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Show 400 APPENDIX. mine, who shipped lumber frotn New York to the amount of $1000, sold it here for $14,000. Houses that cost $300, sell readily for $3000; and the demand is constantly increasing. At least 75 houses have been imported from Canton, and are put up by Chinese carpenters. Nearly all the chairs in private families are of Chinese Inanu:fucture; and there are two restaurants in the town kept by Kang-sung and W augtong, where every palatable chow-chow, curry, and tarts, are served up by the Celestials. W ashinO' is still$8 a dozen~ and the consequence is, large qu~ntities of soiled linen are sent to our antipodes to be purified. A vessel just in from Canton brought 250 dozen, which were sent out a few months ago ; another, from the Sandwich Islands, brought 100 dozen; and the practice is now h,econ1ing general. San Francisco is, in fact, more metropolitan in its character than any port in the world. Its trade with all parts of the Pacific is rapidly increasing. The overland emigration is pouring into the country in a full tide. The reports that reached here of distress on the routes, and the certainty that many would need aid before reaching the settlements, caused a public movement in favour of raising supplies to send out on the routes. Private individuals and companies contribut" d largely ; and General Riley, on being applied to, promptly gave a carte blanche to Major Cauley and Captain I(ain, of the Q. M. department, to furnish all the assistance in their power. Several hundred pack-mules, under the charge of competent officers, have been sent to Vallecitos, at the edge of the great desert, and to the sink of Hun1boldfs River, in the great basin, the places where emigrants will most require aid. Word has reached us that many waggons have stopped at the latter place, unable to proceed further. I have heard of no such distress on the northern route as the southern. The emigrants in the north, so far as I learn, have not been molested by the Indians ; while the hostilities of the Yumas and APPENDIX. 401 Maricopas, ~t the Color~do crossing, have already cost the companies on the G1la the loss of several lives. "As to prices, all mining tools are high, as are also all articles upon which labour has been performed here. Picks, $5 ; pans, /$5; cradles for washing O'Old, three feet long, worth /$2 in the States, sell her~ for $40; flour, from /$8 to /$10 per hundred; pork, $50 per hundred; cofl'ee, /$18; board, $21 per week, or /$1 50 cents per meal, with the privilege of sleeping under the nearest tree unoccupied. At the mines, sixty n1iles distant, the prices are doubled, and of some things trebled. Brandy, $2 per bottle. At the mines they are making, on an average, an ounce of gold per day. One man who arrived here this month, made in two weeks $2.S,OOO, and has gone to San Francisco to take passage for the States. Labour is in proportion to the produce of the mines, ranging from $8 to $18 per day. '' Vessels continue to arrive at San Francisco from the United States. When I left there, two weeks a<Yo, 102 vessels had arrived out of the 250 which s~iled from different ports in the United States ~ur~ng the winter and spring. Since then, the.y are begmni.ng to crowd in more rapidly. I was this morning Informed, though not from the most reliable authority, that forty-five had arrived in two days. The harb~ur presents for 1niles an unbroken .forest ~f masts; ships from every nation and country he ~ere Idle and worthless, with no prospect of ever leaving: many must go down at their anchor, for there are not men enou~h unemployed to work the twentieth part of t~e.m. T e men will leave· there is no way of deta1nmg them for duty on boa~·d: the naval force has been weaken~d by desertion ; and there is no human effo.rt or possibility to prevent the 'custom' of deserting. Commander Jones has barely force en~ugh on board to form a crew much less to tender assistance to merchanttnen. ' There are yet scores of vesse~s in port that have been months endeavouring to discharge ; some |