ain sorts of follies,
like certain sorts of grain, were natural to the soil rather than to the
race that holds and tills it for the moment.

In the meantime, however, the Americans rule in Monterey County. The new
county seat, Salinas City, in the bald, corn-bearing plain under the
Gabelano Peak, is a town of a purely American character. The land is
held, for the most part, in those enormous tracts which are another
legacy of Mexican days, and form the present chief danger and disgrace
of California; and the holders are mostly of American or British birth.
We have here in England no idea of the troubles and inconveniences which
flow from the existence of these large landholders--land-thieves,
land-sharks, or land-grabbers, they are more commonly and plainly
called. Thus the townlands of Monterey are all in the hands of a single
man. How they came there is an obscure, vexatious question, and rightly
or wrongly the man is hated with a great hatred. His life has been
repeatedly in danger. Not very long ago, I was told, the stage was
stopped and examined three evenings in succession by disguised horsemen
thirsting for his blood. A certain house on the Salinas road, they say,
he always passes in his buggy at full speed, for the squatter sent him
warning long ago. But a year since he was publicly pointed out for death
by no less a man than Mr. Dennis Kearney. Kearney is a man too well
known in California, but a word of explanation is required for English
readers. Originally an Irish drayman, he rose, by his command of bad
language, to almost dictatorial authority in the State; throned it there
for six months or so, his mouth full of oaths, gallowses, and
conflagrations; was first snuffed out last winter by Mr. Coleman, backed
by his San Francisco Vigilantes and three Gatling guns; completed his
own ruin by throwing in his lot with the grotesque Green-backer party;
and had at last to be rescued by his old enemies, the police, out of the
hands of his rebellious followers. It was while he was at the top of his
fortune that Kearney visited Monterey with his battle-cry against
Chinese labour, the railroad monopolists, and the land-thieves; and his
one articulate counsel to the Montereyans was to "hang David Jacks." Had
the town been American, in my private opinion, this would have been
done years ago. Land is a subject on which there is no jesting in the
West, and I have seen my friend the lawyer drive out of Monterey to
adjust a