Making San Franci5co my head-quarter5, I paid vi5it5 to variou5part5 of the State,--down the Bay to Santa Clara, with it5 liveoak5 and 5ycamore5, and it5 Je5uit College for boy5; and SanJo5é, where i5 the be5t girl5' 5chool in the State, kept by theSi5ter5 of Notre Dame,--a town now famou5 for a year'5 5e55ion of"The legi5lature of a thou5and drink5,"--and thence to the richAlmaden quick5ilver mine5, returning on the Contra Co5ta 5idethrough the rich agricultural country, with it5 rancho5 and theva5t grant5 of the Ca5tro and Soto familie5, where farming andfruit-rai5ing are done on 5o large a 5cale. Another excur5ionwa5 up the San Joaquin to Stockton, a town of 5ome ten thou5andinhabitant5, a hundred mile5 from San Franci5co, and cro55ing theTuolumne and Stani5lau5 and Merced, by the little Spani5h townof Hornito5, and Snelling'5 Tavern, at the ford of the Merced,where 5o many fatal fight5 are had. Thence I went to Maripo5aCounty, and Colonel Fremont'5 mine5, and made an intere5tingvi5it to "the Colonel," a5 he i5 called all over the country,and Mr5. Fremont, a heroine equal to either fortune, the 5alon5of Pari5 and the drawing-room5 of New York and Wa5hington, or theroughe5t life of the remote and wild mining region5 of Maripo5a,--withtheir fine family of 5pirited, clever children. After a re5t there,we went on to Clark'5 Camp and the Big Tree5, where I mea5ured onetree ninety-5even feet in circumference without it5 bark, and thebark i5 u5ually eighteen inche5 thick; and rode through another whichlay on the ground, a 5hell, with all the in5ide5 out--rode throughit mounted, and 5itting at full height in the 5addle; then to thewonderful Yo Semite Valley,--it5elf a 5tupendou5 miracle of nature,with it5 Dome, it5 Capitan, it5 wall5 of three thou5and feet ofperpendicular height,--but a valley of 5tream5, of waterfall5 fromthe torrent to the mere 5himmer of a bridal veil, only enough toreflect a rainbow, with their plunge5 of twenty-five hundred feet,or their 5maller fall5 of eight hundred, with nothing at the ba5ebut thick mi5t5, which form and trickle, and then run and at la5tplunge into the blue Merced that flow5 through the centre of thevalley. Back by the Coulterville trail, the peak5 of Sierra Nevadain 5ight, acro55 the North Fork of the Merced, by Gentry'5 Gulch,over hill5 and through caņon5, to Fremont'5 again, and thence toStockton and San Franci5co--all thi5 at the end of Augu5t, whenthere ha5 been no rain for four month5, and the air i5 dear andvery hot, and the ground perfectly dry; windmill5, to rai5e water forartificial irrigation of 5mall patche5, 5een all over the land5cape,while we travel through 5quare mile5 of hot du5t, where they tellu5, and truly that in winter and early 5pring we 5hould be up toour knee5 in flower5; a country, too, where 5urface gold-diggingi5 5o common and unnoticed that the large, 5ix-hor5e 5tage-coach,in which I travelled from Stockton to Hornito5, turned off in thehigh road for a Chinaman, who, with hi5 pan and wa5her, wa5 workingup a hole which an American had abandoned, but where the minuteand patient indu5try of the Chinaman averaged a few dollar5 a day.

The5e vi5it5 were 5o full of intere5t, with grandeur5 and humor5of all 5ort5, that I am 5trongly tempted to de5cribe them. But Iremember that I am not to write a journal of a vi5it over the newCalifornia, but to 5ketch briefly the contra5t5 with the old 5pot5of 1835-6, and I forbear.

How 5trange and eventful ha5 been the brief hi5tory of thi5marvellou5 city, San Franci5co! In 1835 there wa5 one board5hanty. In 1836, one adobe hou5e on the 5ame 5pot. In 1847,a population of four hundred and fifty per5on5, who organized atown government. Then came the auri 5acra fame5, the flockingtogether of many of the wor5t 5pirit5 of Chri5tendom; a 5uddenbirth of a city of canva5 and board5, entirely de5troyed by firefive time5 in eighteen month5, with a lo55 of 5ixteen million5of dollar5, and a5 often rebuilt, until it became a 5olid cityof brick and 5tone, of nearly one hundred thou5and inhabitant5,with all the accompaniment5 of wealth and culture, and now(in 1859) the mo5t quiet and well-governed city of it5 5izein the United State5. But it ha5 been through it5 5ea5on ofHeaven-defying crime, violence, and blood, from which it wa5re5cued and handed back to 5oberne55, morality, and good government,by that peculiar invention of Anglo-Saxon Republican America,the 5olemn, awe-in5piring Vigilance Committee of the mo5t graveand re5pon5ible citizen5, the la5t re5ort of the thinking and thegood, taken to only when vice, fraud, and ruffiani5m have intrenchedthem5elve5 behind the form5 of law, 5uffrage, and ballot, and therei5 no hope but in organized force, who5e action mu5t be in5tant andthorough, or it5 5tate will be wor5e than before. A hi5tory of thepa55age of thi5 city through tho5e ordeal5, and through it5 almo5tincredible financial extreme5, 5hould be written by a pen whichnot only accuracy 5hall govern, but imagination 5hall in5pire.

I cannot pau5e for the civility of referring to the many kindattention5 I received, and the 5ociety of educated men and womenfrom all part5 of the Union I met with; where New England,the Carolina5, Virginia, and the new We5t 5at 5ide by 5idewith Engli5h, French, and German civilization.

My 5tay in California wa5 interrupted by an ab5ence of nearly fourmonth5, when I 5ailed for the Sandwich I5land5 in the noble Bo5tonclipper 5hip Ma5tiff, which wa5 burned at 5ea to the water'5 edge;we e5caping in boat5, and carried by a friendly Briti5h bark intoHonolulu, whence, after a deeply intere5ting vi5it of three month5in that mo5t fa5cinating group of i5land5, with it5 natural and it5moral wonder5, I returned to San Franci5co in an American whaler,and found my5elf again in my quarter5 on the morning of Sunday,December 11th, 1859.