SALE OP MINEEAL LANDS. 439 



fornians. There are now about 350,000 white inhabitants in 

 the state, and more than 250,000 others have gone "home" 

 during the last twelve years, four-fifths of them never to re- 

 turn. Not one-fifth — probably not one-tenth — of the miners 

 of 1849 are now in the state, and it would be a difficult, and 

 perhaps an impossible task, to find a Californian mining town, 

 one-twentieth of whose population has been permanent there 

 since 1850. 



In regard to the men leaving California, it must in fairness 

 be stated that many of them are actuated by a desire to be 

 with their families, and they see that it is much cheaper for 

 them to go to New York than to have their families come to 

 S.m Francisco ; and there are cases where the families would 

 make very great objection^ even overlooking the cost of pas- 

 sage, against movin^: to a land so far from all their relatives. 

 But, on the other hand, it must be considered also that all the 

 men who leave the state, do so seeing and acknowledging, be- 

 fore they go, that in climate, mineral resources, the profits of 

 labor and trade, the enterprise, intelligence, and generosity of 

 the people, the independent spirit of the poor, the democratic 

 spirit of the rich, and the frank friendliness of all, California 

 is far superior to any other part of the American Union, while 

 it has many advantages in other respects. Such an acknowl- 

 edgment, coming from men leaving a state with which many 

 of the most interesting associations of their lives are connected, 

 implies a great evil somewhere. Although some of them go 

 " home" because they cannot bring their families to Califor- 

 nia, yet this is not the fact in one-fourth of the cases ; they go 

 because they do not wish to live here, because they will not 

 live here. 



Another evil effect of the want of secure land-titles, and 

 the consequent unsettled character of the population, is the 

 want of good houses and substantial improvements of all kinds. 

 The dwellings throughout the mines are, as a class, mere hovels, 

 even in the oldest and most thickly-settled districts. In the 

 towns it is necessary to have some substantial stores, as a pro- 



