dwellers among us an additional lease of life. With a more extensive line of seacoast than the Atlantic side, indented in many places with safe and commodious harbors, possessed of many natural and important resources, its waters were almost unfurrowed by the keels of commerce twentyfive years ago. From Alaska to San Diego, with the single exception of San Francisco, the eye might look in vain over the vast expanse in search of sail or steamer. Now, a busy and constantly increasing fleet of steamers and sailing-craft are continually plowing these waters and utilizing the abun dant resources of their shores.

Wonderful, almost astounding, as have been the material results of the last quarter of a century, they are fairly paralleled by the moral, social, and political developments of the same period. The time-crusted barriers of oriental exclusiveness have been prostrated before the advancing hosts of civilization and Christianity. Japan, which for centuries denied access to all nations, saving an unimportant concession to the Dutch, has not only opened her arms to receive us, but has really become a voluntary missionary in promoting enlightenment with political and social reformation. The effect of her example has been potent with China, and is extending itself to other portions of the Orient. Sons and daughters of her nobler families are receiving education and culture in our seminaries of learning, and commercial intercourse with the peoples of Asia and India has been placed upon a better and more satisfactory footing. Australasia has been stimulated to renewed exertion, and is becoming a valuable ally to California. All these, and innumerable other boons to mankind, have been the legiti. mate sequences of discovering the existence of gold in California. We can not do better than quote, in this connection, the eloquent words of the Honorable J. Ross Browne, delivered before the Society of Territorial Pioneers of California. No event in the history of modern times has produced such an immediate and beneficial effect upon the commerce of the world, or tended so directly to the extension of civilization and the general welfare of mankind, as the discovery of the gold-placers of California in 1848. Already, in a little over a quarter of a century, the

immensity of the results is beyond computa tion. No human eye can penetrate the ramifications through which the enormous treas. ures wrested from the earth have passed during that period :

"From the 1st of September, 1848, to the present time, the State of California alone produced upward of $1,000,000,000 in gold; other States and Territo ries of the United States about $260,000,000; the gold and silver product of Nevada, since 1860, reaches $240,000,000; making an aggregate of $1,500,000,000 added to the metallic currency of the world by a few States and Territories of the American Union."

Such, then, in a condensed relation, have been the wonderful products of one-quarter of a century. Such is the legacy bestowed upon the world by the handful of gallant patriots who carried the standard of our country victoriously through the Mexican war, and the hardy brave band of pioneers whose spirit of daring and adventure led them first to this golden land. The remembrance of their services will not be permitted to perish. The Association of Territorial Pioneers of California made the promise through its president, Captain James M. McDonald, who, in his opening remarks at the celebration of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the State of California, said:

"All who arrived in California prior to the admission of the State into the Union, seemingly the most natural period at which to draw the line, are eligible to membership. It has already about 375 contributing members, and a number of junior members, the descendants of pioneers; in addition to which there

are some honorary members, most of whom are veterans of the Mexican war-men who, on account of

the gallant service rendered in the war that led to the acquisition of this country, are entitled to this distinction under the by-laws of the society. The objects of the association are succinctly set forth in our constitution, and may be briefly stated as social, kistorical, and literary. We propose to collect and place in an enduring form accounts of events as yet unwritten, and of the discovery, exploration, and naming of the various mountains and valleys, forests, lakes, rivers, bays, and so on, that lie within the forth the wonder and admiration of all beholders, and boundaries of our extensive State; objects which call excite a desire to hear and know more concerning. them. We hope also to gather and preserve the reminiscences and biographies of many men whose lives have been identified with the development and progress of the Pacific Coast. With every pioneer that passes away from our midst there is buried a fund of authentic historical information, as well as of romantic story connected with his experiences and ad

ventures in a new land during those busy days so full of hardships and hope, of excitement and change, so characterized by novel pursuits and fluctuating fortunes. With every passing year we lose some of those whose memories reach back into and beyond the strange and eventful times which marked the rapid transition of an almost unexplored wilderness into a wealth-producing State peopled by energetic and civilized men. Much of the matter which is thus, alas! drifting so rapidly into oblivion would be not only interesting and valuable at the present time, but would be cherished by posterity in connection with the memory of those who participated in the events narrated."

Our Financial Condition.

