be relied upon as to the numbers of wild Indians,—or gentiles, as they were called by the Spaniards. Indeed as these gentiles were naturally of an emigratory habit, roaming from place to place in search of game, or in pursuit of hostile tribes, they could scarcely be classed as among the permanent inhabitants of any particular district of country. It was estimated by Humboldt that, in 1802, the number of whites, mestizoes and mulattoes, and who lived either in the presidios or in the service of the monks, was only about thirteen hundred. These were the gente de razon, or rational creatures of the country, in contradistinction to the natives, who were considered only as bestias, or beasts.

In 1802, the total Indian population connected with the missions, when they were eighteen in number, as shown by the above table, amounted to 15,562. In 1801, Humboldt says, that the Indian population was 13,668, and in 1790, when the missions were eleven in number, it was 7748. La Pérouse, in 1786, when there were only ten missions, estimates the converted or domesticated Indians at 5143. These figures show a very rapid increase of population, or rather of conversions, in so few years. The real increase of population, however, would have been considerable among the gente de razon had not the traditionary customs or laws, which regulated the Spanish presidios for ages, stood in the way of the settling of the white population. The governing priests were jealous of their white subjects (the people of reason), and wished only a tame Indian population, who were supposed unable to reason. Therefore the soldiers of the presidios were not allowed to establish themselves as colonists, nor was any building permitted to be erected in the neighborhood. of these fortresses. Indeed no marriages were tolerated among the soldiers, without the consent of the Spanish Crown, and such consent the Fathers hindered as much as lay in their power. Notwithstanding these impolitic restrictions, the fertility and pleasantness of the land were so great as gradually to draw a small number of white settlers from other provinces of New Spain; and although grants of land could only flow from the Fathers themselves, yet, either through favor or direct interest, such grants were occasionally obtained, though generally the land thus given lay at a considerable distance from the missions and presidios.

The Indian population attached to the missions were meanwhile becoming an industrious, contented and numerous class, though indeed, in intelligence and manly spirit, they were little better than bestias-beasts, after all. Generally speaking, the Indians along the whole north-west coast of America were a very inferior order of beings to the great tribes who inhabited the Atlantic border; and, in particular, the different races who dwelt in California were but poor wandering clans who subsisted on what they could procure by hunting and fishing, and on the fruits and grains which grew spontaneously; but they knew nothing of the arts of agriculture, or even of a pastoral life. They might properly enough be compared to the aborigines of Australia or to the Hottentots, or, perhaps, even the Bosjesmans of Southern Africa, who have been considered the most barbarous and brute-like people on the earth. On this subject, Humboldt remarks that "the Indians of the Bay of San Francisco were equally wretched at that time (the establishment of the missions), with the inhabitants of Van Diemen's Land." Venegas has said of the aborigines of the peninsula, who closely resembled their brethren in Upper California, that "it is not easy for Europeans who were never out of their own country to conceive an adequate idea of these people. For even in the least frequented corners of the globe there is not a nation so stupid, of such contracted ideas, and weak both in body and mind, as the unhappy Californians. Their characteristics are stupidity and insensibility, want of knowledge and reflection, inconstancy, impetuosity and blindness of appetite, an excessive sloth, and abhorrence of all fatigues of every kind, however trifling or brutal; in fine, a most wretched want of every thing which constitutes the real man and renders him rational, inventive, tractable, and useful to himself and society."

The worthy Father Michael certainly paints, in dull enough colors, his protégés and converts. It may be farther remarked, that the Indians appear to have had little or no notion of religion, although they seem to have had a kind of sorcerers among them, who amused or terrified themselves and their patients with sundry superstitious observances. Some writers, such as La Pérouse, say, that they had no knowledge of a God or a future state;

others simply call them idolaters. The natives around San Francisco Bay appear to have burned the corpses of their people, while other tribes, more to the south, always buried theirs. Occasionally, they appear to have eaten pieces of the bodies of their more distinguished adversaries killed in battle, although this was pro

1. Wahla, chief of the Yuba tribe,-civilized and employed by Mr. S. Brannan. 2. A partly civilized Indian. 3. A wild Indian.-From daguerreotypes by Mr. W. Shew.

bably only to insure, as they imagined, that a portion of the brave spirit and good qualities of the slain should enter into and be incorporated with their own systems along with the literal flesh of their antagonists.

