in California. The news was scattered over the civilized world the next spring, and emigrants began to pour in from every country. By the middle of 1849, the town contained a population of 5000, the larger portion being mere adventurers, who were of no permanent advantage to the place. In 1850, the city of San Francisco was incorporated. It has grown rapidly, and having passed successfully through the stormy days of its pioneer history, is now in the enjoyment of a solid prosperity which promises to make it one of the greatest cities of the world.

SAN JOSÉ.

In Santa Clara county, is the third city of the State. It lies in the lovely valley of Santa Clara, on the right bank of the Guadaloupe River, about 8 miles above the head of San Francisco Bay, and about 50 miles south-southeast of San Francisco. It is the most beautiful

place on the Pacific coast, and lies in the "garden district" of the State, and is the centre of a large trade. It is laid off regularly, and is well built. It contains some fine public buildings, and a number of elegant private residences. The climate is one of almost perpetual spring, and the valley is noted for its great beauty.

The city contains a handsome new Court House, the largest and

finest in the State, 7 churches, 3 newspaper offices, several public and private schools, including the female College of Notre Dame, and a good hotel. It is lighted with gas, and is supplied with water by means of artesian wells. It is governed by a Mayor and Council, and in 1870, contained a population of 9089. The port of San José is at Alviso, on the bay, 7 miles distant.

San José was founded in the early part of the present century. It was incorporated as a city in 1850, and was at one time the capital of California.

MISCELLANIES.

SAN FRANCISCO IN 1848-9.

In the early spring of this year (1848), occasional intelligence had been received of the finding of gold in large quantities among the foot hills of the Sierra Nevada. Small parcels of the precious metal had also been forwarded to San Francisco, while visitors from the mines, and some actual diggers arrived, to tell the wonders of the region and the golden gains of those engaged in exploring and working it. In consequence of such representations, the inhabitants began gradually, in bands and singly, to desert their previous occupations, and betake themselves to the American River and other auriferous parts of the great Sacramento Valley. Labor, from the deficiency of hands, rose rapidly in value, and soon all business and work, except the most urgent, was forced to be stopped. Seamen deserted from their ships in the bay, and soldiers from the barracks. Over all the country the excitement was the same. Neither threats, punishment,

nor money could keep men to their most solemn engagements. Gold was the irresistible magnet that drew human souls to the place where it lay, rudely snapping asunder the feebler ties of affection and duty. Avarice and the overweening desire to be suddenly rich, from whence sprang the hope and moral certainty of being so, grew into a disease, and the infection spread on all sides, and led to a general migration of every class of the community to the golden quarters. The daily laborer, who had worked for the good and at the command of another, for one or two dollars a day, could not be restrained from flying to the happy spot where he could earn six or ten times the amount, and might possibly gain a hundred or even a thousand times the sum in one lucky day's chance. Then the life, at worst, promised to be one of continual adventure and excitement, and the miner was his own master. While this was the case with the common laborer, his employer, wanting his services, suddenly found his occupation at an end; while shopkeepers and the like, dependent on both, discovered themselves in the same predicament. The glowing tales of the successful miners all the while reached their ears, and threw their own steady and large gains comparatively in the shade. They therefore could do no better, in a pecuniary sense even, for themselves, than to hasten after their old servants, and share in their new labor and its extraordinary gains, or pack up their former business stock, and, travelling with it to the mines, open their new shops, and stores, and stalls, and dispose of their old articles to the fortunate diggers, at a rise of 500 or 1000 per cent.

In the month of May, it was computed that at least 150 people had left San Francisco, and every day since was adding to their number. Some were occasionally returning from the auriferous quarter; but they had little time to stop and expatiate upon what they had seen. They had hastily come back, as they had hastily gone away at first, leaving their household and business to waste and ruin, now to fasten more properly their houses, and remove goods, family and all, at once to the gold region. Their hurried movements, more even than the words they uttered, excited the curiosity and then the eager desire of others to accompany them. And so And so it was. Day after day the bay was covered with launches, filled with the inhabitants and their goods, hastening up the Sacramento. This state of matters soon came to a head; and master and man alike hurried to the placeres, leaving San Francisco, like a place where the plague reigns, forsaken by its old inhabitants, a melancholy solitude.

