harrowed, and
grew rich, and civilized. On the other hand the colonists of "New
France" a name which comprehended the valleys of the St Lawrence and
Mississippi, dwindled and pined away, partly because the golden dreams
of the free trade carried them away from stationary pursuits, and partly
because the government considered them rather as soldiers than settlers.
In like manner Spanish America, with its _Serras_ of silver, holding out
to every adventurer the hope of earning his bread without the sweat of
his brow, became the paradise of idlers.

In California the herds of cattle, and the sale of their hides and
tallow, offer so easy a subsistence, that the population think of no
other, and in consequence are poor, degenerate, and dwindling. Their
whole education consists in bullock hunting. In this view, unjust and
violent as may be the aggressions of the American arms, it is difficult
to regret the transfer of the territory into any hands which will bring
these fine countries into the general use of mankind, root out a race
incapable of improvement, and fill the hills and valleys of this mighty
province with corn and man.

At present the produce of a bullock in hide, tallow, and horns, is about
five dollars, (the beef goes for nothing) of which the farmer's revenue
is averaged at a dollar and a half. This often makes up a large income.
General Vallego, who had about eight thousand head of cattle, must
receive from this source about ten thousand dollars a-year. The former
Missions, or Monkish revenues, must have been very large; that of San
Jose possessing thirty thousand head of cattle, Santa Clara nearly half
the number, and San Gabriel more than both together.

It must be acknowledged that the monks had made a handsome affair of
holiness in the good old times. Previously to the Mexican revolution
their "missions" amounted, in the upper province alone, to twenty-one,
every one of course with its endowment on a showy scale. Every monk had
an annual stipend of four hundred dollars. But this was mere
pocket-money; they had "donations and bequests" from the living and from
the dead, a most capacious source of opulence, and of an opulence
continually growing, constituting what was termed the pious fund of
California. Besides all these things, they had the cheap labour of
eighteen thousand converts. But the drones were to be suddenly smoked
out of their hives. Mexico declared itself a republic; and, as the
first act of a