The French population of California is very considerable, amounting to probably from ten to fifteen thousand, though, as comparatively few of its members become naturalized, it is not so easy to estimate its numbers. In itself it is more completely organized than any other class of the population, having its own benevolent societies, hospitals, military companies, savings-banks, press, and other institutions, all distinctively French in their management. The Italians, who are nearly as numerous as the French, resemble them in the number of their national organizations; but they are not as well managed as those of the former. The Italians are engaged chiefly in trade, fishing, and gardening, in which pursuits they are industrious and usually prosperous. The French are engaged in almost every avocation. The Italians have a national church in San Francisco, and the French have a special pastor attached to one of the parochial churches of the city for their benefit.
The Sclavonians from Austria are also a numerous body; they usually are classed with the Italians, though possessing several associations of their own nationality. Nearly one half of them are schismatics; and the Russian government has lately established a schismatic church in San Francisco for their use and that of the few Russians residing there. It is even in contemplation to make that city the residence of the Bishop of Sitka, who has recently been transferred along with his flock to the allegiance of the United States, but who, nevertheless, still receives his orders from the Russian synod. It is a curious example of the way religious affairs are managed among the subjects of the czar, that the president of the Sclavonian Church Society is a German Lutheran, who fills the office of Russian consul, and on that account alone is considered sufficiently qualified to direct the spiritual concerns of his fellow-subjects.
The Chinese form a very large, and, in many respects, the strangest element in the population of the Pacific coast. They are spread through all its States and territories, and, according to the most reliable accounts, number at least a hundred thousand. Few of them have families, or ever intend to settle permanently in the country, but after a few years' toil as servants or laborers they almost invariably return to China. The immense majority of them are pagans or atheists, and they have several temples or joss-houses in different cities of California. A few Catholics, however, are to be found among them, and a small chapel has lately been opened in San Francisco for their special use. The morals of the pagan Chinese are of the most licentious kind, and slavery in its worst form exists among them in spite of the laws, their ignorance of the language acting as an effectual bar to their availing themselves of its safeguards to personal freedom. As in all other Chinese settlements, so in California, they have practically a government of their own, under the name of companies, the chief men of which exercise almost absolute authority over their countrymen, extending, it is believed, occasionally to the infliction of capital punishment. The white laboring classes are bitterly opposed to the Chinese, on account of the low rate of wages for which they work, and the belief that they are slaves of the companies; but nevertheless their numbers are steadily on the increase, and it is not impossible but they may eventually become the majority of the population of the entire Pacific slope.
The greater part of the preceding remarks are applicable mainly to California and the adjoining mining territories of Nevada, Montana, Idaho, and Arizona, which have been chiefly settled from it, and whose inhabitants partake of the character of its people. The State of Oregon and the adjoining territory of Washington number a population of nearly two hundred thousand, of an entirely different character from that of California.
While Catholic missionaries were the first settlers in California, the colonization of Oregon was mainly effected under the direction of Methodist ministers and the auspices of the Methodist Church. Catholic priests, it is true, had preceded Methodism on its soil, and the present Archbishop of Portland and the Vicar-Apostolic of Vancouver had visited its Indian tribes in 1838; but the Methodist colonies, which arrived in the country a few years later, were deeply imbued with hatred to Catholicity, and a good deal of their intolerant spirit still remains among the people. The Jesuits have been, indeed, very successful in converting and civilizing the Indians; but the white population, with the exception of a few Canadian colonies and a not very large number of Catholics in the city of Portland and the mining districts of southern Oregon, is mainly under Methodist influence. Indeed, so high did anti-Catholic prejudice run among the first settlers of Oregon, that a Methodist conference seriously proposed to Mr. Lane, the first governor of the territory, to expel all Catholics from his jurisdiction by force, a proposition which it is scarcely needful to say he indignantly rejected. Of late years, however, the number of Catholics is on the increase, and with the greater facilities for settlement offered by the lines of railroads now in course of construction, their numbers will no doubt grow still faster in the future. Portland in Oregon is an archiepiscopal see, and Washington territory is a separate diocese, so that Catholic immigrants need not fear the want of religious aids in spite of the limited number of their fellow-worshippers in these northern districts of the Pacific coast.
Such, in brief, is the past history and the present state of the church beyond the Rocky Mountains; and a Catholic can hardly fail to find in them the brightest hopes for its future. Obstacles will have to be encountered, no doubt; fights be fought and sacrifices made; but the successes which Catholicity has already achieved, and the vantage-ground she now occupies in California, leave little reason to doubt of her final triumph. The soil, fertilized by the sweat and blood of the Franciscan missionaries, cannot prove a barren one; and no part of the Union gives promise of a richer harvest than that California which a few years ago was regarded throughout the world as the chosen abode of lawlessness and crime.
OUR LADY'S NATIVITY.
Star of the morning, how still was thy shining,
When its young splendor arose on the sea!
Only the angels, the secret divining,
Hailed the long-promised, the chosen, in thee.