FROM CALIFORNIA.
AN ELMIRAN ON HIS TRAVELS.
SAN FRANCISCO, July 22, 1869.
I see by the ADVERTISER, which finds it's way out on the Pacific Coast that my friend and companion for a part of my trip, has returned home and to duty. The ADVERTISER circulates daily among three of us, one particularly, when punctual in its arrival. Sometimes it tar-ries on the way for company, and when it arrives, there will be two or three numbers and then a time is devoted to reading up the tardy papers, and an emphatic sugges-tion made that GRANT'S officials might be more prompt. You are aware a hungry man is impatient, whether his cravings are for food for the body or mind.
After a pleasant trip across the coun-try, stopping at all the principal places en route of railroad travel, we diverged to Salt Lake City, a place accursed by the sur-rounding Gentiles, without apparent rea-son, as good citizens and members of a community. There are unquestionably-bad men found among the Mormons, as among others ; again, you will find those who devoutly believe their creed and relig-iously follow it. Seldom if ever can you meet with an association persons where more general integrity is stamped upon the masses. In Southern Utah, recently, it is reported a train of emigrants, with some very fine stock, moving across the territory was attacked, and all persons composing it brutally murdered, un-der the guise of the Ute or Pi-Ute Indians, by the Mormon settlers and the stock appropriated without causing any in-vestigation by the President BRIGHAM YOUNG. The Gentiles do not allow any report of that kind to lose animus.
There are some milk and water Mor-mons, who, on the approach of railroads and the advance of a christian community, offer but few apologies for the association of which they form a part, and there are others ardent in their belief and bitter in their denunciations of the coming destroyers of their peculiar institution.
The profits of the masses center in their President and his Council, in the way of tithes of all they possess. Recently the flow in that course has been repudiated by some of the recreant, and evidently more knowing ones, who are regarded as worse than the Gentile, and imprecations of de-struction are invited for them. They occu-py a very fertile and a very peasant valley, wanting in but few of the comforts that sur-round our communities east. On the Sab-bath the people assemble for worship in buildings numbered according to the dis-trict, and in the Tabernacle, a capacious building computed to hold ten thousand per-sons, yet unfinished, and there is doubt about its being ever filled. A veil of muslin is drawn across the building nearly in the centre, which then makes a large audience room, and which was scarcely more than half full during the service which I attended in the morning.
On prosecuting the trip westward from the point of departure for Salt Lake City, the terminus of the Union Pacific appears to be the end of the Celtic and Anglo Saxon common laborer. You immediately strike a new strata of enterprise and operators. The means which they employ is foreign and the antipodes of the other. The Chi-nese bone and sinew, are the motors of ad-vancement and completion. Platform cars may be seen loaded with the short, stubbed oriental men—the cheap untiring laborers—the beings who accumulate from the cast off refuse of the white, in every day toil. Persistent efforts are making them power-ful, by giving them the productive power, while their opponents are growing effemi-nate and imbecile. They are growing weal-thy from the profligate and wanton care-lessness of their employers. Their tented clusters are but the nestlings of a monster influence.
Again we diverge at Winnemucca for a point northward, the stopping place of our friend ROBERTSON—where currency is made and spent, where some have made their "take" and others have"weakened." With a "you bet," they are going to have another "lay out" that will have "pay in it." Here are, indeed, some very fine mining proper—[….], some from which six to eight thousand dollars are being taken daily. Others are being hotly pushed, incited by the success of a neighbor, sometimes with evident proof of accomplishment. There is more excitement here over the striking of a ledge of good mineral, than any one can conceive, or the prosperous and continuous working out of rich ore. Persistent effort rarely goes uncompensated here. There are those, as in every community, who pick a little here and shovel a little there, that neither ac-complish nor defeat anything.
Our own city may be benefitted through some of these holes in the ground, and some very rich mines are being struck, and Elmira may have the credit of some of them.
The staging to and from this place is terribly rough. I doubt whether that term is emphatic enough ; hardly as emphatic as some of the sittings one hurriedly makes.—If there is any place where a lashing is pos-itively necessary for a person to keep him from unshipping his head, it would seem a fit place on one of these overland coaches. The stages make from eight to ten miles an hour on some roads, and if it was their practice on this road, my friend would hardly have arrived as safely as reported. This has been heretofore quite a danger-ous road. For the past year no difficulty what-ever has been experienced by the coach pas-sengers from Indian attacks. The few Indians that remain encamped around the military depots and camps, or have gone onto their reservations and are fast becoming extinct. It is really a wonder how they live on these barren, unproductive moun-tains.
Returning to Winnemucea, we continue our trip westward to the Pacific coast, and arrive at Sacramento in the afternoon. The scenery on the Central Pacific is grand af-ter leaving Truckee. The best, I am as-sured, is lost sight of by the snow sheds. The scenery is very much improved by sub-stituting on the mountain slopes, the pine trees in all their magnificence, for the mis-erable stunted sago bush and grease wood.
Sacramento is a place of over 20,000 in-habitants, and it is reported to contain more. The business appears to me to be made up of that class and with the object of meeting the wants and tastes of the mining community. Saloons are abundant, with gambling places in the same locations, where thousands are lost in a night by the miner. Fruits are found here in abundance of every kind that you can name that we have at home, and you may add the first fruiting of the fig tree, and they are all, ex-cept the apple, very large and delicious. At Nappa, below Sacramento, is the point where immense quantities of grapes are grown, and where the California Wine is mostly made and upon which its reputation was formed.
The trip down to San Francisco is made by rail and steamboat in four hours, and it is a very pleasant trip. The temperature changes to be much colder as you approach San Francisco, and the sunny skies are fre-quently interrupted. Hoping before long to give you the particulars of my stay here,
I am, Yours truly,
JNO. M. DEXTER.