Events of a remarkable character have recently disturbed the financial repose of California, and to their calm consideration we shall devote a brief space. The afternoon of August 26th witnessed the temporary suspension of cash payments by the Bank of California, the Merchants' Exchange Bank, and the National Gold Bank and Trust Company. The causes are readily explainable. From January 1st to August 26th, inclusive, this city exported the enormous amount of $30,500,000 in treasure, being nearly $15,000,000 in excess of shipments for the like period of 1874. The rise in gold at the East was the inciting motive, and heavy payments, as well as large sums forwarded for speculative purposes, were contemporaneously taken from this market, leaving it weak and poorly supplied. At the same time, our crops were being harvested and moved to tide-water, absorbing at least $5,000,000 more. The increasing scarcity of gold coin induced a number of heavy depositors to withdraw their funds and temporarily retire them at the very time that the assistance they would have giv. en was most needed. At that most critical juncture a "run" was precipitated upon the banks, culminating in the suspensions above stated. That pressure forced $4,000,000 more from the vaults of our monetary reservoirs, making a total drainage of not less than $19,000,000 or $20,000,000 from our ordinary resources. The storm was weathered nobly without leaving a wreck. Not a single failure has occurred, not one mercantile house has succumbed, not an industry has been permanently affected, not a workshop closed, not an interest destroyed. The

Merchants' Exchange Bank shortly re-opened its doors, the National Gold Bank and Trust Company soon followed, and the Bank of California on the 22d of September was preparing to resume, with a greater volume of paid-up capital in gold coin, and all its connections unimpaired. At the same date, the new Bank of Nevada was nearly ready to commence operations with $5,000,000, and coin was flowing in from a variety of exterior sources. A large portion of the harvest was still held in the State ready for conversion into money, the mines were yielding with unprecedented liberality, and public confidence was completely restored. California "still lives."

An Artist's Trip in the Sierra.

SECOND LETTER.

As the light gains in the east, faint twitters are heard, gradually gaining strength and volume, and just as the first flush of sunlight falls on distant snow-covered dome and peak, the song is loudest. You spring up, not as in the sleepy town, but with a keen sense of enjoyment. A drink at the soda spring, of clear cool champagne - like water, and you are ready for your simple breakfast, which is all the better for its simplicity. On looking about we find ourselves on a broad plateau, about 100 or 200 feet above the Tuolumne Meadows; at our right the soda springs bubbling out in half-a-dozen places, dyeing the earth around with reddish incrustations, and gradually oozing its way through rank grass to the river. Beneath spreads the Tuolumne, winding in graceful curves through the meadow; beyond, Cathedral Peak, patched with snow; at its base, a noble forest growth of Williamson spruce, and mountain, yellow, and two-leafed pine-groves of the latter interspersed in the meadows, as if planted by a landscape gardener; farther to the left, a series of nameless peaks leading on up the valley toward Mount Lyell, which is hidden from sight by the lofty walls girdling the meadows; the panorama completed by an immense rounded mass of smooth - polished rock called Eagle Cliff, around whose base the river roars in rapids: all this landscape in clear gray shadow which does not give one

the feeling of shadow, and only the tops of the peaks in warm-colored sunlight. I was much struck by this appearance, and found myself wishing for a little conventional studioshadow tone in the landscape. There are, I fancy, but few painters who think for them. selves, and who leave the studio behind them when studying from nature, who have not had some sense of this puzzled feeling in finding nature oblivious to their preconceived ideas. Saddling and packing our animals, we leave our camp for the next comers, and, with a glorious sense of freedom, we ride up the meadows for a mile or two, past Eagle Cliff; pass flocks of sheep that stupidly run and ba-a-h, in treble and bass. We cross the river, and after climbing a thou sand feet or more of steep hill-side we come to another meadow full of white bowlders, flocked together in the green pastures; the background filled by Dana and Mount Gibbs, a reddish purple in the morning light (they being composed of metamorphic red slate). Patches of meadow, and pines-green and purplish-brown-stretch up their rounded sides, contrasting beautifully with a foreground of living green; clear water flowing stilly over sparkling beds of sand, at times over loose rocks in hurrying gurgling speed, at our right, walled in by cliffs whose feet are bathed by small lakes of melted snow, clear and cool, to which a few groups of contorta give a character both stern and wild. Slowly climbing the Mono trail, the sternness and wildness increase. Patches of snow melting in the hot sun—the grasses becoming thinner and more gray, boggy, and marshy-make walking anything but pleasant for the animals. Three hours of hard exercise bring us to the summit.

