force of moral influences in the government of his crew, and is well sustained in its exertion by his intelligent officers. It is rarely that you meet with a commander in the service who is indifferent to the religious character of his crew. If he has no religion himself, still he respects it in others, and places his greatest reliance where it exerts a controlling influence. Religion, wherever possessed, vindicates its celestial origin.

The captain of a whale-ship applied to Mr. Damon, of Honolulu, to preach on board his vessel, stating very frankly that he had no religion himself, but then he wanted his ship to appear "a little decent." Now when a captain applies for a religious service to give an air of respectability to his vessel, it shows that moral truth is in the ascendancy, at least in the dignity of its claims. There was a time when no such expedient was deemed necessary; but a higher light has struck the mariners who float the great Pacific. Their hosannas will yet be rolled to heaven in concert with the loud anthem of her many-voiced waves.

CHAPTER X.

DESTRUCTION OF DOGS-THE WASH-TUB MAIL.-THE SURRENDER IN THE NORTH.-ROBBING THE CALIFORNIANS.-DEATH-SCENE IN A SHANTY.THE MEN WHO TOOK UP ARMS.-ARRIVAL OF THE INDEPENDENCE.DESTITUTION OF OUR TROOPS.-CAPTURE OF LOS ANGELES.

MONDAY, JAN. 11. I never expected, when threading the streets of Constantinople, where dogs inherit the rights of citizenship, to encounter such multitudes of them in any other part of the world. But California is more than a match for the Ottoman capital. Here you will find in every little village a thousand dogs, who never had a master: every farm-house has some sixty or eighty; and every Indian drives his cart with thirty or forty on its trail. They had become so troublesome, that an order was given a few days since to thin their ranks. The marines, with their muskets, were to be the executioners. The order, of course, very naturally runs into dog-erels.

The dogs, the dogs! my gallant lads

Let cach one seize his gun,

And lead the battle's fiery van,

Though Mars himself should run.

Remember Lodi's blazing bridge,
Marengo's shaking plain,

And Borodino's thunder-clouds,
Where Cossacks fell like rain.

TUESDAY, JAN. 12. After three weeks, in which we had a cloudless sky and balmy air, the wind has hauled into the southeast, and a gentle rain has commenced falling. Its having crept upon us so softly, is a symptom that it will continue with us some time. The first break of sunshine may be a week hence.

Wednesday, Jan. 13. We have no intelligence, as yet, from the seat of war. The solicitude of the public to know the result is at the highest pitch. No one doubts that the issue has been very decisive. A report reached us to-day that the town of los Angeles had been taken by our troops, and that a large portion of the Californians had laid down their arms. This rumor comes through the washerwomen of this place. They get their intelligence from the Indians, who cross the streams in which they wash their clothes. Singular as this sort of mail may seem, it very often conveys news, not only with wonderful dispatch, but with extraordinary accuracy.

The first capture of los Angeles, by Com. Stockton, was announced here by these washerwomen; they were also the first to spread the intelligence of the breaking out of the insurrection at the same place, and knew of the retreat of the Americans at San Pedro before any other class of people in Monterey. So much for a wash-tub mail. You may think lightly of it as of the soap-bubbles that break over its rim; but if you are wise you will heed its intelligence. It is an old mail that has long been run in California; and has announced more revolutions, plots, and counterplots, than there are mummies in Memphis. Who, in other lands, would dream of going to an old woman, washing her clothes in a mountain stream, for the first tidings of events in which the destinies of nations tremble? Mr. Morse need hardly come here with his magnetic machine. One of these women would snap

the news from a napkin or shirt before his lightningmail had got under way.

THURSDAY, JAN. 14. The small party of Californians who recently took up arms on the bay of San Francisco, soon increased to two hundred. They were, with few exceptions, men of the better stampmen who had a permanent interest in the soil, and who had refused to join the rash spirits at the south. They had captured Mr. Bartlett, the chief magistrate of the jurisdiction, and several other Americans, whom they held as hostages.

Capt. Marston, with fifty men from the Savannah, and Capt. Maddox, with a company of mounted volunteers, and Capt. Weber, with another band of resolute spirits, met them. A general and decisive engagement was anticipated; but after a few hours of pretty sharp fighting, the Californians withdrew from Santa Clara, which was entered by our forces. A flag of truce was sent in, and the leading spirits on both sides assembled under the shadows of a great native oak. The Californians stated that they had taken up arms, not to make war on the American flag, but to protect themselves from the depredations of those who, under color of that flag, were plundering them of their cattle, horses, and grain; and that on assurance being given that these acts of lawless violence should cease, they were ready to return quietly to their homes. These demands were not enforced in a spirit of menace, but with that moral