only eight villages; in 1790, only eleven: in 1802, they amounted to eighteen. The population of New California, including only the Indians attached to the soil who had begun to cultivate their fields, was, in 1790, 7,748 souls; in 1801, it had risen to 13,668; and in 1802, to 15,562. Thus the number of inhabitants were doubled in twelve years. In 1791, the Indians sowed in the whole province, only 874 fanegas of wheat, which yielded 15,197 fanegas. The cultivation had doubled in 1802; the quantity sown being 2089 fanegas, and the harvest 33,576 fanegas. In 1791, there were only 24,958 head of black cattle in all the Indian villages. In 1802, the live stock consisted of 67,782 beeves, 107,177 sheep, 1,040 hogs, 2,187 tamed horses, and 877 mules. This progress of agriculture, this peaceful conquest of industry, is so much the more interesting, as the natives of this coast, very different from those of Nootka Sound and Norfolk Bay, were less than fifty years ago, a wandering tribe, subsisting by fishing and hunting, and cultivating no sort of vegetables. The Indians of the Bay of San Francisco were at that time equally wretched with the inhabitants of Van Diemen's Land. The natives were found somewhat more advanced in civilisation (in 1769) only near the channel of Santa Barbara. There they constructed large huts of a pyramidal form, close to one another; they appeared benevolent and hospitable; and they presented to the Spaniards, vases very curiously wrought of stalks of rushes, lined with a very thin layer of asphaltus, that renders them impenetrable to water or strong liquors.

"The population of New California would have augmented still more rapidly, if the laws by which the Spanish presidios have been for ages governed,

*The total number of horses, reckoning those who run wild in the savannas, amounted to 19,429.

were not directly opposed to the true interests both of the mother country and the colonies. By these laws, the soldiers stationed at Monterey, are not permitted to live out of their barracks or to settle as colonists. The monks are generally averse to the settlement of white colonists, because, being people who reason (gente de razon),* they are not so easily brought to yield a blind obedience as the Indians. It is truly distressing,' says a well-informed and enlightened Spanish navigator (D. Dionisio Galiano), 'that the military, who pass a painful and laborious life, cannot, in their old age, settle in the country, and employ themselves in agriculture. The prohibition against building houses in the neighbourhood of the presidio, is contrary to all the dictates of sound policy. If the whites were permitted to employ themselves in the cultivation of the soil and the rearing of cattle, and if the military, by establishing their wives and children in cottages, could prepare an asylum against the indigence to which they are too frequently exposed in their old age, New California would soon become a flourishing colony, a resting-place of the greatest utility for the Spanish navigators who trade between Peru, Mexico, and the Philippine Islands." On removing the obstacles here pointed out, the Malouine Islands, the missions of the Rio Negro, and the coasts of San Francisco and Monterey, would soon be peopled with a great number of whites. What a striking contrast between the principles of colonisation followed by the Spaniards, and those by which Great Britain has created in a few years villages on the eastern coast of New Holland!

"The Indians who inhabit the villages of New

* "The whites, mulattoes, negroes, and all the castes except Indians, go under the designation of gente de razon; a humiliating distinction for the natives, which had its origin in ages of barbarism.”

California, have been of late years employed in spinning coarse woollen stuffs, called frisadas. But their

principal occupation, the produce of which might become a very considerable branch of commerce, is the dressing of stags' skins. The Spanish and the Russian establishments being hitherto the only ones which exist on the north-west coast, it may not be useless to enumerate all the missions of New California, which have been founded up to 1803, in the order in which they run, from south to north:-1. San Diego, founded in 1769, fifteen leagues distant from the most northern mission of Old California; population in 1802, 1,560. 2. San Luis Rey de Francia, founded in 1798; population, 600. 3. San Juan Capistrano, founded in 1776; 1,000 inhabitants. 4. San Gabriel, 1771; 1,050 inhabitants. 5. San Fernando, 1797; 600 inhabitants. 6. San Buenaventura, 1782; 950 inhabitants. 7. Santa Barbara, 1786; 1,100 inhabitants. 8. La Purissima Concepcion, 1787; 1,000 inhabitants. 9. San Luis Obisbo, 1772; 700 inhabitants. 10. San Miguel, 1797; 600 inhabitants. 11. Soledad, 1791; 570 inhabitants. 12. San Antonio de Padua, 1771; 1050 inhabitants. 13. SAN CARLOS DE MONTEREY, the capital, 1770; population, 700. 14. San Juan Bautista, 1797; 960 inhabitants. 15. Santa

