The women carry this
peculiarity of speaking to a much greater extreme than the men, who
have more evenness and stateliness of utterance. A common
bullock-driver, on horseback, delivering a message, seemed to speak
like an ambassador at an audience. In fact, they sometimes appeared to
me to be a people on whom a curse had fallen, and stripped them of
everything but their pride, their manners, and their voices.
Another thing that surprised me was the quantity of silver that
was in circulation. I certainly never saw so much silver at one time
in my life, as during the week that we were at Monterey. The truth is,
they have no credit system, no banks, and no way of investing way of
investing money but in cattle. They have no circulating medium but
silver and hides- which the sailors call "California bank notes."
Everything that they buy they must pay for in one or the other of
these things. The hides they bring down dried and doubled, in clumsy
ox-carts, or upon mules' backs, and the money they carry tied up in
a handkerchief;- fifty, eighty, or an hundred dollars and half dollars.
I had never studied Spanish while at college, and could not speak
a word, when at Juan Fernandez; but during the latter part of the
passage out, I borrowed a grammar and dictionary from the cabin, and
by a continual use of these, and a careful attention to every word
that I heard spoken, I soon got a vocabulary together, and began
talking for myself.
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