The revenues derived from these enormous imposts have passed into the pockets of a few individuals, who have placed themselves, by violence or fraud, at the head of the government, and have never reached the public in any beneficial form. These exactions, enforced by an irresponsible tyranny, have kept California poor, have crushed all enterprise, and have rolled back the tide of emigration from her soil as the resisting rock the rushing stream. But the barriers are now broken, and broken forever. California is free, free of Mexican rule and all domestic usurpers.

WEDNESDAY, AUG. 5. We have in one apartment of our prison two Californians, confined for having robbed a United States courier, on his way from Monterey to San Francisco, with public dispatches. They have not yet been tried. Yesterday they applied to me for permission to have their guitars. They stated that their situation was very lonely, and they wanted something to cheer it. Their request was complied with; and last evening, when the streets were still, and the soft moonlight melted through the grates of their prison, their music streamed out upon the quiet air with wonderful sweetness and power. Their voices were in rich harmony with their instruments, and their melodies had a wild and melancholy tone. They were singing, for aught they knew, their own requiem.

THURSDAY, AUG. 6. It sounds strange to an Ameri

can, and much more so to an Englishman, to hear Californians talk of farms. They never speak of acres, or even miles; they deal only in leagues. A farm of four or five leagues is considered quite small. It is not so large, in the conception of this people, as was the one-acre farm of Horace in the estimation of the Romans. Capt. Sutter's farm, in the valley of the Sacramento, is sixty miles long. The Californians speak in the same way of the stock on their farms. Two thousand horses, fifteen thousand head of cattle, and twenty thousand sheep, are only what a thrifty farmer should have before he thinks of killing or selling. They are to be his productive stock, on which he should not encroach, except in an emergency. Only fancy a farm covering sixty miles in length! Why, a man would want a railroad through it for his own private use. Get out of the way, ye landlords of England and patroons of Amsterdam, with your boroughs and dykes, and give place to the Californian with his sixty mile sweep!

FRIDAY, AUG. 7. The Mormon ship Brooklyn, which we left at Honolulu, has arrived at San Francisco, and her passengers have debarked on the shores of that magnificent bay. They have not yet selected their lands. The natives hold them in great horror. They seem to think cannibalism among the least of their enormities. They consider the term Mormon the most branding epithet that can be applied to a man. A mother complained to me, a few

days since, that a gentleman in Monterey had struck her son and called him a Mormon.

She dwelt with

great earnestness on the opprobrious character of the epithet, and appeared to consider its application to her son a higher crime than that of his fist. I told her what sort of people these Mormons were; but it was to her as if I had represented Satan as an angel of light. I lectured the wrong-doer.

SATURDAY, AUG. 8. Capt. Fauntleroy, of the Savannahı, and Maj. Snyder, with fifty mounted men under their command, occupy San Juan, which lies inland about thirty miles from Monterey. A report reached them a few days since, that a hundred wild Indians had descended upon the town of San José and driven off over two hundred horses. They started immediately with twenty men, well mounted, got upon their trail, and came up with them at a distance of sixty miles. The Indians finding themselves hotly pressed, left their horses and took to the bush, throwing back upon their pursuers the most wild and frantic imprecations. Three or four of their number only were killed. The denseness of the forest and the approach of night rendered further pursuit impracticable.

The horses were all recaptured and brought back to their owners, who received them with acclamations of surprise and gratitude. This was the first time, they said, that their property had been rescued from savages by the government, and they run up the

American flag. This prompt interference of Capt. Fauntleroy and Maj. Snyder will do more to win the confidence of the Californians than forty orations delivered in the most liquid Spanish that ever rolled

from a Castilian tongue.

There is something in

action which the most simple can appreciate, and which the most crafty cannot gainsay.

SUNDAY, AUG. 9. I officiated to-day on board the Savannah. The weather was pleasant, and several gentlemen from the shore attended. There was no service in the Roman Catholic Church, owing to the absence of one of the priests and the infirmities of the other. But when there is service, only a few of the people attend. It is sometimes, however, forced upon them in the shape of penance. When a friend of mine here was married, it was necessary that he should confess. The penance imposed on him for his previous negligences and transgressions was, that he should attend church seven Sabbaths.

CHAPTER II.

FECUNDITY OF THE CALIFORNIANS.-FIRST INTELLIGENCE OF THE WAR.WILD INDIANS ON BOARD SHIP. THE CHIEF.-FIRST NEWSPAPER PUBLISHED IN CALIFORNIA.-RAISING THE MATERIALS.-THE RIVAL SUITORS. -FLIGHT OF GEN. CASTRO.-A CALIFORNIAN ON HORSEBACK.

MONDAY, AUG. 10. The fecundity of the Californians is remarkable, and must be attributed in no small degree to the effects of the climate. It is no uncommon sight to find from fourteen to eighteen children at the same table, with their mother at their head. There is a lady of some note in Monterey, who is the mother of twenty-two living children. The youngest is at the breast, and must soon, it is said, relinquish his place to a new-comer, who will, in all probability, be allowed only the same brevity of bliss.

There is a lady in the department below who has twenty-eight children, all living, in fine health, and who may share the "envied kiss" with others yet to come. What a family-what a wife-what a mother! I have more respect for the shadow of that woman than for the living presence of the mincing being who raises a whole village if she has one child, and then puts it to death with sugar-plums. woman with one child is like a hen with one chicken; there is an eternal scratch about nothing.

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