Worcester daily spy. [volume] (Worcester [Mass.]) 1850-1888, 1851-03-21
lie i'm California.

Mr. Jnius L. CIark's lecture on California, whicn he
delivered last evening in the City Hall, presented tue
most intimate interesting and instructive pictures u
life in California in all its variety of aspects 'n"t VIC
have vet been privileged to see Mr. Clark was io
IN several months in the country travelling over the length
and breadth of it, and observing with keen, critical
rye all the phases of character developed by the SOIL
the climate, the geographical disposition of the land,
and the varied attributes of the native and immigrant
Populations.
Many of his anecdotes exceedingly graphic. In
descl bing the habits Of the ladies of California, the
daughters of the raneheos, SpanoAmercan farmers,
he showed how universal is the love of rich apparel
amongst the softer SEX and how universal also, that
characteristic of mothers with marragable daughters,
which has constituted the point of many fashionable
stories, and one of the elements of almost every FASH
ionabe novel.
Mr. Clarks description of the rise, progress, and
spirit of enterprise in San Francisco, of those
instructive and impartial records of that city of specu
laton gold dust and enterprise, which it would be well
for young to read, before they leave the sobriees
of society behind them; and which we have doubt
many with the tan of the California upon their
cheeks viii recognise with sigh, their expe
rience.
The record of the sanitary condition Of Sacramento
during the Cholera, is appaing alas, how many thou
sands of men, alike unknowng and unknown, sleep in
the undistingushed graves of that city of DEATH
Many young men, full of the hopes that born in
youths gay morn, landed upon that fatal shore at Md
day, to lay themselves down below the sepuchral CO.
dars to die; and then huddled into common
grave before the sun set. Many, in whom center
ed fond hopes and ardent expectations, sleeping be-
meath the swampy soil of Sacramento, and " Sorely
will their mothers grieve, eer they back again.
Mr.. Clark makes no high pretensions of exposing
the delusions that have been practsed relation this
FL Dorado, this Golgothe of modern times, but his
clear, distinct facts comprehendng every detail of Cal
iforna lile from digging in the placers, washing in the
streams Of the Sierra Nevada and poughing the al
luvium of the San Joaquin, cheating, robbery and
numbering Indians, are, to our mind, most effective
agents in dispeng these Authorizations that the re-
suit of isolated facts, operating upon and dis
tempered imagnations. Both sides of the picture of
California life are exposed to views the grandeur and
the gloom of its extremes both passed in panoramic
clearness before the eyes of the observer.
The gloom of California life however, bears fearful
preponderance; it is the rule, the brightness is the
exception. The details of the suferings experienced
by the immigrants in the mountains and on the plains
from Cholera, privaon and the prevalence of anarchy
are repete with horrors. Oh, who would leave, even
poverty, with hope behind him, for the wretched-
that ntervenes between the gold digger and the
object of his ambition. The grand merit of Mr. Cark's
lectures is their pregnancy of facts Every sentence
presents not idea but object. The lecturer
tells what he saw, heard and experienced. He leaves
his audience to phosophse and to speculate upon his
acts, and to draw their conclusions from them
We cannot wish extensive circulation to those
eloquent and instructive facts which Mr. Clark has
brought from the land of gold, and which really of
benefit to the community than gold of 20 caras,
if rightly accepted and considered.