CALIFORNIA. [From the Times, September 28.]

New Zealand Spectator and Cook's Strait Guardian, Volume VI, Issue 473, 13 February 1850, Page 4

CALIFORNIA. [From the Times, September 28.]

There are at this moment two great waves of population following the setting sun over this globe. The one is that mighty title of human beings which, this year beyond all former parallel, is flowing from Ireland, Great 8.-itain, Germany, and some other parts of Europe, in one compact and unbroken stream to the United States. The other, which may be almost described as urged on by the former, is that which, by many differeut ways, is forcing itself across the New World to California. Of these the latter is by far the most broken and frustrated. To cross the Atlantic is now as easy and safe as four hundred years ago it was to cross the British Channel ; and when the dire stimulus of hunger has once urged the peasant to cut the tie of home, it costs him scarcely an effort of body or of mind to be passed on from shore to shore, from deck to quay, from station to station, till he finds himself grading a railway or excavating a canal in the heart of North. America. It is far otherwise with the crowd whom that furious impulse, auri sacra fames, is attracting from comfortable homes to an almost desert shore. There is no kind of hardship and peril which they have not to undergo, and which they do not endure cheerfully for gold's sake. Immense voyages, tropical suns, stormy capes, pestilential ports, interminable deserts, savage tribrs, rocky mountains, winter snows, famine, cholera, and panic despair, are some of tbe alternatives from which they have to choose. As it is computed that by the end of this year near a hundred thousand persons will have left the States for California, it may not be uninteresting to trace the progress of the several streams. The greater part appear to have chosen the overland routes. The reasons for this preference are obvious. Throughout the whole Union there are always numbors on the move ; and nothing is more usual than to see trains of waggons bound for tbe backwoods. To

i adventurers of this class, wiib their thoughts and their faces once turned to the west, a trip to California seems only a slight extension of their purpose, and an itt mediate fulfilment of their ultimate destiny. The results, however, show that it is not quite the same thing as a journey to "Wiscons'n or Arkansas. The overland emigrants, we are told, h»ve principally taken three routes, the largest body by far going the northern route by the Missouri, the Platte, and Fort Lartmie. Beyond this fort grass and water are scarce, and a great amount of suffering is anticipated. Considerable bodies are also travelling by the middle or old Spanish trail, — the most direct route from Santa Fe to California, and by the southern, or Colonel Cook's route, south of the Gila. The Mexicans of Santa Fe have soon become reconciled to their American conquerors and fellow-citizens, and render them willing though not very efficient assistance. Their city is now the rendezvous of countless adventurers. Provisions have risen !to a famine price. Under the combined effects of fatigue, dissipation, and gambling, the licentious crowd lingers in this Capua of the gold hunters ; and many of them have, perhaps wisely, resolved to stop, and work the mines in the vicinity, which they are doing with succeSs. Westward of Santa Fe the country is of that sort that even they who have often traversed it, and are thoroughly well mounted and equipped, require careful and experienced guides. Of these three routes, however, the first or most northern is the favourite. There were lately on the road between Forts Kearney aud Hall thirty thousand emigrants, with more than fifty thousand head of stock, mostly oxen. Foreseeing that as they approached the mountains the pasture would diminish, they were daily accelerating their speed into an actual race. Waggons were cut up by hundreds to make. pack saddles. Oxen and mules could not be replaced at any price, only exchanged — a mule %r a yoke of oxen; and every man who could excba'nge his oxen for mules or ponies was abandoning his waggons, and packing up a few pounds of provisions. Such as were obliged to proceed with their waggons were lightening their cargoes, as in a storm : making the nicest calculation of the provision necessary for the distance, and throwing the rest away. The track for two hundred miles was strewn with waggons, trunks, axes, picks, shovels, harness, bacon, lead, flour, biscuit, beans, coats, pants, boots, shoes, chairs, &c. Such a destruction of property, and that so willingly, was probably never seen bef# re. Every one was striving to push ahead of the crowd, and the cattle were breaking down by wholesale. The prospect of the laggers was gloomy indeed. Should they find the pasture exhausted on the regular track, they would have to diverge into the ravines, and suffer so much delay as not to arrive at the Sierra Nevada till the falling snow would make the passage impossible. As early as, June, before the emigrants had got a third of their distance, four hundred had perished from cholera, which dogged their path, and even met them wherever they came, as the Indian tribes wete everywhere smitten by the plague. The want of pasture and water in the latter part of the route was so much j greater than iv the former that the most serious apprehensions were felt as to the fate of the thirty thousand adventurers, in passes and plains, where strong men, well mounted and otherwise prepared for the journey, have perished in companies, after supporting life for a time by the last and most horrible of expedients. The wealthier class of gold-hunters take the route by Chagres at very great cost, and with the chance of haviug to spend many weeks in idleness at Panama. The vessels from that port to San Francisco are almost forcibly boarded by the crowd of expectants, who must pay what fares the captains choose .to demand. Numerous bands, chiefly from Texas, cross Central America at more northern points, and, as might be expected, the Mexican Consul at Washington lately complained that in passing through Chihuahua and the adjoining provinces, these rude adventurers show but little consideration for Mexican property or feelings. Of the expedition round Cape Horn the intelligence is necessarily imperfect. The great body of it was last seen at Rio de Janeiro. "To the home-sick and sea-sick Californian," says the correspondent of the Weekly Herald, " the soothing sweetness of this harbour is inexpressible. Imagine what must be the feelings of a man tossed for fifty days upon the rude ocean when he enters a placid sheet of water one hundred miles in circuit, gladdened by cheerful sunshine and evergreen orange groves. Encircling this little paradise of lake and plain is a lofty amphitheatre of mountains, rising in every varied form, and covered with eternal verdure. On the west of this wonderful bay is the great city, the seat of the Court, and the metropolis of Brazil." The man who professes himself thus soothed and overwhelmed does not allow

