SALE OF MINERAL LANDS. 439 
fornians. There are now about 350,000 white inhabitants in 
the state, and more than 250,000 others have gone “home” 
during the last twelve years, four-fifths of them never to re- 
turn. Not one-fifth—probably not one-tenth—of the miners - 
of 1849 are now in the state, and it would be a difficult, and 
perhaps an impossible task, to find a Californian mining town, 
one-twentieth of whose population has been permanent there 
since 1850. 
In regard to the men leaving California, it must in fairness 
be stated that many of them are actuated by a desire to be 
with their families, and they see that it is much cheaper for 
them to go to New York than to have their families come to 
San Francisco; and there are cases where the families would 
make very great objection, even overlooking the cost of pas- 
sage, against moving to a land so far from all their relatives. 
But, on the other hand, it must be considered also that all the 
men who leave the state, do so seeing and acknowledging, be- 
fore they go, that in climate, mineral resources, the profits of 
labor and trade, the enterprise, intelligence, and generosity of 
the people, the independent spirit of the poor, the democratic 
spirit of the rich, and the frank friendliness of all, California 
is far superior to any other part of the American Union, while 
it has many advantages in other respects. Such an acknowl- 
edgment, coming from men leaving a state with which many 
of the most interesting associations of their lives are connected, 
implies a great evil somewhere. Although some of them go 
“home” because they cannot bring their families to Califor- 
nia, yet this is not the fact in one-fourth of the cases; they go 
because they do not wish to live here, because they will not 
live here. 
Another evil effect of the want of secure land-titles, and 
the consequent unsettled character of the population, is the 
want of good houses and substantial improvements of all kinds. 
The dwellings throughout the mines are, as a class, mere hovels, 
even in the oldest and most thickly-settled districts. In the 
towns it is necessary to have some substantial stores, as a pro- 
