By the steamer Oregon arrived out Major R. P. Hammond, J. M.
Williams, James Blair, and others; also the gentlemen who, with
Major Ogden, were to compose a joint commission to select the sites
for the permanent forts and navyyard of California. This
commission was composed of Majors Ogden, Smith, and Leadbetter, of,
the army, and Captains Goldsborough, Van Brunt, and Blunt, of the
navy. These officers, after a most careful study of the whole
subject, selected Mare Island for the navy-yard, and "Benicia" for
the storehouses and arsenals of the army. The Pacific Mail
Steamship Company also selected Benicia as their depot. Thus was
again revived the old struggle for supremacy of these two points
as the site of the future city of the Pacific. Meantime, however,
San Francisco had secured the name. About six hundred ships were
anchored there without crews, and could not get away; and there the
city was, and had to be.

Nevertheless, General Smith, being disinterested and unprejudiced,
decided on Benicia as the point where the city ought to be, and
where the army headquarters should be. By the Oregon there arrived
at San Francisco a man who deserves mention here--Baron
Steinberger. He had been a great cattle-dealer in the United
States, and boasted that he had helped to break the United States
Bank, by being indebted to it five million dollars! At all events,
he was a splendid looking fellow, and brought with him from
Washington a letter to General Smith and another for Commodore
Jones, to the effect that he was a man of enlarged experience in
beef; that the authorities in Washington knew that there existed in
California large herds of cattle, which were only valuable for
their hides and tallow; that it was of great importance to the
Government that this beef should be cured and salted so as to be of