90 HISTORY OF CALIFORNIA. 



by hopes of tlie wildest kind, join vociferously in 

 chorus, in the exuberance of their joy. 



" A group of Englishmen, muscular in form, and 

 honest in feature, are chaffering with the keen-witted 

 Yankee porters for the carriage of their luggage. 

 There is an air of dogged resolution about them, that 

 plainly indicates they will not submit to what they 

 evidently consider an imposition. Such a sum for so 

 slender a service ! Well, then, they can carry their 

 baggage themselves : so they will ; and, quickly 

 shouldering it, some depart in the track of the rest, 

 whilst two or three remain behind, to watch what is 

 left, until their friends return. They are manifestly 

 well known to one another, and seem to be almost 

 intimate ; the voyage has made them friends. 



'' Here come a number of Chilians and Peruvians, 

 and a goodly number of natives from the Sandwich 

 Islands. A couple of Irishmen, too ! I know them 

 by their vivacity, and by the odd trick they have of 

 getting into every body's way ; to say nothing of their 

 broad, merry faces. Their property is in common, it 

 seems; for they have only one small pack between 

 them. 



" Here come ten or a dozen plainly but comfortably 

 dressed mechanics ; hard-working men they seem, and 

 just the sort of persons to make their way in a coun- 

 try where the artisan occupies his proper position, and 

 where honest toil — and dishonest, too, sometimes — is 

 almost certain to reap a harvest. Far differently will 

 you fare, and far preferable, too, will be your lot, in 

 regions where privation is the rule, to that of many 

 amongst your numerous fellow-travellers, unaccus- 

 tomed as they are to laborious occupations — with 

 frames uninured to fatigue, and constitutions unha- 



