The merry, the adventurous, often the desperate, always the brave,
deserted the South and New England in 1849 to rush around the Horn or to
try the perils of the plains. They found there a land already grown old
in the hands of the Spaniards - younger sons of hidalgo and many of them
of the best blood of Spain. To a great extent the pioneers intermarried
with Spanish women; in fact, except for a proud little colony here and
there, the old, aristocratic Spanish blood is sunk in that of the
conquering race. Then there was an influx of intellectual French people,
largely overlooked in the histories of the early days; and this Latin
leaven has had its influence.
Brought up in a bountiful country, where no one really has to work very
hard to live, nurtured on adventure, scion of a free and merry stock,
the real, native Californian is a distinctive type; as far from the
Easterner in psychology as the extreme Southerner is from the Yankee. He
is easy going, witty, hospitable, lovable, inclined to be unmoral rather
than immoral in his personal habits, and easy to meet and to know.
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