On the 29th of May, the Californian published a fly-sheet, apologizing for the future non-issue of the paper, until better days came, when they might expect to retain their servants for some amount of remuneration, which at present was impossible, as all, from the "subs" to the "devil," had indignantly rejected every offer, and gone off to the diggings. "The whole country," said the last editorial of the paper, "from San Francisco to Los Angeles, and from the sea shore to the base of the Sierra Nevada, resounds with the sordid cry of gold! GOLD!! GOLD!!!-while the field is left half planted, the house half built, and everything neglected but the manufacture of shovels and pick-axes, and the means of transportation to the spot where one man obtained $128 worth of the real stuff in one day's washing, and the average for all concerned is twenty dollars per diem."

Within the first eight weeks after the "diggings" had been fairly known, $250,000 had reached San Francisco in gold dust, and within the next eight weeks $600,000 more. These sums were all to purchase, at any price, additional supplies for the mines. Coin grew scarce, and all that was in the country was Gold insufficient to satisfy the increased wants of commerce in one town alone. dust, therefore, soon became a circulating medium, and after some little demur The authorities, at first, was readily received by all classes at $16 an ounce. however, would only accept it in payment of duties at $10 per ounce, with the privilege of redemption, by payment of coin, within a limited time.

When subsequently immigrants began to arrive in numerous bands, any amount of labor could be obtained, provided always a most unusually high price was paid for it. Returned diggers, and those who cautiously had never went to the mines, were then also glad enough to work for rates varying from $12 to $30 a day; at which terms capitalists were somewhat afraid to commence any heavy undertaking. The hesitation was only for an instant. Soon all the labor that could possibly be procured was in ample request at whatever rates were demanded. The population of a great State was suddenly flocking in upon them, and no preparations had hitherto been made for its reception. Building lots had to be surveyed, and streets graded and planked-hills levelled-hollows, lagoons, and the bay itself piled, capped, filled up and planked-lumber, bricks, and all other building materials provided, at most extraordinarily high priceshouses built, finished, and furnished-great warehouses and stores erected— wharves run far out into the sea-numberless tons of goods removed from shipboard, and delivered and shipped anew everywhere-and ten thousand other things had all to be done without a moment's unnecessary delay. Long before

these things were completed, the sand-hills and barren ground around the town were overspread with a multitude of canvas, blanket, and bough-covered tents-the bay was alive with shipping and small craft, carrying passengers and goods backward and forward-the unplanked, ungraded, unformed streets (at one time moving heaps of dry sand and dust; at another, miry abysses, whose treacherous depths sucked in horse and dray, and occasionally man himself) were crowded with human beings from every corner of the universe and of every tongue--all excited and busy, plotting, speaking, working, buying and selling town lots, and beach and water lots, shiploads of every kind of assorted merchandise, the ships themselves, if they could-though that was not often-gold dust in hundred weights, ranches square leagues in extent, with their thousands of cattle-allotments in hundreds of contemplated towns, already prettily designed and laid out— on paper—and, in short, speculating and gambling in every branch of modern commerce, and in many strange things peculiar to the time and place. And everybody made money, and was suddenly growing rich.

The loud voices of the eager seller and as eager buyer-the laugh of reckless joy-the bold accents of successful speculation-the stir and hum of active, hurried labor, as man and brute, horse and bullock, and their guides, struggled and managed through heaps of loose rubbish, over hills of sand, and among deceiving deep mud pools and swamps, filled the amazed newly arrived immigrant with an almost appalling sense of the exuberant life, energy, and enterprise of the place. He breathed quick and faintly-his limbs grew weak as water-and his heart sunk within him as he thought of the dreadful conflict, when he approached and mingled among that confused and terrible business battle.

