I3'4 Audubon s Western Journal 



hundred inhabitants, the town itself containing 

 some stores like those we have come across every- 

 where from Davis's Rancho to Jesus Maria. At 

 Trinidad there are three Frenchmen, one the 

 Alcalde, the other two traders, dealing in every- 

 thing from horses to a single tallow candle. They 

 also sell quantities of muscalle, which is taken 

 mainly for the love of the alcohol, for any dose of 

 medicine would be as palatable, and in this hot 

 country probably more beneficial, certainly less 

 injurious. I asked one of the Frenchmen, now 

 so long a resident that he had almost forgotten his 

 own language, what induced him to live in such a 

 country. His answer was short and to the point: 

 "The love of gold." "Have you found it?" I 

 asked. "No," was his reply, "but I cannot return 

 without it." So it is with many of all nations, who, 

 lured by the stories of fortunes easily made, come 

 to this part of the earth and grow more and more 

 lazy and indolent, until they have become unfit for 

 the active, energetic industry requisite in happier 

 and more enlightened portions of the world. The 

 people here simply vegetate; many of them drink, 

 and are depraved in many ways. Some seem 

 happy with their Mexican wives, who, however, 

 are neither as handsome nor as clever as quadroons. 

 Nature is beautiful at every turn, now in bird 

 and beast, then in tree and flower, then in rock and 

 rill: how pained I am to pass them all by; but the 