Cruz, 1794; 440 inhabitants. 16. Santa Clara, 1777; 1,300 inhabitants. 17. San Jose, 1797; 630 inhabitants. 18. San Francisco, 1776, with a fine port; population 820,"*

San Carlos de Monterey is two leagues distant from the presidio of the same name. It is situated at the foot of the Cordillera of Santa Lucia, which is covered with oaks, pines, and rose-bushes. Cabrillo,

Humboldt's Pol. Essay, vol. ii. pp. 292–308. Of these 15,562 inhabitants, 7,945 were maies, 7,617 females. The number of whites, M. Humboldt estimates, by conjecture, at 1,300.

who first discovered this coast, in 1542, as high as latitude 43°, called the Bay of Monterey, Bahia de los Pinos, on account of the beautiful pines with which the neighbouring mountains are clothed. It received its present name sixty years afterwards, in honour of the viceroy, Count de Monterey. "In the vicinity of San Carlos is found the famous shell (aurum merum) of Monterey, which is in request among the inhabitants of Nootka Sound." From Monterey to the mouth of the Colombia river, is a navigation of from eight to ten days.

Within the extent of 180 leagues of coast, from San Diego to San Francisco, no fewer than seventeen dialects are said to be spoken by the natives. The northern part of the province is inhabited by the Rumsen and Escelen tribes, who speak languages totally different: they form the population of Monterey. In the Bay of San Francisco are found the Matalan, Salsen, and Quirote tribes, each having its separate dialect, but evidently derived from a common language. Between some of these idioms and the Aztec, there is an apparent analogy, especially in the final tl. Humboldt remarks, too, that the Indians of California discover the same fondness for warm vapour baths as the old Mexicans and several tribes of Northern Asia, as well as of Northern Europe. "We find in the missions, beside each cottage, a small vaulted edifice. On returning from their labour, the Indians enter this oven, in which the fire has a few moments before been extinguished; and they remain there for a quarter of an hour. When they feel themselves covered with perspiration, they plunge into the water of some neighbouring stream, or wallow about in the sand. This rapid transition from heat to cold, and the sudden suppression of the cutaneous transpiration, which a European would justly dread, causes the most agreeable sensations in the savage,

who enjoys whatever acts with violence on his nervous system." This same practice is found among the natives of Russia and Iceland.

Neither buffaloes nor elks are found in the low cor

dillera which runs along this coast. On the crest of the mountains, which are covered with snow in the month of November, wander herds of a peculiar species of wild goat, of an ashy white, with horns curved backwards like those of the chamois; they are called berendos. The forests of the plains abound with stags of a gigantic size, a brown colour, smooth, and without spot, with branches above four feet in length.* This stag of New California is represented by all travellers to be one of the most beautiful animals of Spanish America. "These venados," says Humboldt, "run with extraordinary rapidity, throwing their head back, and supporting their branches on their backs. The horses of New Biscay, which are famed for running, are incapable of keeping up with them; and they only reach them at the moment when the animal, who very seldom drinks, comes to quench his thirst. He is then too heavy to display all the energy of his muscular force, and is easily come up with. The hunter who pursues him, gets the better of him by means of a noose, in the same way that they manage wild horses and cattle in the Spanish colonies. The Indians make use, however, of another very ingenious artifice to approach the stags, and kill them. They cut off the head of a venado, the branches of which are very long; and they empty the neck, and place it on their own head. Masked in this manner, and armed also with bows and arrows, they conceal themselves in the brushwood, or among the high and thick herbage. By

*Sebastian Viscaino, the navigator, asserts, that when he put into the port of Monterey in 1602, he saw some with branches nearly nine feet in length.