arguments for and against each track, he may be enabled to draw his own conclusions.

In

The parallel of 51° is the highest that deserves our consideration. this latitude the wind is favourable, and the route is shorter than those of lower parallels. The principal objection against this route is, that it is within the limits of ice drifts, which at the latter months of the Austral summer (March and April) are occasionally met with as low as the forty-seventh parallel, between the meridians of 40° W. and 100° E.

Between latitude 50° and that of 46°, the composite track is beset with islands which compose Prince Edward's, Crozets, and Kerguleans Groups; and, should not therefore be adopted at any season of the year. The parallel 45° is free from islands, and at all seasons of the year it is beyond the limits of ice. Moreover, the distance is not increased more than 100 miles, which is of small consideration in a region in which the mariner can make good from 180 to 200 miles per diem. And lastly, the parallel of 40° is but 200 miles longer than the shortest practical route, and to compensate for this increase of distance, it presents to the mariner the advantages of a clearer sky and a more defined horizon; advantages of considerable importance in connection with solar, lunar, and stellar observations.

All, however, agree in the establishment of this one point, that, comparatively, little value is attendant on the composite route if the ship touches at the Cape. Between the tropic of Capricorn and Australia, the Cape may emphatically be designated the region of storms. Thus, by striking off into the composite route, as soon as the mariner has cleared the trade winds, he avoids the danger of storm, instead of encountering the peril of rocks, which Sinbad and others erroneously imagine to be necessarily connected with Composite sailing.

I am, &c.,

J. T. TowsON.

"STRAWS FROM CALIFORNIA."-Progress of the Go-a-head System.

"Where is Vernon? you ask-Ah, your dusty old Geographies will avail you nothing on that question. It is not the mount where the ashes of Washington rest-nor any other Vernon than the new town, just christened, at the junction of Feather River with the Sacramento, in Upper California. Four or five rough wood buildings, and a few tents mark the site. The chief business establishments are two or three groceries, where liquor seems to be the main article of traffic. A rival town, named Freemont, with two or three tabernacles for a nucleus, is trying to start into existence, on the opposite bank of the Sacramento; but, having the river between it and the mines, its chances of eclipsing Canton or London are not great. Indeed, the shoal water in the river at Vernon, and the course of the stream, leads an enterprising Yankee to suspect that the true place for the city of this region is two or three miles further down the river, on the eastern bank, where the water is deep, and where the Sacramento makes such a bend, as to approach nearer than any other point to the rich mines of Feather River, and the American Fork. Accordingly, a new town, at that place, is to enter the lists for public favour. The site is a beautiful one.

At what has been so long known as Sutter's Fort, at the junction of the American Fork, and the Sacramento, I was astonished the other day to find

a large and flourishing town, named Sacramento, already built and building. In the midst of heavy oak timber, stores and dwellings of wood and cloth are shooting up in every direction; and, in walking half a mile up the closely built and pretty busy "main street" of the city, you must be careful to step high, or stub your toes every moment against the stumps of bushes and saplings, which only a few weeks ago were flourishing here in all their greenness. Forty or fifty vessels, of all sorts, lie at the river's bank-and probably more business is done at this place than any other in the country, except San Francisco. The warehouses are full of goods, which numerous teams are fast transporting into the mountains.

Three miles below Sacramento, Suttersville, with a few bushes, is strug gling for a foothold among cities, but with indifferent prospects of success. Ten or fifteen miles further down you pass the town of Webster, on the eastern bank, where Daniel or Noah (whether the town is named after the statesman or the lexicographer I known not,) might see a couple of log houses standing as the representative of the family name.

Still sailing down the crooked but beautiful Sacramento, fifteen miles above its mouth, you pass the beautiful site of Suisun on the right bank-a city as yet without inhabitants.

At the junction of the Sacramento with Suisun Bay, on the right hand, is the city of Montezuma (a beautiful name for a town). A single building marks the spot, though the town is two years old; and even that tenement, like the "halls" whose name it assumes, has been, I believe, a long time deserted.

Opposite Montezuma, at the junction of one of the mouths of the San Joaquin with Suisun Bay, is the town site politely called "New York of the Pacific,"-a name somewhat after the taste of "Praise-God Barebones", and other similar appellatives of the days of Cromwell. After some months puffing, it boasts a tent and an unfinished shanty.

