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 under the 
Mexican dominion, but they were secure in their property, and 
were the political masters. Now 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 affairs, in some of the counties where 
the Spanish population is most numerous, was 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 poorer 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 arid 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 
