1841.] CLIMATE. 443 



San Francisco, which stands on the west bank of the bay of 

 the same name, just below the opening of the strait leading 

 to the ocean, and Monterey and San Diego on the coast. 

 Ciudad de los Angelos, in the interior, and about midway 

 between Monterey and San Diego, was also a town of some 

 consideration ; it being the capital of the two Calitornias 

 while under the Mexican sway. All these places have come 

 forward during the past year with astonishing rapidity. 

 But little more than twelve months ago, either of them 

 counted its population by hundreds, but now they are num- 

 bered in thousands. San Francisco has outstripped them 

 all. She has over twenty-five thousand inhabitants ; a 

 dense forest of masts and spars may be witnessed in front 

 of her wharfs; and from sunrise till sunset, the busy hum 

 of a commercial town resounds upon a spot whose wild 

 solitudes at a very recent period were scarcely disturbed by 

 the footsteps of civilized man. The most important towns 

 which have sprung up since the commencement of the gold 

 excitement, are Sacramento city, at the junction of the 

 American Fork and the Sacramento ; Stockton, on the San 

 Joaquin ; New York-of-the-Pacific, on Suisun Bay, in the 

 peninsula formed between the two rivers at their junction, 

 and at the head of ship navigation ; and Benicia, which lies 

 on the northern bank of the straits of Karquinez, near the 

 entrance into Suisun Bay, a distance of forty-five miles 

 from San Francisco. 



The climate of California is variable, but not unhealthy, and 

 most of the diseases that prevail are not produced by its in- 

 fluence. It is much warmer, of course, than in the same 

 latitude on the Pacific; and at the south, the heat is some- 

 times intense. Near the Colorado, the thermometer often 

 rises to 140°; and in the valley of the Sacramento, to 110°, in 

 the shade. Along the coast, it is not so warm. During the 

 dry season, from the 1st of March to the 1st of November, the 

 mornings are clear, and the heat generally intolerable; but at 

 noon, the sky becomes overcast ; the strong and unpleasant, 

 but bracing north-westerly gales set in, and condense tho 



