After his recent severe experience, it seemed unlikely that Mr. Coke would soon regret life in the prairies, with its painful alternations of bitter cold and parching heat; its frequent privations, hunger, thirst, fatigue, restive mules, hard labor, and scanty rest. During a seven weeks’ passage between Fort Vancouver and the Sandwich Islands, on board the Mary Dare, a wretched little coal-tub of a brig, he and his companions actually found themselves vaunting the superior comforts of their late land-journey. Confined by constant wet weather to a cabin twelve feet by eight, without a mattress to lie on, but with a superabundance of fleas, rats and cockroaches, they blessed the hour when they first caught sight of the palm-crowned shores of the Sandwich group. Mr. Coke’s account of his stay at the Hawaiian court is lively enough, but of no particular interest; and the sort of thing has been much better done before by Herman Melville and others. After the adventurous journey across the Rocky Mountains, this part of the book reads but tamely, and we are not sorry to get Mr. Coke back to North America. He and Fred landed at San Francisco. A long letter which he wrote thence, after a month’s stay in the country, is here reprinted, having originally been inserted in the _Times_ newspaper by the friend to whom it was addressed. He adds some further particulars and characteristic anecdotes. His account of the diggings, both wet and dry, but especially of the latter, fully confirms the mass of evidence already adduced as to their incalculable richness. “The quartz rock,” he says, “which is supposed to be the only permanent source from which gold will eventually be derived, extends north and south for more than a degree and a half of latitude. At Maripoosa, a society, possessing several ‘claims,’ have established, at a great expense, machinery for crushing the rock. They employ thirty men, whom they pay at the rate of 100 dollars each a month. This society is now making a clear gain of 1500 dollars a-day. This will show you what is to be expected when capital sets to work in the country.” Some of the sketches at _table-d’hôtes_ and gambling-tables are extremely natural and spirited. Mr. Coke and Fred, whilst at San Francisco, lived at El Dorado, the best hotel there; four meals a-day, dinner as good as at Astor’s at New York, venison, grizzly-bear, Sandhill-crane, and other delicacies; cost of board and lodging eight dollars a-day—not dear for California. At the dinner-table they made some queer acquaintances; amongst others a certain Major M., whose first mark of good-will, after his introduction to them by a judge, (judges and majors swarm at San Francisco) was to offer to serve as their friend in any “difficulty” into which they might get. The judge suggested that the two English gentlemen might probably have no need of a “friend” in that sense of the word. The Major’s reply will be our last extract.