368 RESOURCES 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. They 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 families; the American women 
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 sufficient 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 
