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Show 182 PERSONAL ADVENTURES sometimes is marle to counteract a run of illluck. So engrossed 'vere they in these pursuitsthe majority of them frivolous-that it was not to be wondered at that their missions and towns should be gradually deserted, and fall it1to ruins ; at once a standing reproach to the people, for their negligence and effeminacy, and to the Mexican G.overnment, for its supineness, its reckless, narrow-minded policy, its prejudices, and its injustice. In the hands of any other people, these missions might and 'vould have been made the legitimate instru· ments of irnproving the population, and of ministering no less to their physical necessities than to their spiritual requirements. Instead of becoming the nucleus of intrigues, they would have been converted into so many centres, whence would have radiated streams of intelligence and civilization, which must rapidly have changed the entire aspect of the country, and not less powerfully co-operated to develop the minds of the people, and ele· vate their character. But, under the blight· . IN CALIFORNIA. 183 ing tyranny of the Mexican authorities, progress was impossible; San Francisco could never have become a city; and the lands in its immediate vicinity must have lain waste, and thinly populated. Beneath the cherishing wing of the Arne .. rican Government, a splendid destiny opens before it as a great cornmercial emporium ; and, even had the gold mines never been dis .. covered, the working of which has imparted such a sudden and so extraordinary an impetus to its growth, the natural advantages of the harbour could not have long ren1ained unknown to the trading populations of the busy East; for it must, under the restless energy of the Yankees, have become, in course of time, the principal resort of their vessels of war, of merchantmen and whalers; whilst the hardy Anglo-Saxon emigrants would eventually have flocked into the country, eager to open up a new and a wider field for their industry. Agriculture, too, would soon have claimed its right to measure the strength of its sinewy arm against the stubbornness of the soil, |