We arrived at the Pueblo do San Jose about twelve o’clock.  There being no hotels in California, we were much at a loss where to apply for refreshments and lodgings for the night.  Soon, however, we were met by Captain Fisher, a native of Massachusetts, but a resident of this country for twenty years or more, who invited us to his house.  We were most civilly received by Senora F., who, although she did not speak English, seemed to understand it very well.  She is a native of the southern Pacific coast of Mexico, and a lady of fine manners and personal appearance.  Her oldest daughter, about thirteen years of age, is very beautiful.  An excellent dinner was soon set out, with a variety of the native wines of California and other liquors.  We could not have felt ourselves more happy and more at home, even at our own firesides and in the midst of our own families.

The Pueblo de San Jose is a village containing some six or eight hundred inhabitants.  It is situated in what is called the “Pueblo Valley,” about fifteen miles south of the southern shore of the Bay of San Francisco.  Through a navigable creek, vessels of considerable burden can approach the town within a distance of five or six miles.  The embarcadero, or landing, I think, is six miles from the Pueblo.  The fertile plain between this and the town, at certain seasons of the year, is sometimes inundated.  The “Pueblo Valley,” which is eighty or one hundred miles in length, varying from ten to twenty in breadth, is well watered by the Rio Santa Clara and numerous arroyos, and is one of the most fertile and picturesque plains in California.  For pastoral charms, fertility of soil, variety of productions, and delicious voluptuousness of climate and scenery, it cannot be surpassed.  This valley, if properly cultivated, would alone produce breadstuffs enough to supply millions of population.  The buildings of the Pueblo, with few exceptions, are constructed of adobes, and none of them have even the smallest pretensions to architectural taste or beauty.  The church, which is situated near the centre of the town, exteriorly resembles a huge Dutch barn.  The streets are irregular, every man having erected his house in a position most convenient to him.  Aqueducts convey water from the Santa Clara River to all parts of the town.  In the main plaza hundreds, perhaps thousands, of squirrels, whose abodes are under ground, have their residences.  They are of a brownish colour, and about the size of our common gray squirrel.  Emerging from their subterraneous abodes, they skip and leap about over the plaza without the least concern, no one molesting them.