The Pueblo de San José is a village containing some six or eight
hundred inhabitants. It is situated in what is called the "Pueblo
Valley," about fifteen miles south of the southern shore of the Bay of
San Francisco. Through a navigable creek, vessels of considerable
burden can approach the town within a distance of five or six miles.
The _embarcadero_, or landing, I think, is six miles from the Pueblo.
The fertile plain between this and the town, at certain seasons of the
year, is sometimes inundated. The "Pueblo Valley," which is eighty or
one hundred miles in length, varying from ten to twenty in breadth, is
well watered by the Rio Santa Clara and numerous _arroyos_, and is one
of the most fertile and picturesque plains in California. For pastoral
charms, fertility of soil, variety of productions, and delicious
voluptuousness of climate and scenery, it cannot be surpassed. This
valley, if properly cultivated, would alone produce breadstuffs enough
to supply millions of population. The buildings of the Pueblo, with few
exceptions, are constructed of adobes, and none of them have even the
smallest pretensions to architectural taste or beauty. The church,
which is situated near the centre of the town, exteriorly resembles a
huge Dutch barn. The streets are irregular, every man having erected
his house in a position most convenient to him. Aqueducts convey water
from the Santa Clara River to all parts of the town. In the main plaza
hundreds, perhaps thousands, of squirrels, whose abodes are under
ground, have their residences. They are of a brownish colour, and about
the size of our common gray squirrel. Emerging from their subterraneous
abodes, they skip and leap about over the plaza without the least
concern, no one molesting them.

The population of the place is composed chiefly of native Californian
land-proprietors. Their ranchos are in the valley, but their residences
and gardens are in the town. We visited this afternoon the garden of