Californian

“ But you are an Estenega; that explains everything."
"I am a Californian," he said, ignoring the scorn of the last words, "but I hope I have acquired some common-sense in roving about the world. The women of California are admirable in every way,—chaste, strong of character, industrious, devoted wives and mothers, born with sufficient capacity for small pleasures. But what are our men? Idle, thriftless, unambitious, too lazy to walk across the street, but with a horse for every step, sleeping all day in a hammock, gambling and drinking all night. ”

“ I refer even to that astonishing detail in the general Californian sulphitism, the seals which frequent beach rocks close to the shore, a short car ride from the heart of a city as big as San Francisco.
—and this—
California, because of rich gold deposits, and a richer golden, sunshine, its golden spring poppy and its golden summer verdure, seems both literally and figuratively, a golden land golden and gay. It is a land full of contradictions however. For those amazing memorials from a prehistoric past give it in places a strange air of tragedy. ”

“ Above all there is an art sense all through the populace which sets it off from any other population of the country. This sense is almost Latin in its strength, and the Californian owes it to the leaven of Latin blood. The true Californian lingers in the north; for southern California has been built up by "lungers" from the East and middle West and is Eastern in character and feeling. ”

“ To give interest to the fiction of California, for instance, it was necessary for a Bret Harte to represent its pioneers as a class at once peculiar and outré; as if all the men who were pioneers were not from the older States, instead of being indigenous to California; so that now the early Californians have passed into the literature of half a dozen different nations, as a people half-ruffians and half-montebanks; when every one knows that no new State under the sun ever possessed so intellectual, energetic, or educated a population ”

“ The present day man-in-the-street, man-about-town Californian has an obvious magnificence about him that is allied to the eucalyptus tree, the pomegranate....
“The enemy of California says the state is magnificent, but thin. He declares it is as though it were painted on a Brobdingnagian piece of gilt paper, and he who dampens his finger and thrusts it through finds an alkali valley on the other side, the lonely prickly pear, and a heap of ashes from a deserted camp-fire. He says the citizens of this state lack the richness of an æsthetic and religious tradition. ”

“ A wilderness of mountain-tops, desolate as eternity, arid, parched, baked by the awful heat, the silence never broken by the cry of a bird, a hut rarely breaking the barren monotony, only an infrequent spring to save from death. It was almost impossible to get food or fresh horses. Many a night De la Vega and his stoical guide slept beneath a cactus, or in the mocking bed of a creek. The mustangs he managed to lasso were almost unridable, and would have bucked to death any but a Californian. Sometimes he lived on cactus fruit and the dried meat he had brought with him ”

“ For the pleasures of the table they care but little. With his horse and trappings, his sarape and blanket, a piece of beef and a tortilla, the Californian is content, so far as his personal comforts are concerned. But he is ardent in his pursuit of amusement and pleasure, and these consist chiefly in the fandango, the game of monte, horse-racing, and bull and bear-baiting. They gamble freely and desperately, but pay their losses with the most strict punctuality, at any and every sacrifice, and manifest but little concern about them. ”

“ The collection for the history of California is absolutely complete; and it should be regarded as of the greatest importance to the State, not only that such a collection exists, but that there exists in its owner a man with the high ambition to extract from it, with infinite labor and ample resources, a perfectly accurate as well as thoroughly creditable history of the country from the earliest times to the present—an advantage no other State of any nation has ever possessed. ”

“ The inhabitants of the City of the Angels, being generally of the wealthy class of Californians, have always strongly adhered to the institutions of Mexico. They offered the most strenuous resistance to the American forces at the time of the conquest of California, but were vanquished in two battles, and the city taken. All the customs and amusements peculiar to the Spaniards and the countries which they colonized, are here in full vogue. Music, dancing, singing, slaughtering cattle, or gambling, are the usual pastimes of the inhabitants. ”

“ Thus it was that men who two or three years before had hardly known there was such a country as California were being called Californians, as if they were a new, recently found race; and they were, in a way, being of a race that had found new and unsuspected strength, generosity, courage within themselves after entering a far country. ”

“ Round about California in that day were scattered a host of these living dead men --pride-smitten poor fellows, grizzled and old at forty, whose secret thoughts were made all of regrets and longings--regrets for their wasted lives, and longings to be out of the struggle and done with it all.
It was a lonesome land! Not a sound in all those peaceful expanses of grass and woods but the drowsy hum of insects; no glimpse of man or beast; nothing to keep up your spirits and make you glad to be alive. ”

“ The glamour of the gold excitement passed away with the first fifteen years of marvelous growth, and California was simply a new State, with, for a new State, a large class of wealthy men with the habits of men of business everywhere. ”

“ The Californians like most other Mexican Spaniards, are a lazy, indolent and cowardly people, and have neither enterprise nor spirit of improvement in their disposition, they are only a grade above the aborigines, and like them they will soon be compelled from the very nature of things, to yield to the swelling tide of Anglo-Saxon adventure. Almost every thing which the Californians possess, is of the rudest and simplest construction. ”

“ At the present time, it is a matter of doubt, whether the Americans or the foreigners predominate in the population of California. It is certain that the former have things pretty much their own way in the various cities and in the mines. But that may be from a want of unity of action among the foreigners. The habits and modes of life belonging to the Americans are generally prevalent in the cities; but in the smaller and older towns, the native Californians conduct every thing in the old Spanish mode. ”

