386 RESOURCES OF CALIFORNIA. 



some, tall, broad-shouldered, large-boned, big-bellied, strong, 

 healthy, and long-lived. They grow fleshy as they grow old ; 

 and the same remark applies to the women. They are a good- 

 natured race, very kind and obliging to their friends, but out 

 of place among Americans, who are too sharp for them in 

 trading. Instead of increasing in wealth with the develop- 

 ment of the country, the Spanish Californians have been rap- 

 idly growing poorer, and now they own scarcely one-tenth of 

 the landed property which they had in 1848. Then they owned 

 nearly every thing ; now there is not a leading merchant or 

 millionaire among them. They regret the conquest of their 

 country. They lived in a very simple manner mider the 

 Mexican dominion, but they were secure in their property, and 

 were the political masters. Xow they form a small and pow- 

 erless minority, among a people far superior to them in agri- 

 cultural and mechanical skill and business knowledge — a peo- 

 ple who are absorbing all their wealth, and who look upon 

 them and treat them as inferiors. Although some of the Span- 

 ish Californians are content with the change of dominion, yet 

 many hate the Americans, and hate them so bitterly that they 

 would resort to civil war if there were any hope of success. 

 Indeed, the condition of afiairs, in some of the counties where 

 the Spanish population is most numerous, Avas near civil war 

 at various periods between 1851 and 1854. Most of the Span- 

 ish Californians live in the country ; their chief wealth is in 

 land and cattle, and the chief occupation of the jDOorer classes 

 is herding cattle. Their dwellings are adobe houses, usually 

 of one story, often with no floor save the bare earth, and with- 

 out chairs. 



§ 270. Chinamen. — The Chinamen in California are nearly 

 all very ignorant and very poor. Their number is about fifty 

 thousand, of whom more than half have been six or seven 

 years in the state. Most of them are engaged in mining ; and 

 the remainder are merchants, fishermen, washermen, and a few 

 are employed as cooks in hotels, and as farm laborers on farms 

 owned by white men. Most of them come from Southern 



