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Collection: Books and Periodicals
Three Years in California by John D. Borthwick (1857)(LoC) (423 pages)
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Page: of 423
150 A CALIFORNIA EDUCATION.
rushed across the Isthmus, one from New York, the
other from San Francisco. The great majority in
both cases were men of the lower ranks of life, and
it is of course to them alone that my remarks apply.
Those coming from New York—who were mostly
Americans and Irish—-seemed to think that each
man could do just as he pleased, without regard to
the comfort of his neighbours. They showed no
accommodating spirit, but grumbled at everything,
and were rude and surly in their manners; they
were very raw and stupid, and had no genius for
doing anything for themselves or each other to assist
their progress, but perversely delighted in acting in
opposition to the regulations and arrangements made
for them by the Transit Company. The same men,
however, on their return from California, were perfect gentlemen in comparison. They were orderly
in their behaviour; though rough, they were not
rude, and showed great consideration for others,
submitting cheerfully to any personal inconvenience
necessary for the common good, and showing by
their conduct that they had acquired some notion of
their duties to balance the very enlarged idea of
their rights which they had formerly entertained.
The Missourians, however, although they acquired
no new accomplishments on their journey to California, lost none of those which they originally possessed. They could use an axe or a rifle with any
man. Two of them would chop down a few trees
and build a log-cabin in a day and a half, and with