“ Under the peculiar circumstances in which California becomes a State—with an unexampled increase of a population coming from every part of the world, speaking various languages, and imbued with different feelings and prejudices, no form of government, no system of laws, can be expected to meet with immediate and unanimous assent. It is to be remembered, moreover, that a considerable portion of our fellow-citizens are natives of Old Spain, Californians, and those who have voluntarily relinquished the rights of Mexicans to enjoy those of American citizens. ”

“ Our bay is full of the finest fish, and yet it is rare to meet one on the table. There is not a boat here in which one can safely trust himself 84a cable’s length from land. And if there were, there would be no Californian to row it. Could they go to sea on their horses, and fish from their saddles, they would often be seen dashing through the surf; but to sit quietly in a boat and bob a line, is entirely too tame a business. Put a fish on land, and give him the speed of the buck, and he would have a dozen Californians and forty hounds on his trail. ”

“ With such a climate and soil, to say nothing of its enormous mineral wealth, ‘it is bound,’ to use the local word, to leave New York, and Pennsylvania, and all the old leading States of the Union far behind, and, indeed, every other part of the world, whether new or old.
California compared with Italy.
One cannot become acquainted with half-a-dozen Californians without seeing that man himself has been improved in this wonder-working region—the [Pg 55] finest, not only that the Anglo-Saxon race, but that any race of man has ever inhabited. ”

“ The Californians have a jolly, good-natured way of regarding idiosyncrasies, and a kind of lavish generosity in the distribution of their alms, quite different from the careful and judicious method of the Eastern people. ”

“ This apparent thinness California has in common with the routine photoplay, which is at times as shallow in its thought as the shadow it throws upon [Pg xvi] the screen. This newness California has in common with all photoplays. It is thrillingly possible for the state and the art to acquire spiritual tradition and depth together.
“Part of the thinness of California is not only its youth, but the result of the physical fact that the human race is there spread over so many acres of land. “Good” Californians count their mines and enumerate their palm trees. ”

“ The Californians were in reality gratified by the prospect of American success in their territory, for they believed that it would secure a stable and progressive government, under which, that beautiful region would be gradually developed. ”

“ The native Californians form a goodly proportion of the gold-seekers. Many of the men are accompanied by their wives, who are attended by Indian girls. The graceful Spanish costume of the Californians adds quite a feature to the busy scene at the mines. ”

“ No Californian gentleman or lady ever abuses or oppresses a Chinaman, under any circumstances, an explanation that seems to be much needed in the East. Only the scum of the population do it—they and their children; they, and, naturally and consistently, the policemen and politicians, likewise, for these are the dust-licking pimps and slaves of the scum, there as well as elsewhere in America. ”

“ A courier arrived to-day from los Angeles. Every thing continues quiet there. The Californians had entirely dispersed, and retired to their ranchos, with the exception of those few who had gone upon a forlorn hope to Sonora. They will never be able to raise a force there sufficient to make any impression here. Mexico has enough to do in her own borders, without an attempt to retake California. ”

“ There are no people that I have ever been among who enjoy life so thoroughly as the Californians. Their habits are simple; their wants few; nature rolls almost every thing spontaneously into their lap. Their cattle, horses, and sheep roam at large—not a blade of grass is cut, and none is required. The harvest waves wherever the plough and 222harrow have been; and the grain which the wind scatters this year, serves as seed for the next. The slight labor required is more a diversion than a toil; and even this is shared by the Indian. ”

“ Californians, one of the seven groups into which the natives of the Pacific States are divided, located in California, Oregon, Idaho, Nevada, and Utah, between latitudes 43° and 32° 30 ́, subdivided into four families, the Northern Californians, Central Californians, Southern Californians and Shoshones. ”

“ The Californians do not differ materially from the Mexicans, from whom they are descended, in other provinces of that country. Physically and intellectually, the men, probably, are superior to the same race farther south, and inhabiting the countries contiguous to the city of Mexico. ”

“ For, as you shall learn, she was reputed the most beautiful of women; and it was she, O Californians, who wedded the gallant prince Talanque,—your first-known king. The supporters of the arms of the beautiful shield of the State of California should be, on the right, a knight armed cap-à-pie, and, on the left, an Amazon sable, clothed in skins, as you shall now see.
Mr. E. E. Hale, of Boston, sent to the Antiquarian Society last year a paper which shows that the name of California was known to literature before it was given to our peninsula by Cortés. ”

“ East is East, and West is San Francisco, according to Californians. Californians are a race of people; they are not merely inhabitants of a State. ”

“ While it may be true, since the rapid accumulation of money often bewilders the possessor as to its best use, that many of the rich men of California have been selfishly addicted to their own pleasures and to pleasing their personal favorites, still a comparison of the public institutions of California founded or assisted by private means with those of other States of the same age would probably show a creditable munificence on their part. ”

“ And live like hunted beasts. I like the valley; the sun in winter, the cool mountains in summer. If I am victor to-morrow, all the Indians in California will call me chief. They will run here from every Mission and hacienda, and from every hill and mountain, like little ones to their good father; and we will drive the priests out of the country, and make the hidalgos, the caballeros, the soft silk-dressed donas our friends or our slaves—as they wish. California belongs to us. The Great Spirit put us here, not the white man. ”

“ Instead of returning, as the most of the gold-seekers intended to do on leaving their homes, they found California a delightful climate, with rich and fertile valleys, and many, very many of them concluded, after having a year's experience in the country, to become citizens, and a little later in the fifties, there were a great many people in the Western States who sold their homes and started with their families for the golden shores of the Pacific—in other words, for California—in view of adopting that State for their future homes. ”