If any of the girls were
discovered by the alcalde to be open evil-livers, they were whipped,
and kept at work sweeping the square of the presidio, and carrying mud
and bricks for the buildings; yet a few reals would generally buy them
off. Intemperance, too, is a common vice among the Indians. The
Spaniards, on the contrary, are very abstemious, and I do not remember
ever having seen a Spaniard intoxicated.
Such are the people who inhabit a country embracing four or five
hundred miles of sea-coast, with several good harbors; with fine
forests in the north; the waters filled with fish, and the plains
covered with thousands of herds of cattle; blessed with a climate,
than which there can be no better in the world; free from all manner
of diseases, whether epidemic or endemic; and with a soil in which
corn yields from seventy to eighty fold. In the hands of an
enterprising people, what a country this might be! we are ready to
say. Yet how long would a people remain so, in such a country? The
Americans (as those from the United States are called) and Englishmen,
who are fast filling up the principal towns, and getting the trade
into their hands, are indeed more industrious and effective than the
Spaniards; yet their children are brought up Spaniards, in every
respect, and if the "California fever" (laziness) spares the first
generation, it always attacks the second.
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