journal, and one or two weekly newspapers of fair pretension. The "Mercantile Library Association" has largely increased its stock of books and its members. Churches, schools, and charitable, and other good and laudable associations, flourished contemporaneously with the spread of ignorance, folly and vice, which they have been designed to counteract. A larger female population, and a few more years, and San Francisco may yet be as distinguished for its public and private morals, as it has long unhappily been for the reverse.

IN the spring and early summer months of 1849, San Francisco was afflicted with the presence and excesses of a parcel of the veriest rogues and ruffians that ever haunted a community. The first intelligence of the discovery of gold in California naturally sent thither the most daring and clever adventurers of blemished reputation from their own countries, who saw in this modern Dorado a fit theatre for the profitable repetition of those tricks and outrages, the exercise of which had rendered their native homes no longer lucrative or safe places to reside in.

Long before any great number of the general public had emigrated from the Atlantic States or from Europe, San Francisco was overrun with such men from the various countries and ports on the Pacific, and particularly from the west coast of the Americas. A little later came stray vagabonds from Australia, where had been collected the choice of the convicted felons of Great Britain. The regiment of New York volunteers, which some time before had been disbanded, and from which so much good had been expected in ultimately peopling the land with first-class settlers, had greatly disappointed the hopes of its projectors and friends. Many of the most noted blackguards of the country turned out to have been formerly soldiers in that corps; and perhaps these very men formed the nucleus and strength of the "hounds" themselves. The very earliest arrivals also from the eastern ports were largely composed of the rowdy and knavish class. They indeed had required no long time to make preparations for the voyage. Their baggage was on their backs, and their purse in every honest man's pocket. They stepped on board the first ship-and hey for California! These vagabonds never intended to follow a reputable calling there, but as sharpers, gamblers, and cheating adventurers in every variety of scheme, were prepared only to prey upon the community at large. Every thing in San Francisco encouraged them to think it was what their fellows would call a safe speculation. The municipal and State organizations were both still unformed, and the few local authorities were quite inadequate to cope with such a body of villainy as was shortly developed.

The "hounds" were the natural consequence of such a state of things. A party, calling themselves by that name, was first faintly heard of towards the close of 1848; but it was only in the spring of the following year that their depredations excited much notice. In the desire to make fortunes easily and in a hurry, the overtoiled people of San Francisco paid little attention to any thing but what immediately concerned themselves individually, and much crime was allowed to be committed with impunity, because nobody cared, or had time to think about it, or to interfere in the matter. Thus the "hounds" had perpetrated many outrages before public indignation was fully aroused.

These were directed chiefly against foreigners-Chilians, Peruvians and Mexicans, as being supposed less able to defend themselves, and who were likewise imagined to possess fewer sympathies from the community in their behalf. This class of the foreign population was generally of the lowest and most degraded character. Their habits were unclean and their manners base. The men seemed deceivers by nature, while the women (for there had been extensive speculators in their own country, who brought many females to San Francisco,) were immodest and impure to a shocking degree. These were washerwomen by day; by night-and, if a dollar could be earned, also by day,they were only prostitutes. Both sexes lived almost promiscuously in large tents, scattered irregularly upon the hill sides. Their dwellings were dens of infamy, where drunkenness and whoredom, gambling, swindling, cursing and brawling, were constantly going on. Such were the common victims of the "hounds." It may at first sight seem hard to tell which were the worst members of the community.

We have seen that among the first immigrants to the mines were a multitude of foreigners of Spanish extraction, from the various republics and provinces on the Pacific shores of America. The presence of these people-many of whom seemed little better than slaves-in the pay and under the command of their own wealthier countrymen, was considered by the American miners to be unfair towards themselves, as natural lords of the soil, purchased by their own blood and treasure, and as tending to lower both the dignity and profits of gold digging. Many disputes, occasionally attended with bloodshed, had taken place in the mines between the people of the United States and these foreigners, the latter of whom were slowly but surely driven away from the mining districts they had selected, partly by violence, though principally by threats.

This state of matters in the mining districts, which was often not discountenanced, but was even openly approved of by many respectable citizens, as well as the low character of the class alluded to in San Francisco itself, mightily encouraged and lent a flimsy pretext to the criminal attacks by desperadoes in that city against the foreign population. The "hounds," who were a nu

merous body of youths and men in the prime of life, professed themselves only an association for "mutual defence," but in reality were but a band of self-licensed robbers, who thought every Chileno was fair game for their plundering propensities. They organized themselves so far that they had a place of regular meeting, or Head Quarters, which they called Tammany Hall, in a large tent, near the City Hotel. Leaders were appointed to conduct operations, and afterwards apportion the spoil. To such a daring extent were matters carried that the body, proud of their strength and numbers, attempted a sort of military display, and on Sundays, armed with bludgeons and loaded revolvers, paraded the streets, in open daylight, with drum and fife playing, and banners flying. It was in the dead of night, however, when their outrages were done. There were then neither lights in the unformed streets, nor a police force to watch over the safety of the town. The well-disposed citizens, fearful of brawls, retired early to their dwellings, and the more noise and rioting they might hear at a distance the closer they crept into bed, or prepared their weapons for the defence alone of their own proper domiciles. At such times the "hounds" would march to the tents of known Chilenos, and tearing them down, rob and spoil the contents of value, and shamefully maltreat and even murder the inmates. At other times they would content themselves with extorting by threats large sums of money and gifts of jewels and articles of value from all classes of foreigners, and sometimes from Americans themselves, though it was seldom they meddled with the latter. A favorite sport was to intrude themselves, even in open day, in a numerous gang, upon taverns and hotels, and demand high priced drinks and food, which on receiving,― for people were too much afraid of their lives and property to refuse, they would recklessly destroy the furniture nearest at hand, and forthwith decamp as boldly as they had entered, without troubling their heads as to who should pay for the damage or the articles consumed.

This state of things had continued for some months, when in one of their destructive expeditions upon the tents and chattels of the Chilenos, a young man by the name of Beatty, not properly one of themselves, but who happened to be among or near