San Andreas independent., 1857-10-17
LETTER FROM NORTH BRANCH.
NoRTu Bn,Scu. October 18th. ls5

ercise with a pen except for the benefit of
my immediate friends. But / wish to
offer few remarks presumptuously
but rather as one who stands aside,
powerless to act, yet feeling lively in
terest in the progress of humanity. [
regret to see the effort that is made by a
few to prejudice the miners against the
agriculturalists. 1t is true that the legiti-
mate business of this mountain country,
is mining, and those cognate branches of
business that aid it; but there are some
sections of land that are valueless for
mining purposes. Where these can be
occupied as farms, it is so much gain to
the community. Again there are other
places which have at great expense been
fenced in and cultivated; | humbly SUBJ
nit that it would not be just to destroy a
mans property and deprive him of the
means of living without making proper
remuneration. For the home whether
of the farmeror miner, allow me to plead?
For all that makes home beautiful-its
flowers, its fruits and shade-trees, are of
more value,-not only to its inmates, but
for every passer-by, than any treasure
that may rest beneath it. Beyond these
reservations let no claimant prevent the
miner from prospecting, and if the dirt
will pay, from working, it should be the
property of the miner The water, too,
is the miners right. If farmers must ir-
rigatc, small expenditure in wind-mills,
will furnish water from their wells.
A greater evil than the Chinese among
us cannot well be conceived. They are
occupying much land, to the exclusion of
white miners, many of whom are now idle
for lack of employment, who might be
proftably employed on claims monopo-
lized by Cinnamon There is but this
alternative to work for less pay than
Cinnamon are deriving from their claims,
or remain idle. There are some of them
holding claims, which, with the force
employed, cannot be worked out under
five or six years. | know it is said that
they usually buy their claims, but this is
not general rule, for some of the larg-
est claims are those that have been taken
up by them. More than that, they are
asserting the right to take ground even
after it has been taken up by white men,
! One place they removed the notices three
times, and after week S interval, doubt
less supposing the claims were given up, J
a Chinese notice of A. Scamp 4 Co., took
their places This Co.-likc charity
covers multitude of SIM There is COM
pany claim taken up, on North Branch
running eight hundred feet, which will
not, with present force, be worked out in
seven or eight years. But bad as this is,
it is not the worst. They differ from us
as much in moral as physical formation
and color. Their sympathies and rules
of action are entirely at variance with
ours, and however admirably adapted to
them, are not reduceable to practice in
their intercourse with the whites, that
are at all advantageous to the latter 1t
was the advice of Bayard Taylor, whose
means of information were ample, that
they should never be permitted to land
on our coast. In speaking of them, he
uses language to this effect:
"They are adopts in all the vices of
more civilized nations and beneath this
surface level of vice and degradation, are
depths below depths of vice and licen-
tiousness, atwhich one cannot even hint
Shall we, by tacit Indifference allow
these people to come among us, and rear
their offspring in the land that we have
chosen for the homes of ourselves and our
children | do not wonder that many
of our best citizens prefer to return to a
soil and climate less fitted for the abode of
man, than to bring their families here,
where We have in prospect the disgusting
vices and miseries which will result from
this people remaining here. The descen-
dants of those now here, while clinging to
the vices of their progenitors, will, by
improving their means of instruction, and
such opportunities as offer, be able to in
graclate themselves into the confidence of
their white ncighbors, and carry out such
schemes of infamy and fraud as will make
our former reputation of Reputation and
ruffianism, but as the twilight to midnight
darkness.
Look at the English West India Is
lands. See there the result of intercourse
between the white and degraded race who
were slaves. According to the parish
registers, three-fouths of the children are
illegitimate. A walk through the streets
of Kingston, reveals more physical dcform-
ity, more promoters and victims of vice.
than can be seen without sorrow and dis
gust as lasting as memory. The same
result has followed between the Spaniard
of South America and the natives. Such
results must and will follow everywhere.
in the intercourse between civilized
people and one with low standard of
morality. We do not elevate them. but
they bring us down. The staid conserv
atiye may scout the idea of the union of
the races, but let them remember that
vice, ever aggressive, breaks down, one
by one, the barriers that virtue and rea-
son interpose, till poor humanity, looking
up from the depths into which it has
fallen, choose rather to associate and affil-
late with those on its own level, than dare
the task of regaining its former position
Think of these things, miners, and act.
IL IL