43 in gross, of the colored race, transferable by sale and delivery, like other property. I shall not discuss the point, but leave it to the learned gentlemen who have undertaken to discuss it; but I suppose there is no slave of that description in California now. I understand that peonisun^ a sort ' of penal servitude, exists there, or rather a sort of voluntary sale of a man and his offspring for debt, as it is arranged and exists in some parts of California and some provinces of Mexico. But what I mean to say is, that African slavery, as we see it among us, is as utterly impossible to find itself, or to be found in California and New Mexico, as any other natural impossibility. California and New Mexico are Asiatic in their formation and scenery. They are composed of vast ridges of mountains of enormous height, with broken ridges and deep valleys. The sides of these mountains are barren, entirely barren; their tops capped by perennial snow. There may be ’in California, now made free by its constitution, and no doubt there are, some tracts of valuable land. But it is not so in New Mexico. Pray, what is the evidence which every gentleman must have obtained on this subject, from information sought by himself or communicated by others ? I have inquired and read all I could find, in order to acquire information on this important question. What is there in New Mexico that could, by any possibility, induce any body to go there with slaves ? There are some narrow strips of tillable land on the borders of the rivers ; but the rivers themselves dry up, before midsummer is gone. Alt that the people can do in that region, is to raise some little articles, some little wheat for their tortillas, and all that by irrigation. And who expects to see a hundred*
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