“Forty Thousand!”

“In the 1840’s! How much commerce were we doing in 1840? And there were many ships, Eric. Who can say, ‘They weren’t using the land?’”

“As an Economics professor, it must intrigue the hell out of you.”

“It did, no more than the peppercorns used as currency by the ancient Sumerians. But there was much more to be learned than the hard life of sailors earning twelve dollars per month in the Merchant Marine in the early 1800’s or the details of the hide trade. Dana spent months at a time on the coast, working in the curing houses. He had access to the towns that grew up around the missions. He described the lifestyles, the people, invaluable historic detail not encountered elsewhere. He made general and detailed observations of immense importance to our understanding of what several parts of this continent and the commerce they undertook was like then.”

“You make me want to run out and buy it as soon as I leave.” I said.

“A bookstore is a good place to get in from the rain. And after you finish it, send it to me. I’d enjoy reading it again myself. It’s a way of getting out of here for a while, even if only in my mind.”

“You’re making certain I purchase it, aren’t you?”

“Why not? It can be my good turn for the day.”

“What’s the book got to do with your argument about patriotism, though? It sounds like an adventure story.”

“It is, to be sure, a great one. But the vastness and resources of California were too much for cattle alone. Dana mused about what an “industrious, enterprising” people–that would us, right?–might accomplish in such a land. There’s no mistaking his conclusion that the locals were indolent, the Missions neglected and run down, and he felt the lifestyle reflected a long term absence of productivity, notwithstanding the enormity of the cattle industry. You see, that’s what a clash of cultures is all about: value judgments. Value judgments are just justifications, equivocations. Dana was from Boston, the heartbeat of the American economy in the first decades of the nineteenth century and he could only envisage what Bostonian culture could accomplish in California, with its fertile valleys and wealth of natural resources. His intuitive conclusions were certainly verified. Today, the one state of California is often the third most powerful economy on earth by itself. But in those days, California was like Alaska is to the continental U.S. today. Far away, almost mythical, seen by few, too vast to imagine populating. And where’s our Bostonian attitude today? Oops! Today, there are people attempting to make the whole of it–including its vast resources–like Dana saw in California one big park! No drilling for oil, no mining, hell, no people! Don’t you see the hypocrisy, Eric?”