Sunday, Aug. 2. I officiated to-day on board the Savannah. It is much to the credit of the officers of this ship that though without a chaplain, they have had, during a three years’ cruise, their religious services regularly on the Sabbath. Four of their number, two lieutenants, the surgeon, and master, are professors of religion, and exert a deep influence through their consistent piety. Their Sabbath exercise has consisted in reading prayers, selections from the Scriptures, and a brief, pertinent sermon. They have had, also, their Sabbath-school. Such facts as these will win for the navy a larger share of public confidence than the capture of forty barbaric fortresses. The American people love valor, but they love religion also. They will confer their highest honors only on him who combines them both.
Monday, Aug. 3. An Indian woman of good appearance came to our office to-day, stating that she had been for two years past a domestic in a Mexican family near Monterey; that she had, during this time, lost her husband, and now wished to marry again; but wished, before she did this, to recover her child, which was forcibly detained in the family in which she had served. It appeared that the father of this family had baptized her child, and claimed, according to custom here, a sort of guardianship over it, as well as a right to a portion of its services.
I asked her if her child would be kindly treated where it now was: she said she thought so; but added, she was a mother, and wanted it with her. We told her as she was going to marry again, she had better perhaps leave the child for the present; and if she found her husband to be a good, industrious man, and disposed to furnish her with a comfortable home, she might call again at our office, and we would get her child. She went away with that mild look of contentment which is as near a smile as any expression which lights an Indian’s face.
Tuesday, Aug. 4. The military chieftains, who have successively usurped the government of California, have arbitrarily imposed such duties on foreign imports as their avarice or exigency suggested. A few examples will be sufficient to show the spirit and character of these imposts. Unbleached cottons, which cost in the United States six cents the yard, cost here fifty, and shirtings cost seventy-five. Plain knives and forks cost ten dollars the dozen; coarse cowhide shoes three dollars the pair; the cheapest tea three dollars the pound; and a pair of common truck-wheels seventy-five dollars. The duty alone on the coarsest hat, even if made of straw, is three dollars.
The revenues derived from these enormous imposts have passed into the pockets of a few individuals, who have placed themselves, by violence or fraud, at the head of the government, and have never reached the public in any beneficial form. These exactions, enforced by an irresponsible tyranny, have kept California poor, have crushed all enterprise, and have rolled back the tide of emigration from her soil as the resisting rock the rushing stream. But the barriers are now broken, and broken forever. California is free,—free of Mexican rule and all domestic usurpers.
Wednesday, Aug. 5. We have in one apartment of our prison two Californians, confined for having robbed a United States courier, on his way from Monterey to San Francisco, with public dispatches. They have not yet been tried. Yesterday they applied to me for permission to have their guitars. They stated that their situation was very lonely, and they wanted something to cheer it. Their request was complied with; and last evening, when the streets were still, and the soft moonlight melted through the grates of their prison, their music streamed out upon the quiet air with wonderful sweetness and power. Their voices were in rich harmony with their instruments, and their melodies had a wild and melancholy tone. They were singing, for aught they knew, their own requiem.
Thursday, Aug. 6. It sounds strange to an American, and much more so to an Englishman, to hear Californians talk of farms. They never speak of acres, or even miles; they deal only in leagues. A farm of four or five leagues is considered quite small. It is not so large, in the conception of this people, as was the one-acre farm of Horace in the estimation of the Romans. Capt. Sutter’s farm, in the valley of the Sacramento, is sixty miles long. The Californians speak in the same way of the stock on their farms. Two thousand horses, fifteen thousand head of cattle, and twenty thousand sheep, are only what a thrifty farmer should have before he thinks of killing or selling. They are to be his productive stock, on which he should not encroach, except in an emergency. Only fancy a farm covering sixty miles in length! Why, a man would want a railroad through it for his own private use. Get out of the way, ye landlords of England and patroons of Amsterdam, with your boroughs and dykes, and give place to the Californian with his sixty mile sweep!
Friday, Aug. 7. The Mormon ship Brooklyn, which we left at Honolulu, has arrived at San Francisco, and her passengers have debarked on the shores of that magnificent bay. They have not yet selected their lands. The natives hold them in great horror. They seem to think cannibalism among the least of their enormities. They consider the term Mormon the most branding epithet that can be applied to a man. A mother complained to me, a few days since, that a gentleman in Monterey had struck her son and called him a Mormon. She dwelt with great earnestness on the opprobrious character of the epithet, and appeared to consider its application to her son a higher crime than that of his fist. I told her what sort of people these Mormons were; but it was to her as if I had represented Satan as an angel of light. I lectured the wrong-doer.
Saturday, Aug. 8. Capt. Fauntleroy, of the Savannah, and Maj. Snyder, with fifty mounted men under their command, occupy San Juan, which lies inland about thirty miles from Monterey. A report reached them a few days since, that a hundred wild Indians had descended upon the town of San José and driven off over two hundred horses. They started immediately with twenty men, well mounted, got upon their trail, and came up with them at a distance of sixty miles. The Indians finding themselves hotly pressed, left their horses and took to the bush, throwing back upon their pursuers the most wild and frantic imprecations. Three or four of their number only were killed. The denseness of the forest and the approach of night rendered further pursuit impracticable.
The horses were all recaptured and brought back to their owners, who received them with acclamations of surprise and gratitude. This was the first time, they said, that their property had been rescued from savages by the government, and they run up the American flag. This prompt interference of Capt. Fauntleroy and Maj. Snyder will do more to win the confidence of the Californians than forty orations delivered in the most liquid Spanish that ever rolled from a Castilian tongue. There is something in action which the most simple can appreciate, and which the most crafty cannot gainsay.