tumble in the street, and
drown in the liquid mud! Montgomery Street had been filled up with
brush and clay, and I always dreaded to ride on horseback along it,
because the mud was so deep that a horse's legs would become
entangled in the bushes below, and the rider was likely to be
thrown and drowned in the mud. The only sidewalks were made of
stepping-stones of empty boxes, and here and there a few planks
with barrel-staves nailed on. All the town lay along Montgomery
Street, from Sacramento to Jackson, and about the plaza. Gambling
was the chief occupation of the people. While they were waiting
for the cessation of the rainy season, and for the beginning of
spring, all sorts of houses were being put up, but of the most
flimsy kind, and all were stores, restaurants, or gambling
-saloons. Any room twenty by sixty feet would rent for a thousand
dollars a month. I had, as my pay, seventy dollars a month, and no
one would even try to hire a servant under three hundred dollars.
Had it not been for the fifteen hundred dollars I had made in the
store at Coloma, I could not have lived through the winter. About
the 1st of April arrived the steamer Oregon; but her captain
(Pearson) knew what was the state of affairs on shore, and ran his
steamer alongside the line-of-battle-ship Ohio at Saucelito, and
obtained the privilege of leaving his crew on board as "prisoners"
until he was ready to return to sea. Then, discharging his
passengers and getting coal out of some of the ships which had
arrived, he retook his crew out of limbo and carried the first
regular mail back to Panama early in April. In regular order
arrived the third steamer, the Panama; and, as the vessels were
arriving with coal, The California was enabled to hire a crew and
get off. From that time forward these three ships constituted the
regular line of mail-steamers, which has been kept up ever since.
By the steamer Oregon arrived out Major R. P. Hammond, J. M.
Williams, James Blair, and others; also the gentlemen who, with
Major Ogden, were to compose a joint commission to select the sites
for the permanent forts and navyyard of California. This
commission was composed of Majors Ogden, Smith, and Leadbetter, of,
the army, and Captains Goldsborough, Van Brunt, and Blunt, of the
navy. These officers, after a most careful study of the whole
subject, selected Mare Island for the navy-yard, and "Benicia" for
the storehouses and arsenals of the army. The