rich; still, such have been the extortionate prices that they have been
compelled to pay for their commonest artificial luxuries and
wearing-apparel, that generally they are but indifferently provided
with the ordinary necessaries of civilized life. For a suit of clothes,
which in New York or Boston would cost seventy-five dollars, the
Californian has been compelled to pay five times that sum in hides at
one dollar and fifty cents; so that a _caballero_, to clothe himself
genteelly, has been obliged, as often as he renewed his dress, to
sacrifice about two hundred of the cattle on his rancho. No people,
whether males or females, are more fond of display; no people have paid
more dearly to gratify this vanity; and yet no civilized people I have
seen are so deficient in what they most covet.

[1] This was in September, 1846. In June, 1847, when I left San
Francisco, on my return to the United States, the population had
increased to about twelve hundred, and houses were rising in all
directions.




CHAPTER IV.

Climate of San Francisco
Periodical winds
Dine on board the Portsmouth
A supper party on shore
Arrival of Commodore Stockton at San Francisco
Rumours of rebellion from the south
Californian court