Gambling saloons, glittering like fairy palaces, like them suddenly sprang into existence, studding nearly all sides of the plaza, and every street in its neighborhood. As if intoxicating drinks from the well plenished and splendid bar they each contained were insufficient to gild the scene, music added its loudest, if not its sweetest, charms; and all was mad, feverish mirth, where fortunes were lost and won, upon the green cloth, in the twinkling of an eye. All classes gambled in those days, from the starchiest white neck-clothed professor to the veriest black rascal that earned a dollar for blacking massa's boots. Nobody had leisure to think, even for a moment, of his occupation, and how it was viewed in Christian lands. The heated brain was never allowed to get cool while a bit of coin or dust was left. These saloons, therefore, were crowded, night and day, by impatient revellers who never could satiate themselves with excitement, nor get rid too soon of their golden heaps.

THE VIGILANCE COMMITTEE.

By the beginning of 1851, San Francisco had become crowded with adventurers of all sorts and from every land. Many were professional criminals, and as the law failed to protect the respectable settlers against their outrages, the citizens were compelled, for their own preservation, to take the matter into their own hands.

Around Clark's Point and vicinity, in San Francisco, was the rendezvous of these villains. "Low drinking and dancing houses, lodging and gambling houses of the same mean class, the constant scenes of lewdness, drunkenness, and strife, abounded in the quarter mentioned. The daily and nightly occupants of these vile abodes had every one, more or less, been addicted to crime; and many of

secure.

them were at all times ready, for the most trifling consideration, to kill a man or fire a town. During the early hours of night, when the Alsatia was in revel, it was dangerous in the highest degree for a single person to venture within its bounds. Even the police hardly dared to enter there; and if they attempted to apprehend some known individuals, it was always in a numerous, strongly-armed company. Seldom, however, were arrests made. The lawless inhabitants of the place united to save their luckless brothers, and génerally managed to drive the assailants away. When the different fires took place in San Francisco, bands. of plunderers issued from this great haunt of dissipation, to help themselves to whatever money or valuables lay in their way, or which they could possibly With these they retreated to their dens, and defied detection or apprehension. Fire, however, was only one means of attaining their ends. The most daring burglaries were committed, and houses and persons rifled of their valuables. Where resistance was made, the bowie-knife or the revolver settled matters, and left the robber unmolested. Midnight assaults, ending in murder, were common. And not only were these deeds perpetrated under the shade of night; but even in daylight, in the highways and byways of the country, in the streets of the town, in crowded bars, gambling saloons and lodging houses, crimes of an equally glaring character were of constant occurrence. People at that period generally carried during all hours, and wherever they happened to be, loaded firearms about their persons; but these weapons availed nothing against the sudden stroke of the 'slung-shot,' the plunge and rip of the knife, or the secret aiming of the pistol. No decent man was in safety to walk the streets. after dark; while at all hours, both of night and day, his property was jeopardized by incendiarism and burglary.

"All this while, the law, whose supposed 'majesty' is so awful in other countries, was here only a matter for ridicule. The police were few in number, and poorly as well as irregularly paid. Some of them were in league with the criminals themselves, and assisted these at all times to elude justice. Subsequent confessions of criminals, on the eve of execution, implicated a considerable number of people in various high and low departments of the executive. Bail was readily accepted in the most serious cases, where the security tendered was absolutely worthless; and where, whenever necessary, both principal and cautioner quietly disappeared. The prisons likewise were small and insecure ; and though filled to overflowing, could no longer contain the crowds of apprehended offenders. When these were ultimately brought to trial, seldom could a conviction be obtained. From technical errors on the part of the prosecutors, laws ill understood and worse applied, false swearing of the witnesses for the prisoners, absence often of the chief evidence for the prosecution, dishonesty of jurors, incapacity, weakness, or venality of the judge, and from many other causes, the cases generally broke down, and the prisoners were freed. Not one criminal had yet been executed. Yet it was notorious that, at this period, at least 100 murders had been committed within the space of a few months; while innumerable were the instances of arson, and of theft, robbery, burglary, and assault with intent to kill. It was evident that the offenders defied and laughed The tedious processes at all the puny efforts of the authorities to control them. of legal tribunals had no terrors for them. As yet everything had been pleasant San Francisco and safe, and they saw no reason why it should not always be so. had just been destroyed, a fifth time, by conflagration. The cities of Stockton and Nevada had likewise shared the same fate. That part of it was the doing of