Of sycamores, and the red, dancing fires
That build a leafy arch, efface and build,
And sink at last, to let the stars peep through;
Of cañons grown with pine, and folded deep
In golden mountain-sides; of airy sweeps
Of mighty landscape, lying all alone
Like some deserted world.”
He mentioned the deep impression of ceaseless progress which the change of a few weeks had made in the growth of San Francisco. When he re-entered it, after his short stay in the mountains, he could not recognize the streets, while the inhabitants and their manners had undergone a change still more astonishing. Where there were tents a few days before, now were large buildings of wood, while the log-cabins and Chinese houses had, in many places, given place to structures of brick and stone. Wharves had been built, streets regularly laid out, banks opened, wholesale stores established, lines of steamers running to the various ports along the coast, and up the rivers; while the rude, dirty, careless, rushing multitude had assumed a cleanliness and a gravity, unequal of course to that of an Eastern city, but astonishingly in advance of the previous wildness. Law offices, brokers’ boards, smelting establishments, barber-shops, hotels, bakeries, laundries, and news-stands had all been established in a confusingly short space of time. The place he found as a frontier camp, he found four months later a swarming yet civilized city, with all the officials, and some of the red tape which characterize older corporations. But San Francisco was not alone in its growth; for Sacramento, San José, Monterey, and many other towns and cities, had been as nothing, less than a year before. At the time he left San Francisco, they were populous cities and villages, teeming with a resistless, sleepless activity. To accurately record such a change, to give an anxious public correct information regarding that wonderland, and the fortune of their friends, and to bear a share in the work of establishing such a State, was the task of Mr. Taylor, and most creditably did he perform his part.
On leaving California, about the first of January, 1850, he decided to go down the coast to Mazatlan and thence overland through Mexico. He came to that conclusion after long consultations with his friends, none of whom could or dared accompany him, while all told him of robbers, deserts, impassable streams, and dangerous wild beasts which awaited all travellers in that benighted and trackless country. Mr. Taylor would have enjoyed some thrilling adventures; and the fears of his advisers only made him more decided in his determination to go. So, alone, and with but slight knowledge of the Spanish language, he disembarked at Mazatlan on the Mexican coast, near the mouth of the Gulf of California, and with a pair of pistols and a dwarfed mule, started into the unknown wilds of that tropical land.
