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women, as Dibdin, in his bibliographical tour, pictures it all in the stieets of Caen. The few women there were in those days were used to blacken characters, not boots.
Much has been said by a class of persons whose en- thusiasm overshadows their judgment, of the breadth and bigness of everything Californian, "as if size were worth, and bigness, greatness. 1 take no special pride in the size of California's turnips, nor in the amount of gold riddled from the placers ; I rejoice in Califor- nia's beauties, for beauty is a thing to rejoice in ; I bathe in her mellow, misty light, and drink her spark- ling air, and rejoice in her capabilities, in the intelligence of her men and women — all that is good in them ; her frailties have no attractions for me, her sins are hate- ful to me.
By midsummer, 1850, fifty ships were in port, upon whose cargoes the owners could not pay freight, and put up at auction the ship's consignees would buy them in.
Traffic as liere displayed, so loud, so large, so errat- ic, was the very irony of speculation; and for long afterward California was famous for wild ventures, and liigh rates of labor and interest ; yet it was clear- ly enough demonstrated that such speculation may prevail unattended by general financial convulsions in a community whose circulation is purely gold and sil- ver. The recuperative powers of the people after a fire, flood, or drought, were marvellous. An isolated com- munity with a metallic currency tends to the originating and building up of private banks, and though a specu- lative inflated condition of things appears at intervals in a rapid spasmodic prog^ress, the failure of any local or incidental element of prosperity, though affecting in some degree every member of society, involved in ruin comparatively few. Nevertheless, the country, and all about it was old and extravagant, the people and their doings being no less whimsical and bizarre than the streets and the houses of the towns. Over the sudden and wonderful development of wealth,
