William Hepworth Dixon, White Conquest: Volume 1

Fray Junipero tried to stop this sale of girls, but his successors winked at customs which they had no means of putting down. Castro and Alvaredo hoped to crush this traffic, but their secular energies were worsted in the vain attempt. Neither Liberal Mexico nor Independent California was equal to the task of wrestling with this evil. Indians sold their children to Spanish dons and Mexican caballeros, just as Georgians and Circassians sold their girls to Greek skippers and Turkish pashas.

Even under the Stars and Stripes, and in a region governed by American law, the trade goes on; less openly and briskly than in olden times; but still the Red man's daughters are bought and sold, even in the neighbourhood of American courts. It is a custom of the country, which, like other maladies, attacks the stranger when he lands. You catch a local custom very much as you catch a local disease. There is a fight between your constitution and the malady. If you can compromise-you live; if not --you die.

“Yes, Senior!” says the Portuguese sailor, “we ”