On the north side of the straits of Karguines, is Benicia-a town beautifully located and possessing greater commercial advantages than any other point on the Bay of San Francisco. Ships of the largest class lie close in shore. It is so situated as to command the commerce of the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers, and the immense business of the gold region. It is the rival of San Francisco; and in natural advantages, is altogether a superior location to that, for a great commercial city. But San Francisco has got the start in point of numbers, capital, and notoriety; and it may be some time before Benicia becomes as large a place as its position would otherwise make it. There are, already 40 or 50 houses up. Two steamers are at present building; and the shipping, which must necessarily come here, owing to the crowded state of San Francisco, will doubtless cause this place to grow rapidly. The climate is beautiful and salubrious, like that of Pueblo de San Jose, Sonoma, and other places so situated inland that the chilling breezes of the coast become tempered to a genial softness -while still further inland, as the vallies of the Sacramento and San Joaquin, these breezes become heated by a continually unclouded sun shining on a broad region of level country, until they produce a kind of weather almost unbearable, and often send an honest Fahrenheit's thermometer, in the shade, up to 100 or 120. With such a temperature, at midday, alternating with cool nights, in a region of almost interminable marshes, formed by the overflow of the rivers, it is not to be wondered at that these two extensive vallies are an immense hot bed of intermittent and remittent fevers, and other various ills that flesh is heir to.

If doctors can annihilate disease there will be little sickness in the country, this season-for the profession is swarming. But, if all the doctors here are to do a tolerable business, the people are much to be commisserated. Yet, NO. 5.-VOL. XIX. 20

numerous as they are, it is to be feared they will all find ample employment before sunmer is over. The sickly climate of the great vallies-in which much of the business connected with the mines must be transacted,together with the beastly intemperance that prevails, and the exposure of health in various ways, will be sufficient to cut down men even of iron constitutions and the most vigorous health. Hundreds, who have come from abroad for gold, will leave their bones within the limits of this territory.

So much for the new cities of the Sacramento valley. The rivers are down and gold digging becoming profitable. One man showed me 3,000 dollars, which he had dug in twenty-nine days, and that without a washing machine. Four individuals, in company, also dug, in that time, 12,000

dollars.

The name of this place will remind you of the good woman, who, bent on giving her boys scriptural names, called the first four in order, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John; and when the fifth youngster made his appearance to be named, resolutely dubbed him "Acts of the Apostles."

The Astor House here is less crowded than the granite prison looking structure on veritable Broadway; and the other building in the city, a small tent looks less aristocratic than one would think consonant with the cuphonious cognomen in which the embryo metropolis rejoices.

Apropos, of the new style of architecture to which California has given birth. You see it in perfection at Sacramento city; nearly as perfect at Stockton and San Francisco. The like of it was never seen on earth before, and it will take the discovery of a new gold region and a new gold fever to give birth to the like of it again. To describe it artistically is impossible, it has been named in none of the standard books. But the way a house or store is erected, is somewhat in this wise:

You take a common inch board, split it into strips, nail the pieces together, and lay them on the ground as sills. Other strips of boards are set upright, and others nailed on for plates. Two frames of similar slates, of the size of the two sides of the roofs, are covered with cotton cloth or canvass, and then placed, whole on the building, made fast by a few nails, and the evidence is covered. In a trice the whole outside of the building is likewise covered with cloth, and a sort of tabernacle, half house, half tent, stands ready to receive a family or two of dwellers, or a cargo of goods.

The rapidity with which these structures flash into existence fairly bewilders one. Go out of town in the morning by a familiar street, and when you return at night by the same thoroughfare the whole aspect of things is so changed by the new houses built and building, that you almost have to inquire your way home.

At San Francisco, my own eyes have seen men laying the foundation of a house as I was on my way to breakfast, and at tea time I saw the edifice complete and filled with an assortment of goods; and, doubtless, before bed time the owner had cleared enough to pay the expense of building the store-room twice over. This was at San Francisco, mind you, not "New York in the Pacific." At Sacramento city something of the kind may also be witnessed. These unique houses are used for all sorts of purposes. Some are large wholesale establishments, more retailing shops, more still, grog-shops, or gambling shops; or, in fact, both, the two vices being to each other as the Siamese twins. If you see the American flag fluttering over one of these tabernacles, be sure it is a drinking and gambling hole, a desecration of the glorious stars and stripes almost equal to that of raising them over a foul tent in the mines, and persuading the wild Indians it was for their special benefit and protection, if they should only bring in, freely, to its occupants, their gold and squaws. Such things have been, shameful to tell.

How these frail tenements will stand the frosts and rains, of winter, time and cold fingers, and damp lodgings, will reveal.

August 1st., meetings were held, in the several districts of the country, to elect members to a convention, to meet in Monterey, Sept. 1st to form a State Constitution. Such a constitution can be formed and ratified by the people, and a governor, two senators, and a representative to congress elected in season to have the constitution ratified, by congress, and the representatives and senators take their seats before the 1st of January. 1850. The prospect of a government, here even so soon, is cheering to every good citizen. Mob law is at present, the substitute for every law. In many cases, its practical working may accord with justice. But, in the nature of things it cannot do so long, punishment is unequal; desperadoes who know that if they escape immediate arrest, there is no regular authority to follow them up and punish them twenty years hence, will not be restrained by mob law. A short time since, a band of armed villains, New York loafers, calling themselves "Hounds', (rightly enough,) paraded San Francisco. robbed, beat, bruised, and insulted peaceful citizens, ad libitum, and committed crimes that in any good government would have left them dangling between earth and heaven. How were they punished? The ringleader, sentenced to be carried in a vessel, free of expense, back to his friends in the United States. Nothing worse? No! Cause why, some other hound or hounds might, on a windy night, touch the north-west corner of the city with a fire brand; and, in a flash, the glory of the great emporium would be like that of Tyre, an empty sound for departed substance, How can even handed justice be distributed when the judge may one minute pass sentence on the culprit, and the next receive a bullet in his body, from the culprit's friends or accomplices?

