reason to believe is very great. This place is, doubtless, destined to
become one of the largest and most opulent commercial cities in the
world, and under American authority it will rise with astonishing
rapidity. The principal merchants now established here are Messrs.
Leidesdorff, Grimes and Davis, and Frank Ward, a young gentleman
recently from New York. These houses carry on an extensive and
profitable commerce with the interior, the Sandwich Islands, Oregon,
and the southern coast of the Pacific. The produce of Oregon for
exportation is flour, lumber, salmon, and cheese; of the Sandwich
Islands, sugar, coffee, and preserved tropical fruits.

California, until recently, has had no commerce, in the broad
signification of the term. A few commercial houses of Boston and New
York have monopolized all the trade on this coast for a number of
years. These houses have sent out ships freighted with cargoes of dry
goods and a variety of _knick-knacks_ saleable in the country. The
ships are fitted up for the retail sale of these articles, and trade
from port to port, vending their wares on board to the rancheros at
prices that would be astonishing at home. For instance, the price of
common brown cotton cloth is one dollar per yard, and other articles in
this and even greater proportion of advance upon home prices. They
receive in payment for their wares, hides and tallow. The price of a
dry hide is ordinarily one dollar and fifty cents. The price of tallow
I do not know. When the ship has disposed of her cargo, she is loaded
with hides, and returns to Boston, where the hides bring about four or
five dollars, according to the fluctuations of the market. Immense
fortunes have been made by this trade; and between the government of
Mexico and the traders on the coast California has been literally
_skinned_, annually, for the last thirty years. Of natural wealth the
population of California possess a superabundance, and are immensely