The elevation is 11,000 feet above sealevel, and at this season of the year (middle of June) the landscape looks very different from the summer appearance of things, 5,000 or 6,000 feet below. It reminds me of sketching-days in Maine in the early spring-the ground where uncovered by the snow pale and dead-looking, every now and again a feeble tuft of grass trying to live in the thin and marly soil-but the distance and foreground tree-foliage was Sierra itself; the flexilis, hardy and vigorous, round and fleshytrunked, its sombre velvety rich foliage con

trasted by dead trunks of a pale straw color, spiked and stiffened by death, in their attitudes defiant still. There is a feeling of sadness in the whole landscape, and in the blueblack sky which seems to close in upon you. Muir here told us that we were near the top of Bloody Cañon, and we all gave an extra cinch to the saddles: "For," said Muir, "the descent is dangerous." With stake-ropes in hand, leading our animals, in a short time we were cautiously placing our feet in the smoothest places; the slate (metamorphic red slate composes the top of Bloody Cañon) standing up like knife-blades, chafing and cutting the horses' feet; sliding and scrambling; now skirting a lakelet bridged by the winter's snow, and dripping softly in miniature falls through slushy sedgy mud; coming to long avalanches of snow, down which shouting and sliding we glide, followed by the plunging snorting animals; brought to a sudden stand at times by the reluctant horses refusing to budge; in places breaking through down into the torrent flowing beneath, the spice of danger adding a fierce pleasure to our efforts. By and by we are cautiously threading our way over loose rock, our left hands almost touching a perpendicular wall; close at our feet a dark cavernous - looking lake about 500 yards wide and looking as if bottomless. Careful climbing brings us to the outlet of the lake, where we find a narrow place to rest. As the excitement of motion dies away, we begin to feel the influence of the savage desolateness of the place, and impressions from Dante's Inferno crowd the mind. Here, right in front of you, the black lake-colorless, except at your feet, where the submerged bowlders look green and brown, abruptly fading into the blacknesssuggesting unknown horrible depths; behind you the shadowed wall, sombre and terrible in its brown blackness; in front, and across the lake, long stretches of shadowed snow; reaching up among the chocolate-colored rocks, dusky olive-green patches of squatting scrubby pine. A general feeling of blackness of darkness completes the picture, leaving fearful impressions which the real danger behind and before us failed to create. Up and at it again. We pass alongside of the fall which forms the outlet of the lake, tearing and foaming its way down to the Mono

plains; crossing and recrossing where practicable; stopping now and again for a few minutes' rest. At one of these resting-places we see Mono Lake, the volcanoes, the eastern flank of the Sierra peak piled on peak, flashing fields of snow glistening and shining in the sun, luminous gray rocks, fields of forest sinking to the purpled sage-brush plains below. Faint markings of greenish gray show the tracks of streams directing their course toward Mono Lake, which fades in the distance, shimmering and fainting, into the quivering sky-light and heat radiating and reflecting from lake to sky, and from plain to peak. A contrast this to the sights of an hour ago. Without accident we arrive at the bottom of Bloody Cañon, at the close of a memorable day, skirting the shores of another lake lined by willow, cotton-wood, and yellow pine, and cross a long meadow where 2,000 or 3,000 sheep are grazing. Following the stream for a mile or two, we camp on its banks for the night. WM. KEITH.

Notes from a "Private" Letter. The "kind and complimentary" from you arrived at my wickiup in the evening, and found me interviewing beans with a pitch-fork. Do you know beans? For many years I did not, but now I do. I raise him; and, following the great advice of Solomon, I thrash him, so that he may not spoil. Please take notice: if children were as tiresome thrashing as beans are, Solomon would never have made his literary reputation by his short sermon on sparing rods. I have much more to say about Solomon, but I postpone, in order to stepas I often do from the sublime to the ridiculous. . . . There was one painter of pictures -I forget his name, and I think he was a Dutchman who painted a woman (he said it was his wife), whose work I like to look at. If I were a paint-artist, and were called upon to paint a woman "out of my own head," the way the boy's father made his hominyblock, I guess I should paint about such a feminine ideal as that Dutch fellow did. If "pull-back skirts" mean anything to me, it is hip. I never look upon the style walking against itself and well filled out, but I am ready to cry with the old Crusaders to the

