hat he would observe to the "English Secretary of State, if
he only had him there,"--pointing with the bottle to his dozing sposa.

My shake-down was in a small receptacle for rubbish, fleas, and other
lively furniture, which in getting at, I was obliged to pass a large
room, laid out with about five-and-twenty of the servitors--men, women,
and children--all in heaps. There were a number of limbs obstructing the
passage, and I was obliged to push them aside, rather unceremoniously, I
fear, for I was greeted by a volley of Indian gutteral curses, sounding
quite like a person who had swallowed a collection of shells, and was
anxious to get them up more expeditiously than was possible. Being too
tired and drowsy to heed their complaints, with Juaquinito I betook
myself to mat and blankets, and never moved until break of day; when I
arose, kicked up an Indian, and sent for fresh horses, and continued
shooting geese and curlew, until the morning was far advanced; then,
after swearing devoted friendship to Bill Anderson, his bullocks, and
his wife, we departed for the port.

CHAPTER XI.

We remained two months at Monterey; and then upon the assembling of the
squadron, and the arrival of a new Commodore, rather than play segundo
violo, and have the blue pennant of a Commander-in-Chief flaunting its
folds in face of our red, we were glad to lift the anchors, and sail for
the waters of San Francisco. Steering too far from the land, a northerly
gale arose, and although the distance is but eighty miles, we were a
week in gaining our destination, on the 29th of March.

The face of the coast presents the same general aspect as that to the
southward of Monterey--one great sea-wall of mountains, split into deep
ravines, and tufted with towering pines. Many of these trees that fringe
what Humboldt terms the maritime Alps of California, are of enormous
magnitude. A German naturalist, employed in scientific pursuits in the
country, assured me that he had measured pines in the Santa Cruz
mountains fifty-seven feet in girth at the base, and carrying the lofty
tops upon a clear shaft for two hundred and seventy feet without a
branch!

I have also seen, in my Californian rambles, pines of immense growth,
taking root in the wild glens of rich and sheltered mountain gorges,
shooting up straight and clear as javelins, with symmetrical columns
that would make too taunt masts for the tallest "amiral" that ever
floated.

Near to the