which had sprung up out of red-wood boards and cotton lining; but the general and ladies could not go out, for ladies were rara aves at that day in California.  Isaac was cook, chamber-maid, and everything, thoughtless of himself, and struggling, out of the slimmest means, to compound a breakfast for a large and hungry family.  Breakfast would be announced any time between ten and twelve, and dinner according to circumstances.  Many a time have I seen General Smith, with a can of preserved meat in his hands, going toward the house, take off his hat on meeting a negro, and, on being asked the reason of his politeness, he would answer that they were the only real gentlemen in California.  I confess that the fidelity of Colonel Mason’s boy “Aaron,” and of General Smith’s boy “Isaac,” at a time when every white man laughed at promises as something made to be broken, has given me a kindly feeling of respect for the negroes, and makes me hope that they will find an honorable “status” in the jumble of affairs in which we now live.

That was a dull hard winter in San Francisco; the rains were heavy, and the mud fearful.  I have seen mules stumble 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,