At Sonoma, a man, for stealing, received fifty light lashes. At Stockton, a week since, a man stole 400 dollars, and was immediately tried and hanged. The Alcalde of the place, I am told, did not sanction the execution. In the mines numerous robberies have taken place, and several mock hangings been got up in the way of inquisition or of punishment. Such mockeries and excesses of justice must ultimately be mischievious.

Thousands of Mexicans, Chilenos, and Peruvians, have been in the mines this season; and their expulsion, by the Americans, has produced some excitement; but, as yet, no violence. Looking upon these foreigners as public robbers, (as they are,) the Americans held meetings, warned them to be off on short notice, and thousands of them have already gone peaceably back to their homes. The secret of their yielding so quietly is in the fact they have dug immense quantities of gold which they are afraid of losing if they get into any operi collision with the Americans. It is estimated, by highly competent judges, that these foreigners, chiefly Sonoranians from Mexicans, will have carried out of the country, the present season, not less than 15,000,000 dollars, a nice little sun for armed Mexicans to come and take out of Uncle Sam's job, to the detriment of sundry of Uncle Sam's own progeny, who are apt to look on gold with yearnings about as vehement as the deposits in these mountains are at present capable of satisfying.

A nice little steamer for the rivers, sixty-two feet long, and fifteen horsepower, is just ready to launch at Benicia, and will be the first river steamer afloat, and the first put together in this country. She will run from Benicia to Springfield, a new city growing up on the Sacramento, three miles below Feather River.

GREAT FLOOD IN CALIFORNIA.-A letter just come from Philadelphia contains the following passage:-"Those tremendous scourges, fire and water, have recently proved very destructive in California. By the last arrival, we were informed of the burning of one-half of the city of San Francisco. And now

we have, by the arrival of the Alabama at New Orleans, news from San Francisco fourteen days later to January 15th, the principal item of which is, the submergence by a flood, of the city of Sacramento. Only one house, and that built on raised poles, was above the water, which was three or four feet deep. Immense herds of cattle have been drowned, the inundation extending over the entire valley of Sacramento, and varying from twenty to fifty miles in breadth, from the Sierra Nevada, to the coast range of mountains. Much misery, starvation, sickness, and death, must be the natural results of this great overflow. The loss of property at Sacramento city, is estimated at 1,000,000 dols. The suffering of the inhabitants there, are described as dreadful. But one writer consoles himself by stating that this great flood, while it destroys much property "will wash out the gold in immense quantities." The Alabama has brought 400,000 dols. worth of gold dust on freight. Her mails will not reach in time for the English steamer, all our news from her being per telegraph from New Orleans. At Stockton the Americans at the mines had been attacked by bands of Chilians. Several were killed on both sides, and a number of Americans, who had been taken prisoners, were afterwards released. The excitement at San Francisco even was great on this subject, and all the accounts say that the Chilians will be attacked in their turn, and expelled from the country. Such a course would probably lead also to the expulsion of other foreign (Spanish race) gold diggers."

TREACHERY AT TIMOR LAUT, A CASE OF 1841.-Mansion House.

A wretched looking, broken down, and wounded seaman, named Joseph Forbes, was brought to the justice-room, and introduced to Alderman Pirie by Mr. Brooks, the ship-owner of Broad Street, who is one of the directors of the London Docks, as an object of charity, from the strange and intense sufferings he had undergone for a series of years.

Mr. Brooks said that Forbes had been lately brought from Sydney to this country in one of his (Mr. Brooks's) vessels, and had been kept at his expense for six weeks, during which the unfortunate man had been in London, where medical aid of the highest kind had been administered almost in vain to his case. The circumstances in which the man had been placed for the last sixteen years, (and of the accurate veracity of the statement there was no doubt) would be best detailed by himself. There had been some instances, of similar horrors, but he was not aware of any of such long duration.

The seaman then made a statement, of which the following is the outline: "In the year 1822, I being then a boy, sailed from London in the schooner Stedcombe, with a crew consisting of thirteen persons, bound for Melville Island, on the North coast of New Holland. The vessel, which was a fine one, having discharged her cargo at Melville Island, proceeded to the island of Timor Laut, for the purpose of procuring buffaloes, and the natives came on board the schooner, appearing to have the most friendly disposition toward us, partook of food with the captain, and brought food and vegetables with them as a proof of their friendliness. There was nothing to interfere with this feeling, which seemed in every respect to be mutual. An arrangement was concluded with the natives for the supply of a large cargo of buffaloes which they stated were ready to be shipped, and the captain left