Chap. IX. INDIANS AND MEXICANS. 567 
were beginning to expend a considerable capital upon the 
breeding of a superior race. Large cattle for slaughter 
was fetching thirty dollars a-head. The breeding of cattle 
was carried on completely in the Mexican style, and even 
the new proprietors employed in preference old Californian 
herdsmen, of Mexican race, who perform their duties on 
horseback, and whose chief business it is, once a year, to 
collect together the branded cattle of the estate, to brand 
the calves with the mark of the proprietor, and to count 
over the whole of the herds and flocks. 
Hitherto the southern part of the State has been influ- 
enced only indirectly by the relations produced by the 
gold-washings and gold-mines of the northern half Those 
who have advocated a partition of the present State of 
California have argued from this difference in its con- 
ditions and interests. The wish to introduce slavery in 
the south is the chief motive, but the motive is by no 
means merely the wish to extend the political influence 
and increase the number of the Slave States. The real 
wants of this part of the country, whom the vicinity of the 
gold-mines, and the consequent very high wages deprive 
of all capability of prosecuting agriculture and the breed- 
ing of cattle, enter greatly into the question. This state 
of things is a severe punishment of the injustice and over- 
bearing with which the Anglo-Americans here, as every- 
where, treat the Hispano- American and Indian population, 
from whom alone could have been derived the labour suffi- 
cient for the wants of this part of the country. I believe, 
however, that the slavery-propagandists will succeed as 
little in their projects with California as in those with 
Mexico and Central- America. It will be easier and more 
advantageous, by a wiser system, — not such a one in which 
an abstract philanthropy and impracticable doctrine of 
