William Hepworth Dixon, White Conquest: Volume 1

[63] round the camps, these Spanish soldiers struck their roots into the soil; so deep, that when their time of service came to an end, they were unable to remove. Their families could not be carried into Spain, or even into Mexico. A viceroy had a puzzling question to resolve. The policy of his Church had been to exclude White settlers from the soil: a policy of prudence if the natives were to be converted and preserved. Except the friars, no man had a right to hold land in California. Except the soldiers, sent to guard these friars and execute their orders, no man had a right of domicile in California. Civil laws and civil magistrates were unknown. California was treated as a Holy State, a paradise of monks, a patrimony of the Church. This clerical policy had always been supported by the king and council in Madrid. A pope had given California to Spain, and Spain was eager to restore it to the church. Yet how were veterans, grown grey in service on a distant shore, to leave their children, dear though dusky, to the chances of a savage life? Fear, as well as pity, held the clerical policy in check. If left behind, they must remain a progeny of shame, an evidence of moral failure, in the neighbourhood of every