From Two Years Before the Mast by Richard Henry Dana
Dana and his ship, the Pilrgrim
Dana’s view of the Mexicans living by the San Francisco Bay
“In their domestic relations, the Mexicans of California are not better than in their public. The men are thriftless, proud, extravagant, and very much given to gaming; and the women have but little education, and a good deal of beauty, and their morality, of course, is none of the best.... If the women have but little virtue, the jealousy of their husbands is extreme, and their revenge deadly and almost certain....
“The very men who would lay down their lives to avenge the dishonor of their own family would risk the same lives to complete the dishonor of another.”
Native American “Sense of Morality”
“To show the entire want of any sense of morality or domestic duty among them [the Native Americans], I have frequently known an Indian to bring his wife, to whom he was lawfully married in the church, down to the beach, and carry her back again, dividing with her the money which she had got from the sailors.”
Those “Greasy Russians”
“Such a stupid and greasy looking set I never saw before. They had brutish faces, and looked like the antipodes of sailors, and apparently dealt in nothing but grease. They lived upon grease; ate it, drank it, slept in the midst of it, and their clothes were covered with it. To a Russian, grease is the greatest luxury. The grease appeared to fill their pores, and to come out in their hair and on their faces. It seems as if it were this saturation that makes them stand cold and rain so well. If they were to go into a warm climate, they would melt...”
The Future of California
[California is a place with] several good harbors, with fine forests in the north; the waters filled with fish, and the plains covered with thousands of herds of cattle; blessed with a climate, than which there can be no better in the world; free from all manner of diseases, whether epidemic or endemic, and with a soil in which corn yields from seventy to eighty-fold. In the hands of an enterprising people, what a country this might be! we are ready to say. Yet how long would a people remain so, in such a country? The Americans and Englishmen who are fast filling up the principal towns, and getting the trade into their hands, are indeed more industrious and effective than the Mexicans; yet their children are brought up Mexicans in most respects, and if the ‘California fever’ (laziness) spares the first generation, it is likely to attack the second.”
