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say that the Mexican Indians, in the days of Montezuma, were not infinitely inferior to those who, ages before, had possessed the country? When we remember the stupendous structures, whose scattered remains fill us with astonishment, and almost superstitious awe; when we bear in mind that indubitable indications still exist of vast cities, covering many square miles of territory, filled with sculptured relics of an unknown order of architecture; and when we take into consideration that these ruins must date centuries beyond the era of Cortez-we become bewildered and lost in the mazes of antiquity, and almost shrink from the task of accounting for these vestiges of an earlier world. Still we cannot avoid conjecturing that here was the seat of a powerful empire; and this conviction forces itself so strongly upon our minds, that we cannot help speculating upon the character of the wonderful people who built those extensive cities, whose desolate ruins appeal to us from the gloomy solitudes of ancient forests, which have sprung up in their long-forgotten highways, and, by the simple power of vegetation, have overturned their gorgeous temples and palaces.

Looking far beyond the day of the Spanish conquest, we are constrained to believe, that a comparatively civilized people inhabited Mexico, and in endeavoring to solve the mystery of their disappearance, nothing has seemed more probable than that the northern Indians swooped down from their mountains and forests, and overran the effeminate children of the south, sunk in luxury and sloth. When Rome subdued Greece, the Greeks in their turn are said to have vanquished their conquerors, by imparting to them the arts and refinements of civilization. At that time, however, the Romans themselves were making advances in arts as well as arms, and were in a fit state to receive the softening influences of Grecian culture. But when the barbarians of the north overwhelmed the Roman Empirethen the seat of art, literature, and learning-the result

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was the reverse of that which followed the subjugation of Greece. Barbarism was in the ascendant, and not only rejected all alliance with the humanities, but nearly overwhelmed civilization, which for centuries lurked only in bye-places, while the bulk of Europe was wrapped in the dark pall of ignorance, and governed by the brutal law of physical force, but little improved by the influence of religious superstition and intolerance.

And now for the point of this profound disquisition. Why should not the northern tribes of Indians have overrun Mexico centuries ago, and mingled with the civilized people who built those ancient cities, without wholly destroying them? Why should they not have become inseparably intermingled with the more luxurious southern race, as the conquering Tartars have done with respect to the original Chinese? Why may it not have been that Montezuma flourished at a time when the ancient and almost forgotten arts were in process of restoration, and the people in a transition state, and on the eve of a revival of learning? My theory supposes that the ancient inhabitants. were completely merged in the invaders, and that their institutions became extinct, or existed so faintly as to be scarcely perceptible; yet that in process of time a decided improvement took place in the condition of the descendants. of the invaders, the feeble light flickering from the Past shedding a dim ray over the dawning Future. But what has this to do with the Indians of California? It has everything to do with them. I will not stop to argue that a country so admirably adapted for the abode of man has been, for many centuries, inhabited by the human race. I will assume thus much, and leave the antediluvians to dispute the postulate if they dare. Now, upon the hypothesis that the savage Northmen penetrated the continent as far south as Mexico, it follows that they passed through California, then perhaps inhabited by a large tribe of Indians, possessing a national character, and having some acquain

tance with the arts, but immeasurably behind the mysterious builders of those ruined cities in Mexico and Central America. California, being on the route to the principal seat of conquest, shared the fate which usually attends intervening countries lying on the conqueror's road,-the people being massacred and plundered without mercy. Its proximity to the northern tribes probably subjected it to constant incursions, until its people were so incessantly harassed and persecuted that their bond of union was violently sundered, and they were compelled to seek safety by breaking up into scattered communities, and like the nomadic tribes of Arabia, to shift their habitations from place to place.

Theories are day-dreams, and at the best are scarcely more than "airy nothings." While, therefore, a theorist has no right to plume himself upon his sagacity, the public have as little right to find fault with the exhuberance of his fancy. I have stated my theory, and any one is welcome to invent a better.

It now became my duty to repel an invasion of the descendants of those desolating conquerors, who ages before had perhaps overrun the Pacific coast, and subverted the empire of the mystic builders of those mighty cities, whose sculptured ruins excite the admiration and amazement of the present generation.

Messengers were despatched in every direction, to raise the entire population of my district, and this levy en masse included not only Californians, Americans, and Foreigners, but also Indians. They were directed to report themselves with all convenient speed at Sutter's Fort, it being necessary that I should push forward to the place of rendezvous with all expedition.

Starting without delay with my own troop of " regulars,” bivouacked the first night in the western serrania of the Sacramento Valley, and the next afternoon arrived with my men and caballada on the banks of the great river.

Those who are curious in military matters may like to

have a description of a Californian ponton. We had no boats, no water equipment of any kind, and yet we crossed the Sacramento with perfect ease and safety, without wetting any of our arms or luggage. We stripped saddles, and all hands went to work cutting the tulé which abounds on the rivers of California. We lashed these monster bulrushes together with our horse-ropes, making them into bundles shaped something like segars, and with these bundles we constructed a raft, upon which we deposited our arms, accoutrements, saddles, and horse-furniture. The floating mass was then paddled over with the greatest ease, the air-chambers of the tulé, as well as the lightness of the material itself, rendering it extremely buoyant.

For the purposes of emigration, the tulé will prove of the greatest utility. On the occasion to which I allude, we could without difficulty have carried artillery across the river, and by making large rafts, any number of men could be ferried across with perfect ease and safety. Horses should be made to swim over, as their cumbrous weight would render it necessary to make very large rafts, while their restiveness might make it exceedingly difficult to float them over on such a fragile bark. The emigrant, however, can, by means of the tulé, cross the river dry-shod himself, and also carry his provisions, wagons, &c., at the expense of a little time spent in constructing a raft. It would be well for those intending to settle in the interior of California, to come prepared with a good supply of rope for the purpose of lashing the rushes together. After a little experience, it will not be considered any thing of a feat to cross rivers in this simple manner. I would also suggest, that the first man who takes pains to build one of these rafts in a workmanlike and substantial manner, and gets possession of a point on the Sacramento where there is a considerable amount of travel, will be able to amass a handsome fortune by carrying over emigrants, and those returning from the mines, with their horses and luggage. A raft

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built as near as may be in the shape of a scow, covered with a plank floor, and surrounded by a secure railing, would probably do an immense business at any frequented crossing.

Before the tulé was floated, the horses were surrounded by my men, and by dint of shouts and noises of every imaginable description, were forced, greatly against their wills, to take to the water and swim over.

On reaching the opposite bank, a few of them were caught by a party stationed there for the purpose, and the vaqueros mounting them, were enabled to drive the rest to a tongue of land nearly surrounded by the river, where they were secured, and equipped again as easily as if they had been in a corral. The whole operation did not last more than half an hour, and the entire company, caballada, arms and equipments, were, in that brief space, passed safely across a broad and deep river.

We were warmly welcomed at the fort, where preparations were going on for an energetic defence, and such was the alacrity of the inhabitants on the north side of the bay, that, within twenty-four hours after my arrival, I found myself at the head of a force of one hundred and fifty white men of all descriptions, and nearly three hundred Indians, all well armed, and all the whites well-mounted. This was a flattering proof of the estimation in which the United States government was held by the Californians and foreigners of that district.

A hostile visit had been expected for about a year, from an Oregon tribe of Indians, called Walla-wallas, to avenge the death of a young chief called Elijah, a protégé of the missionaries of that country, and like too many of their proselytes, uniting the vices of the white man to those of the Indian. It was proved to my satisfaction that he was killed by Mr. Cook, an American, residing in California, in a private quarrel, in which he was the aggressor, and that he