Mulberry trees a few years since were not known, some two or three were brought from Sonora and planted here, about twelve years ago; they bear well, but no person has taken pride in the cultivation of them, though from the experiment there is not the least doubt of this country and climate being entirely adapted to the growth of this useful tree.

Of the silk worm I can say nothing,this animalcula not having come within the sphere of my observation.

Bees have never been brought to this country, but I cannot but suppose both the country and the climate perfectly adapted to this insect, from the numberless classes of honey flowers with which the northern part of this country abounds.

November 5th, 1846.-The whole coast of California abounds in most exquisite fish, of many kinds, but although a small codfish, of which there are plenty all over the coast, sells for a dollar, still a meal of fish is very rare on shore; for no other reason but because no person will take the trouble to catch them; and I have known in time of Lent, a small boat to go out fishing, and one hour after its return the owner of it has sold from twenty to thirty dollars worth of fish, and this after about seven hours' fishing.

In the winter season, every rivulet that leads into the sea abounds in salmon and salmon trout. Many of these are taken in nets, and they certainly are of the very finest kind. Here are likewise numerous kinds of shellfish all along the coast, besides hair seals, and the valuable sea otter; and in the months of September and October, a person may sit in the balcony of his house in Monterey, and see the great whale killed, with all the manoeuvres of the people employed in killing it, from the moment of lowering the boats into the water, to their return to the vessel, with the huge leviathan in tow.

Flax grows to an extraordinary length in this country. I have sown it several times in small quantities in a garden, and being well aware that the tilling and the ordering of it would be very profitable

to any person who would undertake to cultivate it in a proper manner, I cannot but hope that some of the many emigrants who are daily arriving will place their particular attention on this branch of agriculture. The best time for sowing it, from San Luis Obispo to the northward, is in April; and in the middle of September the flax will be fit to pull. And the best manner of sowing it is in rows, about fourteen inches apart, and never dropping more than two seeds together; otherwise, when it gets an inch high it is necessary to thin it, by pulling up some of the stalks, which may be transplanted, and by these means produce flax equal, if not superior, to that of any other part of the world.

California likewise abounds in game. Deer of different descriptions are plentiful in all parts of the territory. Elk, in the San Joaquin valley, are very numerous. The natives go out in the months of March, April and May, and lasso vast numbers of them. They are then very fat. As soon as the elk is caught and killed, they take off the hide and tallow. The former is tanned for shoe leather, and the latter is brought into the settlement, and used for making soap.

Between the months of October and March geese, ducks, curlew, &c., are to be seen in immense flocks, feeding on the plains, or darkening the air with their numbers.

The grisly bear is here to be found in all places where there is not much passing and repassing of human beings. They are not so dangerous as they have been represented. I have been a great deal among them, and I never saw a single instance of a bear having attacked a man, unless it had previously been molested, or it had been surprised on a sudden.

November 6th, 1846.-In the year 1825 California was overstocked with horses and horned cattle, and sheep; and the natives considering horses of less value than sheep or horned cattle, killed off many thousands of the former that room might be left, and pasture for the other kinds. They would make large pens near some wood, and

then twenty or thirty men would muster, and drive in horses and mares by hundreds, and after picking out such of them as they considered to be of the best quality, they lassoed and strangled the remainder.

In the year 1827, Captain Jedediah Smith came into this country overland from St. Louis, and bought three hundred and ninety-seven head of horses and mules, of the best kind that could be found in the country; and only one horse amongst them cost as high as fifteen dollars the average price he paid for them was about nine dollars.

In 1829 some New Mexicans came here, and bought many hundreds of mares, at the low price of fifty cents each, and among them were some very splendid animals; the following year, the wild Indians began to steal horses from the settlements, and between these and the New Mexican traders, the settlements have been left literally without a horse to saddle.

But still California, rich in all her productions, has a resource which with some attention from government, may be made inexhaustible.

On the Tulares plains are numbers of wild horses and mares, I think I may say, without the least exaggeration, that I have seen on this plain in the course of two days travel, forty thousand wild horses and mares, and amongst them are some as noble-looking animals as ever I saw in my life. These for the last fifteen years have formed a complete nursery of horses for California.

But the natives who have no forethought whatever, and have no feeling for dumb animals; if they are allowed by the authorities to act as they have been doing for the last ten or fifteen years, will soon destroy this whole race of useful animals. The people here form in parties of eight or ten men, and go and catch as many of these horses as they can; they are generally gone ten or fifteen days, and should they through mistake catch a mare, they immediately slaughter her from mere wantonness. And in the months of April and May, which is the time the mares are breeding, they very often start a band of from

two hundred to a thousand head, and as they run them hard, the young colts are either trampled down, or left behind; and all these so left are killed in the night, by wolves or foxes; consequently it may easily be conceived how many hundreds of each year's breed are lost and destroyed in this manner.

November 7th, 1846.-In my last, I gave you some account of the manner in which the settlements in California are and have been for some time past supplied with horses, and knowing as I do, from experience, the value of this noble animal, and the usefulness of them, in this country in particular, I cannot despatch this article without giving you some information of the reason why there is such a particular necessity for a great number of horses in this country.

In the first place, the whole territory is but very thinly settled; the grants of land which have been given by Mexico are very large, and it is often the case that a man who lives on a farm will have to travel one or two hundred miles to purchase the actual necessitous clothing, or to sell his produce, which has all, or for the most part to be carried to market on horseback, on account of the badness of the roads; add to this, that all travelling has to be done on horseback, and as no provender of any kind is laid up by farmers here for winter food, the horses from September forward begin to lose their flesh, and by the latter end of November they are scarcely fit to travel at all; consequently, as things now stand, a man who lives a hundred miles from town, will need at least ten horses to carry him the journey.

A Californian will never ride a mare, unless he is actually drove to it by necessity; he thinks it a disgrace, and some years back, if a Californian had arrived at any farm with a tired horse, and his friend or countryman had offered him a fresh mare, that his own horse might be relieved and he pursue his journey, he would have looked upon the act as the greatest affront that could be put upon him, and I have many times known a man to defer his journey one or two days rather than ride a mare.

There were originally two distinct breeds of horses in this country, but for want of care, and curiosity they have got so crossed and mixed up together, that they are not now distinguishable; though I have particularly observed that the best and the fleetest, as well as the handsomest horses in this territory, are those which have been caught wild after having come to their growth in the Tulare valley. I believe the reason of this to be, that those horses which are caught wild, have not been injured when very young, as those are which are bred in the settlements and on farms; these are greatly injured when young, by boys, who take every opportunity of driving them into pens to torment them with their lassoes, lasting their legs to throw them, &c. &c., and this is the reason that there are so very few horses of the age of six or seven years that can be found entirely sound.

Then their method of breaking them in likewise tends to break the spirit of the animals, and injure them in their joints. They will take a wild colt and put the saddle on it, and mount it, and ride it down; and when it is tired they take the saddle off it, and make it fast to a post, without any thing to eat, and keep it there for four or five days on nothing but water-saddling it two or three hours each day, at the end of which time they let it go. They are generally two years taming a horse.

November 8th, 1846.-Perhaps there is no country in the world, generally speaking, where the inhabitants are so much on horseback, as in California, or where there are better riders-and it may almost literally be said that many of them are born on horseback, as I shall show in the sequel.

We may likewise almost say that they are married on horseback, for the day the marriage contract is agreed on between the parties, the bridegroom's first care is to beg, buy, or borrow, and sometimes steal, the best horse that can be found in his district; at the same time, by some of these means, he has to get a saddle, with silver mountings about the bridle, and the overleathers of the saddle must