* * • himself to remain long under the domin l ° n of passive sensations. He was one .of tbe crowd which had .shortly before numbered 2300 in the harbour of Rio, en route for California ; and the prevailing sentiments of that crowd we can easily imagine. His first reflection is that a tenth cf the Bowery boys who mobbed Macready would easily take possession of the town, with its 350,000 Portuguese, French, half-breeds, and negroes. He then pain's with delight the pleasing foretaste of that event he saw before his eyes in the exuberant impudence of the Yankee strangers, and the sort of sea change the city had already undergone. " Rio Janeiro is alive with American greatness. Swarms of uncouth, unwashed, long-bearded men traverse its scorching thoroughfares, and when the Portuguese sentries cry out * Qui pasa P* they yell back ' Californy for ever.' What wonderful myriads of pioneering Yankees our great spirit of expansion is beginning to open to the remotest parts of the earth. Brazil, and the Carribean North, Chili, Peru, and Western Mexico, are all, at this moment, nothing more than great entrepots for this commercial flood of Americans. Is it difficult to look forward to the day when our intimacy with all these nations — greater at this moment than with California ten years ago — will be followed by their Americanization, if not their incorporation with ourselves ? Enter tbe Hotel Pharoux, a tolerable house frequented by the shipping, and what a spectacle to Brother Jonathan — hats, caps, whiskers, and tobacco ! There is no mistaking the prominent tide. Just as it was in Texas, just as it was in Mexico, just as it is beginning to be in the Havannab, so it is now in the capital of Brazil." To give further reality to these delightful anticipations the writer then dwells on the Yankee salutations everywhere heard. " ' Walk up, old fellow. What'll you drink? 9 and in less than ten minutes a black moustachoed Brazilian hands you a sherry cobbler or a mint julep." From the introduction of mint juleps he argues that, in obedience to " some wise and supreme law," Rio is already witnessing the changes which are to mix up its population with other more powerful and diffusive elements. *