As fell their broad, bright glance on you.
Thursday, Feb. 11. Two of the officers of Gen. Castro sent through me to-day to Com. Shubrick, applications for permission to return to Mexico. They are very poor, having received no pay since our flag was raised. There are many more in the same situation. They are entitled to our sympathy. They have tried, it is true, to retake the country; but they are not to blame for that: who would not have done the same, situated as they have been? We may call their courage sheer rashness; but even that has higher claims to respect than pusillanimity. They fought for their places, it is true, but I do not see why there is not quite as much honor in a man’s fighting for bread with which to feed his children, as for a feather with which to plume his ambition. Very few in these days fight from pure patriotism. Some hope of profit or preferment lights their path and lures them on. There has been, I apprehend, quite as much love of country in the Californian as the American, in the storm of battle which has swept over this land.
Friday, Feb. 12. The Cyane sailed to-day for San Francisco, where she will be allowed a short repose. And truly she merits this indulgence; she has been, under her indefatigable commander, for six months incessantly on duty, and has performed some exploits that will figure in history. All our ships on this coast have been extremely active, and their crews more active still. Wherever they have let go their anchors, it has been for service on shore. They have furled their sails only to unfurl their flags, and have relinquished the rope only to handle the carbine. Not a man of them has been missed in the hour of peril; not a murmur has escaped their lips in privation and fatigue. They have done the duty of soldiers as well as sailors. They have conquered California.
Saturday, Feb. 13. The great scarcity of provisions here, and the difficulty experienced in subsisting our forces, has induced Com. Shubrick to issue a circular, throwing the ports open for six months to all necessary articles of food. This step is characterized by sound policy as well as humanity. It will have the effect of lowering the exorbitant prices which we are now paying for these articles, and go far to secure the good will of the citizens. Every measure which relieves the present exigency, will be fully appreciated. The scarcity is the result, in some measure, of the war; in this we have a responsibility, and the least we can do is to relieve, so far as it lies in our power, the calamity which it has entailed.
Sunday, Feb. 14. The bones which bleach on the battle-field, and the groans which load the reluctant winds, are not the saddest memorials of war. They lie deeper; they are coffined in decayed virtue, and in the convulsions of outraged humanity. They convert the heart of a nation into a charnel-house, where the gloomy twilight only serves to betray the corruption which festers within. Flowers may bloom over it, and garlands be woven of their fragrant leaves, but within is death. We shudder at a recollection of the Deluge, and still gaze with wonder and fear at its ghastly memorials: that catastrophe, however, swept the earth but once, and then departed; but war has for ages trampled over it in blood, followed by the shrieks of fatherless children, and the wail of ruined nations.
Where’er the blood-stained monster trod
Fell deep and wide the curse of God.
Monday, Feb. 15. We have had the drama of Adam and Eve as a phase in the amusements, which have been crowded into the last days of the carnival. It was got up by one of our most respectable citizens, who for the purpose converted his ample saloon into a mimic opera-house. The actors were his own children, and those near akin. They sustained their parts well except the one who impersonated Satan; he was of too mild and frank a nature to represent such a daring, subtle character. It was as if the lark were to close his eyes to the touch of day, or the moon to invest herself with thunder. But Eve was beautiful, and full of nature as an unweaned child. She rose at once into full bloom, like the Aphrodite of Phidias from the sparkling wave. Every sound and sight struck on her wondering sense, as that of a being just waked to life. Her untaught motions melted into flowing lines, soft and graceful as those of a bird circling among flowers.
“Her eyes as stars of twilight fair;
Like twilight’s too her dusky hair: