fish being far over the average size in the East and ranging from twenty to fifty pounds weight. This business must ere long be one of the most considerable items of the commercial resources of California. Who can tell the limit of the capabilities of this State? All it has accomplished is but preparatory to new exhibitions of power and wealth. Its career lies yet before it. The telegraph has already furnished nerves to the land, by which the impulses of its distant parts are communicated to its great sensorium commune-its brain at San Francisco. Railroads, too, those great arteries by which vivifying nourishment is carried to and from the remotest members of its body, soon will be completed. The Sacramento Valley Railroad from Sacramento to Mormon Island, now projected, will be the pioneer of this improvement. All these facts, together with the extensive shipbuilding carried on at Happy Valley and the Rincon, are preparing the State, and San Francisco particularly, for the great part she has yet to play. Into the past six years, have been crowded the most remarkable and important events that have occurred to our country since its revolutionary birth; and the great pole to which they have all tended is San Francisco. California henceforth will no longer direct her energies on herself. She has attained her majority and donned her freedom-suit, ready to start upon the field of adventure. Foreign relations are engaging the thoughts of citizens and government; hence the ease with which such expeditions as those of the Count de Boulbon and President Walker are fitted up, and the apparent official countenance bestowed on them. Vessels are already departing for Japan, and numerous companies are being formed for foreign traffic. Two of these are in the full tide of success,-one for the importation of ice from Russian America, and the other for the mining of coal in Bellingham Bay, Puget Sound, Washington Territory. The establishment by Congress of the line of mail steamers between San Francisco and Shanghae, and the great treaty with Japan, come fortuitously to meet and give a field for this new and longing spirit. The Pacific between this country and Asia has at last been bridged over: California, the Sandwich Islands, Japan and China are the great piers-white sails, and great steamers in continuous lines, will span the intervals. Let the Interoceanic

Railway now be built, and San Francisco will then be the great entrepôt of America, the Tyre of the Pacific,—and California, the most populous, enlightened, and civilized country in the world.

The project of extending the water-front of the city (already noticed at length), was revived in the Legislature this year. However, political disputes among its supposed patrons, and the parties pecuniarily interested in the scheme, as well as clamant remonstrances of all San Francisco-collectively, in boards, associations and committees; and individually, by public-meetings and signed petitions-had the effect of causing this unnecessary, unjust, and perhaps "infamous" project, to be abandoned. The new city charter was likewise lost in the Legislature. On the expediency of passing this charter as a whole, public opinion was divided, although many of its provisions were generally admitted to be improvements on the existing charter. Many other bills, introduced in the legislative chambers, and which were peculiarly obnoxious to large classes of the citizens, were likewise lost. While we write, the claim of San Francisco is being pleaded before the Board of Land Commissioners, established by the United States, to settle disputed titles in California to four square leagues of land around the city, in virtue of its being, as alleged, a Mexican "pueblo." Whatever be the result of the claim, many private titles to lots within the municipal bounds will be deeply affected by the decision, and for a time "confusion, worse confounded," will reign among property-holders. Pending the discussion, many parties are busy over all the four square leagues in question, selecting convenient and desirable "claims ;" and outrages of a daring description are continually taking place between the old settlers and the new squatters, in consequence of these lawless proceedings.

San Franciscans can now ask for nothing more on the score of domestic comforts. Their streets and houses are well lighted by a beautiful gas-light; they dwell in elegant and handsomelyfurnished houses; their tables are largely supplied with fish, flesh, and fowl from the mountains, rivers and valleys of their teeming land; they have pure and limpid water for drink and cleanliness, in no stinted measures; and, finally, they have discov

ered, near at home, a boundless supply of excellent stone-coal, sufficient to satisfy all their demands for fuel, in cooking their meals, melting their gold, driving their steam-engines and drying their houses in their wet seasons. Bellingham Bay now furnishes the great demand of the city. Hitherto, all the coal used was brought, at great expense, partly from Vancouver's

Island and Chili, but chiefly from such immense distances as Philadelphia, Liverpool, and other foreign parts. In 1849 and 1850, the townspeople were furnished with fuel by men, chiefly of the lower class of Hispano-Americans, who cut it from the little gnarled oaks and thick brushwood grown on the low sand-hills bordering the town-not a stump of which is now to be seen. Wood and charcoal were brought into the city either on the backs of these men, or in panniers carried by asses, and two dollars were paid for as much as a man could carry in his arms. The charcoal men are yet features of the place. They an

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nounce their coming by the ringing of a small bell, and may be seen in every street offering their little bundles for sale.

The old round of business, pleasure, folly, vice and crime, still went merrily on, Cases of divorce were nearly as common as cases of drunkenness. Cases of political corruption, of party jobbery, of personal scandal, of ruin by debauchery and gambling, by duelling and suicide, of squatter violence, of robbery and burglary, of assault and murder-why, these were, as before, \ nearly "as plentiful as blackberries." It is unnecessary to single out particular cases for remark and reproach. Every day produced a new crop of moral weeds. Still San Francisco contrived to flourish, and its people, in their fashion, to enjoy life. To enforce some measure of outward decency, the common council passed a stringent ordinance regarding houses of ill-fame, making the keeping of them highly penal. This ordinance had the effect, for a time, of closing a few of the most notorious Mexican and Chinese brothels. But it was sought to be enforced against fashionable white Cyprians, who had money enough to employ able counsel to show the intrinsically illegal and tyrannous character of its particular provisions; and then it was found to be utterly impracticable in operation. It seemed all at once to be discovered, that the impurity which was hid by walls, could not be put down by mere legislation.

and

Duels appeared to be getting more numerous. In the months of May and June several fatal "affairs of honor" took place, and the performance with swords by a couple of French† men varied the monotony of pistols and rifles, and introduced a new fashion for the benefit of future gladiators. Occasionally the death of some well-known citizen would rouse the press the pulpit to a spasmodic burst of indignation and high-toned sentiment against the foolish and criminal practice of settling personal quarrels by mortal combat. The public looked wise, savage, and virtuous, and talked and drank; then it looked wiser, and so on, and talked and drank again. Still nothing was done, or perhaps could be done, in the matter. Grand juries occasionally offered a proper presentment on the subject, but their words fell dead. Men in California, who generally want the peaceful, endearing joys of home and family, which best

make life worth living for, set little value on existence, and in their hot rage will hazard it for the veriest trifle.

California Exchange, corner of Clay and Kearny streets, June, 1854.

Theatrical entertainments have never been so well patronized in San Francisco as during the past half year. A rapid succession of musical and dramatic "stars" attracted continual crowds. to the various "houses." English, French and Italian versions of the most noted modern operas were excellently performed in the Metropolitan and Union Theatres, where four ladies, who each claimed the rank of prima donna, successively appeared. At the theatres named, though particularly at the Metropolitan and American, some of the most celebrated American actors and actresses made their regular nightly appearance. These, it is said, have reaped a large harvest from their professional visit to the land and the city of gold. The San Franciscans, truly, are no niggards with their wealth.

A few of the immense number of daily newspapers, existing at the beginning of 1854, have silently disappeared. In their stead have risen the "Pioneer," a monthly magazine of great typographical beauty and considerable literary merit; a Chinese