The Gentle Land

About the Book

California through the late Spanish and early Mexican periods has been portrayed as an ideal existence in an ideal society, in an ideal climate. It has been called the Golden Age, the Gentle Land, the Time of the Bells. Supposedly the warm sun came up each morning bringing on a day of dining, drinking and dancing lasting for two or three days. Then a few days to rest and the start of a new celebration. The people were said to be large, well-formed and handsome with remarkable health and a long longevity. The women were dark eyed beauties and said to be very friendly. The men were caballeros in the very best sense of the word. The Priests were simple saints carrying a burden too heavy for an average man with patience and stability. The Indians were simple children entranced by the pageantry, music and bells while in the process of becoming adult enough that the land might be returned to them fertile and productive enough that the pervious days of semistarvation and constant tribal warfare were over. The economy, mainly beef, hides and tallow, were an ideal business for a people raised from childhood riding horseback. Money was so little regarded and so unnecessary that the bigger estates kept a bowl full of pesetas on a table in the hall so the guest might scoop up a handful when coming or going. Perhaps that is true but this portrayal seemed to the author to be unnatural, considering mankind being what they are. Adam Dumphy has tried to present a balanced account of those days as seen through the eyes of a fifteen year old sailor put ashore from a Boston trading brig as was the custom with a sailor too ill to pull his weight. He finds everything in San Diego of 1800 to 1801 strange and bizarre. But gradually learns of the people as human beings like himself and not as strange a society as reported. There is of course a gentle romance but that seems reasonable, as undoubtedly there was much of that sort of thing in those days also.

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