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mouth of San Francisco the land recedes, and passing through the narrow jaws of the Straits, which are framed in by bold, precipitous, and rocky cliffs, where violent currents are sweeping and foaming in eddying whirls around their base, you soon debouch into the outer bay. It is like a great lake, stretching away right and left, far into the heart of California. To the north another aperture, and still another, leads into the Bays of San Pablo and Sosun, washing the valleys of Sinoma and Tulares, and fed by the rivers Sacramento and San Joaquin, after passing over the golden sands of the rich mines beyond. To the southward the waters are not so extended, and the bay laves the garden of California in the beautiful vale of Santa Clara. Green islands adorn the bosom of these vast estuaries, and everywhere are found safe and commodious harbors. Our anchorage was near the little village of Yerbabuena, five miles from the ocean, and within a short distance from the Franciscan Mission and Presidio of the old royalists. The site seems badly chosen, for although it reposes in partial shelter, beneath the high bluffs of the coast, yet a great portion of the year it is enveloped in chilling fogs; and invariably, during the afternoon, strong sea breezes are drawn through the straits like a funnel, and playing with fitful violence around the hills, the sand is swept in blinding clouds over the town and the adjacent shores of the bay. Yet with all these drawbacks the place was rapidly thriving under the indomitable energy of our countrymen. Tenements, large and small, were running up, like card-built houses, in all directions. The population was composed of Mormons, backwoodsmen, and a few very respectable traders from the eastern cities of the United States. Very rare it was to see a native: our brethren had played the porcupine so sharply as to oblige them to seek their homes among more congenial kindred. On Sunday, however, it was not uncommon to encounter gay cavalcades of young paisanos, jingling in silver chains and finery, dashing into town, half-a-dozen abreast; having left their sweethearts at the Mission, or some neighboring rancho, for the evening fandango. Towards afternoon, when these frolicsome _caballeros_ became a trifle elevated with their potations, they were wont to indulge in a variety of capricious feats on horseback--leaping and wheeling--throwing the lasso over each other;--or if by chance a bullock appeared,
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