Every dollar of these ill-gotten gains should be placed forthwith at the disposal of the state of California. It belongs to her; it never was the property of the United States under any law of Congress. It has been exacted under executive circulars, under the naked dictates of arbitrary power. I blame not the revenue functionaries of the general government in California; they were bound by the orders and instructions which they received; the responsibility rests nearer home: it rests with those who have usurped and exercised powers not conferred by the Constitution, or the consent of the American people. Nor do these aggressions and wrongs stop here. Who has authorized a captain of U. S. dragoons to drive, at the point of his flashing glaive, peaceful citizens from their gardens and dwellings on the bay of San Francisco, under the pretext of a government reservation, and then to farm out those grounds under a ten years' lease? Who has conferred this impudent stretch of authority, and this private monopoly of the public domain? Let the citizens thus trampled upon maintain their right, even with their rifles, till they can be made the proper subjects of judicial investigation or legislative action. CLAIMS ON THE CHRISTIAN. With the Christian community California has higher claims than those which glitter in her mines. The moral elements which now drift over her streams and treasured rocks will ere long settle down into abiding forms. The impalpable will become the real, and the unsubstantial assume a local habitation and a naine. Shall these permanent shapes, into which society is to be cast, take their plastic features from the impress of blind accident and skeptical apathy, or the moulding hand of religion? These primal forms must remain and wear for ages the traces of their deformity or beauty, their guilty insignificance or moral grandeur. Through them circulates your own lifeblood; in them is bound up the hopes of an empire. Not only the destiny of California is suspended on the issue, but the fate of all the republics which cheer the shores of the Pacific. The same treason to religion which wrecks the institutions of this country, will sap the foundations of a thousand other glorified shrines. It is for you, Christian brethren, to prevent such a disaster; it is for you to pour into California an unremitted tide of holy light. The Bible must throw its sacred radiance around every hearth, over every stream, through every mountain glen. The voice of the heralds of heavenly love must be echoed from every cliff and chasm and forest sanctuary. On you devolves this mission of Christian fidelity. It is for your faith and philanthropy to say what California shall be when her swelling population shall burst the bounds of her domain. You can write her hopes in ashes, or stars that shall never set. Every school-book and Bible you throw among her hills will be a source of penetrating and pervading light, when the torch of the caverned miner has gone out The images which you impress on her gold, age will efface; but the insignia of truth, stamped into her ardent heart, will survive the touch of time, and gleam bright in the night of the grave. PROPHETIC SHADOWS AND JOURNALISTS. Coming events cast their shadows before. When Com. Jones, several years since, captured Monterey, no political seer discovered in the event the precursor of an actual, permanent possession. No flag waved on the horoscope save the Mexican; no thunder broke on the ear of the augur, except what disturbed the wrong quarter of the heaven; and even the birds, which carried the fate of nations in their sounding beaks, flew in a wrong direction. But the first occupation, though it came and went as a shadow, was an omen, which has now become a reality—a great eventful fact in the history of the age. The commodore, who struck this first uncertain blow, is now here entrusted with the defence of the new acquisition. His spirit of intelligence and enterprise is making itself felt in every department, that justly falls within the prerogatives of a commander-in-chief. There are a multitude of topics connected with the wild life and new condition of affairs in California, which must escape the pen of any one journalist. Some of them are touched with vivid force in the graphic pictures of "El Dorado," others are sketched with lively effect in the pages of "Los Gringos," while California as she was, before gold had cankered her barbaric bliss, is thrown wildly on our vision, b, the author of "Two Years Before the Mast." Her geography, the habits of her citizens, and her resources, when little known beyond the furtive glances of the coaster, are faithfully delineated in the pioneer pages of Col. Fremont, Capt. Wilkes, and Mr. Robinson. Every traveller can find in California some new untouched feature for a sketch. They unroll themselves on the eye at every glance. With the reader they are rather sources of wonder and amusement, than solid advantage. Our globe was invested with no claims to utility till it had emerged from chaos; then verdure clothed its hills and vales; then flowing streams made vocal the forest aisles; then rolled the anthem of the morning star. CHAPTER XXX. THE GOLD-BEARING QUARTZ.-THEIR LOCALITY.-RICHNESS AND EXTENT STRUMENT. AND THE surface gold in California will in a few years be measurably exhausted; the occasional discovery of new deposits cannot long postpone such a result; nor will it be delayed for any great number of years, by any more scientific and thorough method of securing the treasure. California will prove no exception in these respects to other sections of the globe where surface gold has been found. The great question is, will her mountains be exhausted with her streams and valleys? Will her rock gold give out with her alluvial deposits? The gold-bearing quartz is the sheetanchor at which the whole argosy rides; if this parts, your golden craft goes to fragments. When an old Sonoranian told me in the mines that the quartz swetted out the gold, all the young savans around laughed at the old man's stupidity; and I must say the perspiration part of the business rather |