A history of the passage of this
city through those ordeals, and through its almost incredible
financial extremes, should be written by a pen which not only
accuracy shall govern, but imagination shall inspire.
I cannot pause for the civility of referring to the many kind
attentions I received, and the society of educated men and women
from all parts of the Union I met with; where New England, the
Carolinas, Virginia, and the new West sat side by side with
English, French, and German civilization.
My stay in California was interrupted by an absence of nearly four
months, when I sailed for the Sandwich Islands in the noble Boston
clipper ship Mastiff, which was burned at sea to the water's edge;
we escaping in boats, and carried by a friendly British bark into
Honolulu, whence, after a deeply interesting visit of three months
in that most fascinating group of islands, with its natural and
its moral wonders, I returned to San Francisco in an American
whaler, and found myself again in my quarters on the morning of
Sunday, December 11th, 1859.
My first visit after my return was to Sacramento, a city of about
forty thousand inhabitants, more than a hundred miles inland from
San Francisco, on the Sacramento, where was the capital of the
State, and where were fleets of river steamers, and a large inland
commerce.
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