Certain members of the same Legislature led a movement to form a new State, to be called Colorado and to include all the territory south of San Luis Obispo; and the matter was repeatedly discussed in several subsequent sessions. Nothing came of it, however; but Kern County was formed, in 1866, partly from Los Angeles County and partly from Tulare. About five thousand square miles, formerly under our County banner, were thus legislated away; and because the mountainous and desert area seemed of little prospective value, we submitted willingly. In this manner, unenlightened by modern science and ignorant of future possibilities, Southern California, guided by no clear and certain vision, drifted and stumbled along to its destiny. [Illustration: Los Angeles in the Late Fifties From a contemporary sketch] [Illustration: Myer J. Newmark] [Illustration: Dr. John S. Griffin] [Illustration: Edward J. C. Kewen] [Illustration: William C. Warren] FOOTNOTE: [15] Julio Chrisostino Verdugo died early in March, 1915, supposed to be about one hundred and twelve years old. CHAPTER XIV ORCHARDS AND VINEYARDS 1856 During 1856, I dissolved with my partners, Rich and Laventhal, and went into business with my uncle, Joseph Newmark, J. P. Newmark and Maurice Kremer, under the title of Newmark, Kremer & Company. Instead of a quasi wholesale business, we now had a larger assortment and did more of a retail business. We occupied a room, about forty by eighty feet in size, in the Mascarel and Barri block on the south side of Commercial Street (then known as Commercial Row), between Main and Los Angeles streets, our modest establishment being almost directly opposite the contracted quarters of my first store and having the largest single storeroom then in the city; and there we continued with moderate success, until 1858. To make this new partnership possible, Kremer had sold out his interest in the firm of Lazard & Kremer, dry goods merchants, the readjustment providing an amusing illustration of the manner in which business, with its almost entire lack of specialization, was then conducted. When the stock was taken, a large part of it consisted, not of dry goods, as one might well suppose, but of--cigars and tobacco!