TRAVELS IN THE CALIFORNIA S. 
363 
cation. Indeed there never was a doubt among Californians, 
that they were at the head of the human race. In cowardice, 
ignorance, pretension, and dastardly tyranny, the reader has 
learned that this pretension is well founded. 
Thus much for the Spanish population of the Californias; 
in every way a poor apology of European extraction ; as a 
general thing, incapable of reading or writing, and knowing 
nothing of science or literature, nothing of government but its 
brutal force, nothing of virtue but the sanction of the Church, 
nothing of religion but ceremonies of the national ritual. 
Destitute of industry themselves, they compel the poor Indian 
to labor for them, affording him a bare savage existence for 
his toil, upon their plantations and the fields of the Missions. 
In a w r ord, the Californians are an imbecile, pusillanimous, 
race of men, and unfit to control the destinies of that beautiful 
country. 
The ladies, dear creatures, I wish they were whiter, and that 
their cheek bones did not in their great condescension assimi¬ 
late their manners and customs so remarkably to their Indian 
neighbors. A pity it is that they have not stay and corset- 
makers 5 signs among them, for they allow their waists to grow 
as God designed they should, like Venus de Medici, that ill- 
bred statue that had no kind mother to lash its vitals into 
delicate form. Black eyes, raven locks, slender hands, elastic 
insteps, and you have the Californian ladies. 
