nal there was
unfortunately no English clergyman connected with the establishment.

Sir George himself now visited California, the region which the Mexican
war is bringing into prominent notice. The harbour of San Francisco is
magnificent, the first view of the shore presented a level sward of
about a mile in depth, backed by a ridge of grassy slopes, the whole
pastured by numerous herds of cattle and horses, which, without a keeper
or a fold, fattened whether their owners waked or slept.

The harbour displays a sheet of water of about thirty miles in length
by about twelve in breadth, sheltered from every wind by an amphitheatre
of green hills. But this sheet of water forms only a part in the inland
sea of San Francisco. Whaler's Harbour, at its own northern extremity,
communicates by a strait of about two miles in width with the bay of San
Pedro, which leads by means of a second strait into Fresh Water Bay, of
nearly the same form and magnitude, and which forms the receptacle, of
two great rivers, draining vast tracts of country to the south-east and
north-east, which are navigable for inland craft, so that the harbour,
besides its matchless qualities as a port of refuge on this surf-beaten
coast, is the outlet of an immense, fair, and fertile region.

But the beauties of nature are useless when they fall into the hands of
idlers and fools. Every thing in those fine countries seems to be
boasting and beggary. Every thing has been long sinking into ruin,
through mere indolence. The Californians once manufactured the fleeces
of their sheep into cloth. They are now too lazy to weave or spin, too
lazy even to clip and wash the raw material, and now the sheep have been
literally destroyed to make more room for the horned cattle.

They once made the dairy an object of attention, now neither butter nor
cheese is to be found in the province. They once produced in the
Missions eighty thousand bushels of wheat and maize,--they were lately
buying flour at Monterey at the rate of L6 a sack. Beef was once
plentiful,--they were now buying salted salmon for the sea-store for one
paltry vessel, which constituted the entire line-of-battle of the
Californian navy.

The author justly observes, that this wicked abuse of the soil and
consequent poverty of the people results wholly from "the objects of the
colonisation." Thus the emigrants from England to the northern colonies
looked to subsistence from the fruits of labour; ploughed,