foreigners, admit the inferiority of their judgment and knowledge in every respect, except only in those things which are immediately connected with their every day life. Why is there so great a difference? There must have been some great cause to have produced it; it is evident that such a difference did not exist between the brave and enterprising, though infatuated Spaniards, who conquered Mexico and our forefathers; even the people whom the Spaniards conquered, were far, very far superior to these. What great cause, we would enquire, has operated to sink them so far beneath their proud, daring, and high minded ancestors; and that, too, while all the rest of the civilized world has been moving forward with giant strides up the great highway of human improvement? What could it have been but "that accursed thirst for gold?"
But to plunge precipitately from one extreme to another, as has been usual with us in the few preceding pages, to step from the threshold of the best specimen of society, which this degraded people possess, at once into the wilds of this wild country, we will enter again the Valley of the St. Wakine.
During our stay in the country we went, in company with a friend, from Capt. Sutter's to the South, in order to examine the St. Wakine, to see the wild horses, and to visit the Capital, Monte Rey. We proceeded down the Sacramento, passed around the head of the Bay, and came to the St. Wakine River, thirty miles above its mouth, on the third day. This part of the country is inhabited by a very troublesome tribe of Indians called the Horse Thieves, and contains no white settlement. The character of these Indians will readily be inferred from their name, which is most appropriate. They have long been hostile to the Spaniards, and a short time previous had killed a white man, and it was therefore nec-
