Transcriber's note: Table of Contents created by Transcriber and placed into the Public Domain. CONTENTS Preface 3 The Country and Its Resources 5 The Gold Region 24 Advice to the Miner 33 Towns of California, and What Relates to Them 49 The Harbor of San Francisco 55 Directions for Entering the Harbor of San Francisco 55 Regulations for the Harbor and Port of San Francisco 56 The Towns of California (_continued_) 57 Errata 61 CALIFORNIA AS IT IS, AND AS IT MAY BE, OR, A GUIDE TO THE GOLD REGION. BY F. P. WIERZBICKI, M. D. SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA. FIRST EDITION. ** SAN FRANCISCO: PRINTED BY WASHINGTON BARTLETT, NO. 8, CLAY STREET. 1849. COPY RIGHT SECURED. PREFACE. The residence of several years in the country together with his familiarity with its whole extent, not excluding the Gold Region in which he passed more than four months rambling over its mountains, and even crossing the Sierra Nevada to the verge of the great Western Desert, give the writer of these pages a degree of confidence in the belief that by presenting this work to the public, notwithstanding the numerous books that have already appeared upon the subject, he supplies the desideratum so much needed at this moment, and renders justice to California that of late suffered a little in her reputation by the indiscretion of some of her friends. THE AUTHOR. SAN FRANCISCO, SEPT. 30, 1849. CALIFORNIA. THE COUNTRY AND ITS RESOURCES. The country lying between the _Sierra Nevada_ and the Pacific Ocean, and bounded at the north, though somewhat indefinitely, by the Oregon Territory, and at the South by the Lower California, confined by the late treaty of the two neighboring Republics to the line three miles south of San Diego, is known as Upper California, a country now engrossing the attention of the civilized world with its future importance. There is no other instance known in history where a country just emerging so to say, from obscurity, immediately acquired such complicated and multifarious relations, not only to the nation of whose territory it is only a small portion, but to the whole civilized world, as California has. In view of these various relations, we propose here to consider the subject of Upper California.