ANIMAL INDUSTRIES 215 



had not brought their live-stock and multiplied it as 

 indicated, and if the rancheros away from the mis- 

 sions had not had the materials for their own exten- 

 sion, it is impossible to measure how the enterprise 

 of the gold-seeking Americans of 1849 might have 

 been slowed down. It is very sure that the people 

 who made California a State in 1850 could never 

 have accomplished it on a menu of acorn-cakes and 

 clam-chowder on which the barbaric aborigines sub- 

 sisted. It required plenty of roasted and boiled beef 

 to start California on her career and the padres made 

 such munitions available. 



The Americans had no idea of continuing Cali- 

 fornia as a hide and tallow state, nor of prolonging 

 the rude pastoral husbandry which satisfied the 

 ambitions of their predecessors. Although histori- 

 cally there were foundations laid for animal indus- 

 tries by the Spanish occupants, the superstructures 

 rest only remotely on those foundations, for they 

 have now deeply passed from view beneath the 

 achievements of the Americans who developed in 

 central California herds and flocks on the basis first 

 of the British and later of the Hollandish breeds. 

 So strong was the feeling in support of improved 

 stock in the early fifties that to charge a man with 

 owning and breeding Mexican cattle was something 

 of a social reflection and reproach while honor came 

 to those who gave effort and money to importing 

 good stock by driving the animals across the plains 

 from the Middle West or bringing them by ship from 

 ports on either side of the Atlantic. The terms 