Holy Land, "Hip, hip, Jerusalem!" In short, if a certain virtuous coarseness is Dutch, "that's me." I can not realize any goodness which is more good than the true natural good. I know of no joy so joyful as healthy natural joy. I comprehend no ecstatic thrill equal to a natural thrill. I can not apprehend, conceive, or imagine any picture equal to nature when disrobed of man's drapery of law, custom, and affectation. Even laziness, which is my highest ideal of human happiness, when he lounges along a stream, in the sun - pictured edge of the woodland, with a gun or fishing - rod, hunting a duty but fearing to find it—just tantalized with the thought that he might do something, perhaps ought to do something, but really need not do it—laziness, pinned thus upon the bosom of nature, makes a picture at once bold and most beautiful—a photographic foretaste of heaven, where we are to do nothing but loaf about town and sing. I wish we may not have to sing in the next world—that is, all of us—because there are some people who, if their musical sense is not improved by translation, will make heaven howl like My sins of the pen and pencil (lead) are numerous as well as tedious. When I am done thrashing beans and picking apples I will write you some "pieces"-perhaps if I get "took" with a big sudden inspiration, I'll drop everything, and, in great haste, run home and attend to it. J. W. GALLY.

Powers' Work on California Indians. Stephen Powers' (one of our valued contributors) Indian book was accepted some time ago by the Government, and will, in the course of time, be brought out as a part of the Ethnological Series of the Reports of the Territorial Surveys, in the section over which Major Powell has command. To enable him to put some finishing touches on the book, he has received from the Secretary of the Interior an appointment as Special Commissioner, to proceed to western Nevada and California, to purchase Indian objects for the Centennial. He is authorized to spend $1,000 in Nevada and $1,000 in California in such purchases. He will visit the coast soon, accompanied by an assistant, to spend three or four months.

QUEEN MARY. A Drama. By Alfred Tennyson. Boston: J. R. Osgood & Co. Whatever may be the fate of Mr. Tennyson's drama of Queen Mary, should any attempt be made to present it on the stage, it can not be doubted that he has succeeded in presenting the reader with a very vivid pict ure of a page of history which will live while the world is round. It was not alone for the liberties and life of the one small country in which the scenes of the drama were enacted, that this high game was play ed. The character of the civilization of the age, and of succeeding ages, hung upon the issue; whether the world was to be permitted ever again to think or not-whether the battles which had been fought and won in the quiet studies of Luther and his companions, and in the stormy resolution of bluff Harry, whose "colossal kinghood" had dared the rage of the whole Catholic world. whether all that had been gained was to be lost forever-depended, as it seemed, upon the sturdy manhood and true-hearted trust of some half-a-dozen men whom destiny had stationed around the tottering throne of England to play the man there and die.

The said Harry being quiet in his grave, and Catholic Mary on the throne, hungering with her crowd of Spanish friars and priests to re-establish the old religion and become the minister of destruction and death to the heretics, the hearts of men began to fail them. Upon the wave of this "new learning," with a stout crew, with a bold helmsman, and a rising tide, the ship of state had sailed gallantly along, and all was triumph and hope. But now the helmsman is gone, the tide is turned, a crazy woman and a mob of wrangling churchmen and hungry friars are masters of the decks, and the ship begins to stagger back into the receding tide.

The first scene opens with a street procession, in which Mary and Elizabeth pass, riding side by side, amid the cries of the people: "Long live Queen Mary!" "Down with

the traitors!" and "Death to Northumberland!" Elizabeth has met the queen at Wanstead with five hundred horse; Mary took her hand and called her "sweet sister," kissing her. She is riding to the Tower, to loose the prisoners there, and among them Courtenay. The question is eagerly discussed among the bystanders, Who is the queen to marry?

In scene second all jubilation is passed, for among those who know the queen's mind it is understood in what direction things are tending. Cranmer is discovered sitting in a room in the palace at Lambeth, and musing with himself. All the bishops, he says, have fled from their sees, the deans from their deaneries, and hundreds more, all hur rying across the Channel. He says:

"CRANMER. I will go.

I thank my God it is too late to fly."

After this the actors begin to crowd in upon the stage. We have a scene in St. Paul's Cross, with Father Bourne in the pulpit, and swords are drawn. Bourne calls the queen "Our second Virgin Mary," and the crowd answer him, "We want no Virgins here! We'll have the Lady Elizabeth!" Noailles causes slips of paper to be dropped in the palace under the queen's nose - "There will be no peace for Mary till Elizabeth lose her head." He (Noailles) is playing at "the game of chess with Henry, King of France.