Above all there is an art sense all through the populace which sets it
off from any other population of the country. This sense is almost Latin
in its strength, and the Californian owes it to the leaven of Latin
blood. The true Californian lingers in the north; for southern
California has been built up by "lungers" from the East and middle West
and is Eastern in character and feeling.
Almost has the Californian developed a racial physiology. He tends to
size, to smooth symmetry of limb and trunk, to an erect, free carriage;
and the beauty of his women is not a myth. The pioneers were all men of
good body, they had to be to live and leave descendants. The bones of
the weaklings who started for El Dorado in 1849 lie on the plains or in
the hill-cemeteries of the mining camps. Heredity began it; climate has
carried it on. All things that grow in California tend to become large,
plump, luscious. Fruit trees, grown from cuttings of Eastern stock,
produce fruit larger and finer, if coarser in flavor, than that of the
parent tree.
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