Bay of Pines at