rights and liberties maintained so gloriously with England. But what is our strength at this moment? Are we still so feeble? Still so dependent on beings who are the scourge of mankind and deface the earth with cruelty and tyranny? We all certainly will say no. All will say America is no more dependent on anybody but themselves and nature's laws. Politics and love to live forced legislators to treat friendly with despots and now this voice of justice and humanity calls them to throw off this so long maintained mask of amity to tyrannical systems and to declare themselves at once for mankind and fellowmen. The voice of nature is mighty and omnipotent. She calls us up out of our dreamlike indifference to honorable participation in the fate of our fellowmen and makes it our duty to stand in defense of her laws on this planet and home of intellectual creatures. Let us throw off then our fastidious way of action and exert one and all of us the strength both physical and moral, for universal happiness and so lay by this the road to world's perfection. II VOYAGE TO CALIFORNIA December thirty-first, eighteen hundred and fifty-one. Left Wheeling on Steamer _Messenger_ for Pittsburgh, April twentieth. Exodus to California. The tide of emigration for California swept me along in its progress for the same reason as thousands of others—to appropriate money enough by a few years' hard toil, to secure a future independency. When first the idea of a movement to the West took possession of me, I was wavering in the choice between California and Oregon and gave finally preference to Oregon on account of securing a homestead at the arrival there and to judge from the last news of the diggings better wages than in the latter. From an inability to make up a certain complement of immigrants I had to give up the project and go to California. I left subsequently Pittsburgh on the Steamer _Paris_, passing Wheeling without seeing my brother, and arrived after a week's journey down to the mouth of the Ohio River and from Cairo up the Mississippi to St. Louis.