368 EESOURCES OF CALIFORNIA. 



sumption ; while I presume a residence in the mountains, high 

 above the sea, would be very likely to cure that disease, at 

 least in its early stages. 



The American women of California are not healthy, as a 

 class. Tliey are trained up in the dark and in idleness, as 

 though sunshine and work would ruin them. Pastry, pickles, 

 and sweetmeats form a considerable portion of their food, 

 and they are taught to abhor coarse strength and robustness 

 as worse than sins. Of course they cannot, as women, be 

 healthy. The girls are beautiful — beautiful as angels, but at 

 twenty-five the women begin to wither, and at thirty-five they 

 lose nearly every trace of physical beauty. The diseases pe- 

 culiar to women are very common, and whether from this 

 reason or some other cause, it is very frequent to see women 

 of thirty or thirty-five, who have one or two children ten or 

 twelve years old, and none younger. The native Californian 

 and Irish women have large famihes ; the American ^vomen 

 have but few, and yet there is no country where children are, 

 on an average, so large at birth (if the opinion of some experi- 

 enced physicians of my acquaintance be suflicient authority to 

 establish the fact), or where so many twins are born. It has 

 been remarked that a multitude of instances have occurred of 

 couples who, after having lived childless for ten, fifteen, or 

 twenty years in 'other countries, before coming to California, 

 in a year after their arrival here have had children. Travel- 

 ling and a change of climate will no doubt always have a favor- 

 able influence in this respect, but perhaps the extraordinary 

 productiveness of California may be perceptible here too. 



§ 259. Proportion of the Sexes. — There are not enough 

 women for the men in California. The relation between the 

 sexes is unsound. Unfortunate women are numerous, and 

 separations and divorces between married couples frequent. 

 No civilized country can equal us in the proportionate number 

 of divorces. Our laws are not so lax as those of several of 

 the states east of the Mississippi, but the circumstances of life 

 are more favorable to separation. The small proportion of 



