uth there may have been in these
reports; but in the one case every one believed, and in the other some
suspected, that there had been foul play; and nobody dreamed for an
instant of taking the authorities into their counsel. Now this is, of
course, characteristic enough of the Mexicans; but it is a noteworthy
feature that all the Americans in Monterey acquiesced without a word in
this inaction. Even when I spoke to them upon the subject, they seemed
not to understand my surprise; they had forgotten the traditions of
their own race and upbringing, and become, in a word, wholly
Mexicanised.

Again, the Mexicans, having no ready money to speak of, rely almost
entirely in their business transactions upon each other's worthless
paper. Pedro the penniless pays you with an I O U from the equally
penniless Miguel. It is a sort of local currency by courtesy. Credit in
these parts has passed into a superstition. I have seen a strong,
violent man struggling for months to recover a debt, and getting nothing
but an exchange of waste paper. The very storekeepers are averse to
asking for cash payments, and are more surprised than pleased when they
are offered. They fear there must be something under it, and that you
mean to withdraw your custom from them. I have seen the enterprising
chemist and stationer begging me with fervour to let my account run on,
although I had my purse open in my hand; and partly from the commonness
of the case, partly from some remains of that generous old Mexican
tradition which made all men welcome to their tables, a person may be
notoriously both unwilling and unable to pay, and still find credit for
the necessaries of life in the stores of Monterey. Now this villainous
habit of living upon "tick" has grown into Californian nature. I do not
mean that the American and European storekeepers of Monterey are as lax
as Mexicans; I mean that American farmers in many parts of the State
expect unlimited credit, and profit by it in the meanwhile without a
thought for consequences. Jew storekeepers have already learned the
advantage to be gained from this; they lead on the farmer into
irretrievable indebtedness, and keep him ever after as their bond-slave
hopelessly grinding in the mill. So the whirligig of time brings in its
revenges, and except that the Jew knows better than to foreclose, you
may see Americans bound in the same chains with which they themselves
had formerly bound the Mexican. It seems as if cert