Even as miners, they for the most part congregated round large camps, and were never engaged in the same daring undertakings as the Americans--such as lifting half a mile of a large river from its bed, or trenching for miles the sides of steep mountains, and building lofty viaducts supported on scaffolding which, from its height, looked like a spider’s web; while the only pursuits they engaged in, except mining, were the keeping of restaurants, estaminets, cafés chantants, billiard-rooms, and such places, ministering more to the pleasures than to the necessities of man; and not in any way adding to the wealth of the country by rendering its resources more available. Comparing the men of different nations, the pursuit they were engaged in, and the ends they had accomplished, one could not help being impressed with the idea that if the mines had been peopled entirely by Frenchmen--if all the productive resources of the country had been in their hands--it would yet have been many years before they would have raised California to the rank and position of wealth and importance which she now holds. And it is quite fair to draw a general conclusion regarding them, based upon such evidences of their capabilities as they afforded in California; for not only did they form a very considerable proportion of the population, but, as among people of other nations, there were also among them men of all classes. In many respects they were a most valuable addition to the population of the country, especially in the cities, but as colonizers and subjugators of a new country, their inefficiency was very apparent. They appeared to want that daring and independent spirit of individual self-reliance which impels an American or Englishman to disregard all counsel and companionship, and to enter alone into the wildest enterprise, so long as he himself thinks it feasible; or, disengaging himself for the time being from all communication with his fellow-men, to plunge into the wilderness, and there to labor steadily, uncheered by any passing pleasure, and with nothing to sustain him in his determination but his own confidence in his ability ultimately to attain his object. One scarcely ever met a Frenchman traveling alone in search of diggings; whereas the Americans and English whom one encountered were nearly always solitary individuals, “on their own hook,” going to some distant part where they had heard the diggings were good, but at the same time ready to stop anywhere, or to change their destination according to circumstances. The Frenchmen were too gregarious; they were either found in large numbers, or not at all. They did not travel about much, and, when they did, were in parties of half-a-dozen. While Americans would travel hundreds of miles to reach a place which they believed to be rich, the great object of the Frenchmen, in their choice of a location, seemed to be, to be near where a number of their countrymen were already settled.