“Californians are called the scum of the earth, yet their great city is the best policed in the world,” said a New York friend to me, when he heard that I thought of crossing the continent to San Francisco.

“Them New Yorkers is a sight too fond of looking after other people's morals,” replied an old “Fortyniner,” to whom I repeated this phrase, having first toned it down, however. “Still,” he went on, “our history's baddish, but it ain't for us to play showman to our own worst pints:—let every man skin his own skunk!”

The story of the early days of San Francisco, as to which my curiosity was thus excited, is so curious an instance of the development of an English community under the most inauspicious circumstances, that the whole time which I spent in the city itself I devoted to hearing the tale from those who knew the actors. Not only is the history of the two Vigilance Committees in itself characteristic, but it works in with what I had gathered in Kansas, and Illinois, and Colorado as to the operation of the claim-clubs; and the stories, taken together, form a typical picture of the rise of a New English country.