The other towns of Lower California are--San Antonio, in the neighborhood of an extensive silver mine, which has been worked for a long time with considerable profit; Loreto, on the gulf coast, about two hundred miles north of La Paz; San Domingo and Todos Santos, on the Pacific coast. The latter town is situated on the bay of the same name, and is the most northerly part of Lower California. The church and mission buildings at this place are the largest and most imposing structures of the kind in Lower California. The church has a handsome front and a lofty steeple. The mission is the residence of the head of the church in Lower California. There is every reason to believe, that, when the richer portions of Upper California begin to get a little crowded, the tide of emigration will be turned to the south, and the ports of the peninsula will become of great commercial importance. Then, if not before, the country will become the property of the United States, either by way of purchase, or after the manner of Texas. CHAPTER IX. THE FORMATION OF A STATE GOVERNMENT. The state of things which induced the people of California to form a state government deserves to be fully set forth. Their condition was without precedent in history; and from a statement of that condition, it will be seen that the framing of a constitution and the organization of a state government was the only resource of the Californians. The representations of the report of Thomas Butler King to the government of the United States will not be contradicted, and these we insert. "The discovery of the gold mines had attracted a very large number of citizens of the United States to that territory, who had never been accustomed to any other than American law, administered by American courts. There they found their rights of property and person subject to the uncertain, and frequently most oppressive, operation of laws written in a language they did not understand, and founded on principles, in many respects, new to them. They complained that the alcaldes, or judges, most of whom had been appointed or elected before the immigration had commenced, were not lawyers by education or profession; and, being Americans, they were, of course, unacquainted with the laws of Mexico, or the principles of the civil law on which they are founded. "As our own laws, except for the collection of revenue, the transmission of the mails, and establishment of postoffices, had not been extended over that territory, the laws of Mexico, as they existed at the conclusion of the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, regulating the relations of the inhabitants of California with each other, necessarily remained in force;[11] yet, there was not a single volume containing those laws, as far as I know or believe, in the whole territory, except, perhaps, in the governor's office at Monterey.