king a hole at the head of the Spanish Ravine,
which had been one of the richest in California, found a plain gold
ring of rude workmanship, soldered together with silver, or some white
metal, about four feet from the surface of the ground. On the inside of
it was a cross stamped very legibly, indicating that it was made by a
christian. This was in new diggings, where the earth had never been
disturbed so far as appearances would indicate, and moreover he found
but one small piece of gold besides that in the claim. How long it
would take to form four feet of solid earth, or how it came there, no
one can say, but certainly it must take a great number of years for
that depth of soil to form, and the ring itself shows workmanship of an
early and rude age.

The limited space of this work necessarily precludes me from going into
a lengthened detail of incidents and description of California, but in
closing I must remark that California, from its variety of climate,
which is so great that a man may walk in a day from the region of snow
through a temperate climate to another of perpetual summer, where the
flowers cover the earth, and render the air fragrant with their
perfume. From its great resources in gold and other mineral treasures,
and its boundless forests of pine and cedar, from its great amount of
water power, and its great agricultural and commercial advantages, is
yet destined to be the first State in the Union, as it now is the most
pleasant to reside in, and it behooves our government to so cement the
bonds of union in commercial interests--while now cemented by the
feelings of "Padre pais"--with a belt of iron from ocean to ocean, with
the iron horse with the sinew of steel and breath of fire for a
messenger, that the time may not come, when the diverse interests of
the Pacific states may induce their inhabitants to form a government of
their own.

It is a well known fact in history, that a country divided by a great
natural barrier, cannot remain long under one government, but that
their several interests call for separate governments. The great
natural barrier between the Atlantic and Pacific States is, the Rocky
mountains and the deserts, which can only be overcome by railroads,
which will bring the two sides of the continent within a few days of
each other, and render much now useless territory available, either in
an agricultural, manufacturing or commercial point of view. Although
the country, from the Mi