King, relative to the richness of its soil,
and its great agricultural capacities. The valleys of the Sacramento
and San Joaquim alone are capable of supporting a population of
two millions, if carefully cultivated. The deep, black, porous soil
produces the important cereal grains, although on the seaboard the air
is too cool for the ripening of Indian corn. Enormous crops of wheat
may be obtained by irrigation, such as was successfully practiced
by the great Jesuit missions; and, without it, from forty to fifty
bushels to the bushel of seed have been raised. Oats of the kind grown
on the Atlantic grow luxuriantly and wild, self-sown on all the hills
of the coast, furnishing abundant supplies for horses. Irish potatoes
grow to a great size, and all edible roots cultivated in the States
are produced in perfection, without irrigation.

The climate of San Francisco is unquestionably disagreeable; the
cold, fierce winds which sweep over the bay, and they alternating with
extreme heats, are prejudicial to health and comfort. Inland, however,
in the beautiful valleys of San Jose and Los Angelos, the climate is
all that can be desired. The heat during the summer months is indeed
great, but its dryness renders it more endurable than the damp
sultriness of an Atlantic August. At Los Angelos, latitude 34 deg. 7',
long. W. 118 deg., and forty miles from the ocean, the mean monthly
temperature of ten months was as follows: June 73 deg., July 74,
August 75, September 75, October 69, November 59, December 60.

Our author describes with a poet's enthusiasm the atmospheric effects
of the Californian sunsets. Fresh from his travels in Italy, and with
the dust of that Pincian hill still on his sandals from whence Claude
sketched his sunsets, he declares that his memory of that classic
atmosphere seems cold and pale, when he thinks of the splendor of
evening on the bay and mountains of San Francisco.

The chapter on "Society in California" may prove of much practical
utility, and should be read by all who are smitten with the
gold fever. California is no place for the sick, the weak, the
self-indulgent, the indolent, the desponding. There must be a
willingness to work at anything and everything, and stout muscles to
execute the will. Our author estimates that nearly one-third of the
emigrants are unfitted for their vocation, "miserable, melancholy
men, ready to yield up their last breath at any moment, who left home
prematurely, and n