Year: 1860

A MOUNTAIN BOAST


Complaints of hard times are not confined
to the mining regions. If the miner often
fails in his arduous search for metallic
wealth, so does the culturist of the lower
country in his more legitimate pursuit.


While the one complains of scarcity of gold,
the other laments over drouth, or smut, or
is poor in the midst of abundance for want
OF market at remunerative prices. The
people who inhabit the agricultural portions
of the State have been wont to think they
alone enjoy true prosperity, and contribute


to the genuine progress of the country but
experience has demonstrated that uncertainty
OF title and Improbable grain crops are quite
as disastrous to individual hopes as reverses
in the gold fields. 1t is not even true that
discomfort and proneness to wander are
characteristics peculiar to the mining popu-
lation, for the prevailing silver excitement
has its victims everywhere alike, and did
not st. Helena humbug the calm plowmen
of Napa and SenOma as thoroughly as if
they had been knights of the pick? When
there is no craze whatever about new dig
gings, the settlers of the valleys, the lstless,
unambitious, unthrifty squatters on Spanish


grants, weary of their location as of that
they abandoned in the East, and start up or
down the coast, since they can 60 no farther
west, in search of new place to"settle"- -


Hence ii is that we see in Los Angeles pa
per such paragraph as the following, urg-


ing efforts for the development of the min
eral resources of Southern California as a
pressing necessity:


"We are, upon general principles, opposed
to anything that partakes of excitement on
the subject of minerals and mining; but MS
the chief occupation of the mass of the for
mer California population has become nearly
obsolete, namely stock raising, and the nu-
merous herds, which were once as the leaves
of the forest, having been disposed of, and
the adverse seasons having destroyed thou
sands upon thousands, rendering it almost
impossible for the business ever to resume
its former standard, and the condition of the
title to real estate being such as to preclude
anything like general engaging in the pur
suit of agriculture, something must be done
which will furnish the masses with constant
employment, and keep up and encourage all
classes of trade and business"


There is no lodging the truth, that while
insecurity of title, ruinous attempts to cul-
tivate big farms, and exclusive attachment
to stock raising as pursuit have combined
to keep the great valleys thinly populated
and their denizens unprosperous, the mining
population has been gradually sloughing off
its worst features, developing new resources,
increasing the diversity of pursuits, and
fitting the mountains for permanent occupa-
tion. The mines, instead of being curse,
as some small philosophers have contended,
are proving to be a blessing. They are even
coveted by the agriculturist, because they
create near market for his produce and
increase the number of consumers But for
vacant. The deep canons of the Sierra Ne
vada would not now be ringing with the
sounds of varied labor, nor their rugged
slopes blooming and fructifying in prophecy
of the years to come. Gold was the magnet
that drew men past the smiling domains of
Ceres-past the broad plains of the Sacra-
mento and San Joaquin-to the apparently
sterile nights OF the Sierra. But if Ceres
reigns in the valleys, so does Pomona in the
hills, where she shares the sway of King
Gold and is working out for these lofty,
breezy, health-inspiring regions a new and
better era.