California, Its Characteristics and Prospects: From the New Englander for February, 1858

Excerpt from California, Its Characteristics and Prospects: From the New Englander for February, 1858 Whoever wishes, for health's sake or for any other reason, to change the sceneries or the objects and associations of his life, should set off, not for Europe, but for California. And this the more certainly, if he is a loving and sharp observer of nature; for nature meets us here in moods entirely new; so that we have even to make her acquaintance over again; going back, as it were, to be started in a fresh childhood. All our common, or previously formed impressions, calculations and weather-wisdoms are at fault. We find that we really understand nothing and have everything to learn. We begin to imagine, for example, that her way is to be thus, or thus; or that her operations are to be solved in this, or that manner, but we very soon discover that it will not hold. Our guess must be given up and we must try again. A person who is at all curious, in the study of natural phenomena, will be held in a puzzle thus for whole months, and will nearly complete the cycle of the year, before he seems to himself to have come into any real understanding with the new world he is in; just as if he were on a visit to Jupiter and wanted to sail round the sun with him, for at least once, and feel out his year, before he can be sure that he understands a single day.
California being to this extent a new world, having its own combinations, characters, and colors, it is not to be supposed that we can make any reader acquainted with it by words of description. The most we can hope to accomplish is, that by giving some notes on its physical and social characteristics, we may excite a more curious and possibly a more intelligent interest in California life, and the certainly great scenes preparing to be revealed in that far off, outside, isolated state of the Republic. Whoever wishes, for health's sake or for any other reason, to change the sceneries or the objects and associations of his life, should set off, not for Europe, but for California. And this the more certainly, if he is a loving and sharp observer of nature; for nature meets us here in moods entirely new; so that we have even to make her acquaintance over again; going back, as it were, to be started in a fresh childhood. All our common, or previously formed impressions, calculations and weather-wisdoms are at fault. We find that we really understand nothing and have everything to learn. We begin to imagine, for example, that her way is to be thus, or thus; or that her operations are to be solved in this, or that manner, but we very soon discover that it will not hold. Our guess must be given up and we must try again. A person who is at all curious, in the study of natural phenomena, will be held in a puzzle thus for whole months, and will nearly complete the cycle of the year, before he seems to himself to have come into any real understanding with the new world he is in; just as if he were on a visit to Jupiter and wanted to sail round the sun with him, for at least once, and feel out his year, before he can be sure that he understands a single day.
California being to this extent a new world, having its own combinations, characters, and colors, it is not to be supposed that we can make any reader acquainted with it by words of description. The most we can hope to accomplish is, that by giving some notes on its physical and social characteristics, we may excite a more curious and possibly a more intelligent interest in California life, and the certainly great scenes preparing to be revealed in that far off, outside, isolated state of the Republic.