Democratic Sentinel, Volume 16, Number 34, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 September 1892 — Spanish Laziness. [ARTICLE]

Spanish Laziness.

“One reason for the existence of the tremendous trees in California is the averseness of the Spaniards to felling trees or cutting live timber of any sort, ” said G. A. Satterlee of Los Angeles, Cal., at the Southern. “The Spaniards, you know, two centuries ago pushed their way through Mexico to California, and save the clearing of paths through the dense forests not a twig did their axes chop down. Nor do the Spaniards transplanted to this continent ever destroy timber. With stubborn pertinaciousness strangely at variance with their lethargic dispositions they continue to build their houses of stone and mortar at great expense of money and physical exertion when timber in abundance surrounds them out of which they could construct log houses, as did other pioneers, at a minimum of cost and labor. Why, the Spaniard doesn’t even fell trees for firewood, but picks up dead limbs as they fall to the ground, or pulls them from the trees with his lariat.”—[St Louis Globe-Democrat.