These notices and the extracts previously given from the voyages of Drake and Cavendish, abundantly establish the fact of the wretched state of humanity in California. And so it might have been till doomsday, had not a new people appeared on the scene. The Spanish population, and the Fathers, could not, or would not, as truly they did not, as we may afterwards see, do any thing to promote the happiness of the human race in the

country. Men feed the ox and the sheep for their milk and fleece, the hog for his flesh, the ass for the strength of his back, and all for their increase; so did the Fathers feed their Indian converts, and find abundant profit in their labor and personal services, whom they left, as they perhaps found, if they did not transform them into moral beasts, just as tame, dull and silly, dirty, diseased and stupidly obstinate as the other brutes named. Meanwhile, the little independence, natural intelligence and superiority of mind and character which even the rudest savages possess over the lower creatures were gradually sapped and brushed away, and the Christian converts left ignorant, superstitious and besotted, having neither thoughts nor passions, strength nor will, but at the command and beck of their spiritual and temporal teachers and masters. Better, a thousand times, that the missions and all their two-legged and four-legged beasts should be ruthlessly swept away, than that so fine a country, one so favored and framed by bountiful nature for the support, comfort and elevation of her worthier children, should longer lie a physical and moral waste-a blotch on the fair face of creation.

But another race was destined soon to blow aside the old mists of ignorance and stupidity, and to develope the exceeding riches of the land, which had lain, undisturbed and concealed, during so many ages. The Spaniards had scarcely proceeded any way in the great work,-if they had not rather retarded it,-when the Anglo-Saxons, the true and perhaps only type of modern progress, hastily stepped in, and unscrupulously swept away both their immediate forerunners as effete workers, and the aborigines of the land, all as lumberers and nuisances in the great western highway of civilization. This highway is fated to girdle the globe, and probably, in the course of a few centuries, will join the original starting-point in the natal home of the " 'Pilgrim Fathers" in old England. The "pioneers" of California are our "Pilgrim Fathers," and there need be not the slightest doubt but that the empire, or rather the great union of peoples and nations in the Pacific will soon-perhaps in fifty years, perhaps in a century-rival, if not surpass the magnificent States of the Atlantic. Indians, Spaniards of many provinces, Hawaiians, Japanese, Chinese, Malays, Tartars and Russians, must all give

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place to the resist less flood of Anglo-Saxon or American progress. These peoples need not, and most of them probably cannot be swept from the face of the earth; but undoubtedly their national characteristics and opposing qualities and customs must be materially modified, and closely assimilated to those of the civilizing and dominant race. The English in India have already shown how a beginning may be made; the Americans, on the California coasts, and farther west, will still more develope the modern system of progress. People may differ in opinion as to the equity of the particular steps attending the process, and many honest folk may even doubt its ultimate benefit to mankind; yet that some such grand result will hereafter be evolved from the energy and ebullition of the American character, and from the peculiar circumstances of American position in the world, must be evident to all who take a dispassionate and unprejudiced view of the

matter.

And even

Not only are Japan and China much nearer to the Californian coast than India is to England; but with the aid of steam the time for accomplishing the distance is immensely reduced. In the palmy days of the English conquests in India, her ships took several years to make the voyage out and home. Now, the ocean steamship may traverse the whole northern Pacific from California to China, and back again, within two months! Indian sepoys fought the battles of England against their own countrymen. Chinese sepoys may do the same for Americans. China, like India, has been long used to, and its national spirit broken by the usurping governments of foreign races. while we write, its extensive dominions are being separated by a wide-spread and hitherto successful rebellion, into detached kingdoms under the sway of military chiefs. These, standing alone, and mutually jealous of their conquering neighbors, may be easily played off, one against another, by a white people skilled enough to take advantage of circumstances and direct the moves of the political chess-board. So it was with the English in India; and so it may be with the Americans in China. Only give us time. England has not been very scrupulous in her stealthy progress over Hindostan, Ceylon and Birmah. Then neither need America fear her reproaches, if she, in like manner,