ound, treading it with cattle, and after
taking off the straw throwing the remainder up in the breeze, much was
lost and what was saved was foul."

General shiftlessness and inertia extended also to those branches
wherein the Californian was supposed to excel. Even in the matter of
cattle and sheep, the stock was very inferior to that brought into the
country by the Americans, and such a thing as crossing stock or
improving the breed of either cattle or horses was never thought of. The
cattle were long-horned, rough-skinned animals, and the beef was tough
and coarse. The sheep, while of Spanish stock, were very far from being
Spanish merino. Their wool was of the poorest quality, entirely unfit
for exportation, and their meat was not a favorite food.

There were practically no manufactures on the whole coast. The
inhabitants depended for all luxuries and necessities on foreign trade,
and in exchange gave hide and tallow from the semi-wild cattle that
roamed the hills. Even this trade was discouraged by heavy import duties
which amounted at times to one hundred per cent of the value. Such
conditions naturally led to extensive smuggling which was connived at by
most officials, high and low, and even by the monks of the missions
themselves.

Although the chief reason for Spanish occupancy was to hold the country,
the provisions for defense were not only inadequate but careless. Thomes
says, in _Land and Sea_, that the fort at Monterey was "armed with four
long brass nine-pounders, the handsomest guns that I ever saw all
covered with scroll work and figures. They were mounted on ruined and
decayed carriages. Two of them were pointed toward the planet Venus, and
the other two were depressed so that had they been loaded or fired the
balls would have startled the people on the other side of the
hemisphere." This condition was typical of those throughout the
so-called armed forts of California.

The picture thus presented is unjustly shaded, of course, for Spanish
California had its ideal, noble, and romantic side. In a final estimate
no one could say where the balance would be struck; but our purpose is
not to strike a final balance. We are here endeavoring to analyze the
reasons why the task of the American conquerors was so easy, and to
explain the facility with which the original population was thrust
aside.

It is a sometimes rather annoying anomaly of human nature that the races
and individuals about whom are woven