After ascending by this road and traveling five or six miles over a rolling country covered with magnificent oak trees, and in many places fenced in and under cultivation, I arrived at Sonora, the largest town of the southern mines. It consisted of a single street, extending for upwards of a mile along a sort of hollow between gently sloping hills. Most of the houses were of wood, a few were of canvas, and one or two were solid buildings of sun-dried bricks. The lower end of the town was very peculiar in appearance as compared with the prevailing style of California architecture. Ornament seemed to have been as much consulted as utility, and the different tastes of the French and Mexican builders were very plainly seen in the high-peaked overhanging roofs, the staircases outside the houses, the corridors round each story, and other peculiarities; giving the houses--which were painted, moreover, buff and pale blue--quite an old-fashioned air alongside of the staring white rectangular fronts of the American houses. There was less pretence and more honesty about them than about the American houses, for many of the latter were all front, and gave the idea of a much better house than the small rickety clapboard or canvas concern which was concealed behind it. But these façades were useful as well as ornamental, and were intended to support the large signs, which conveyed an immense deal of useful information. Some small stores, in fact, seemed bursting with intelligence, and were broken out all over with short spasmodic sentences in English, French, Spanish, and German, covering all the available space save the door, and presenting to the passer-by a large amount of desultory reading as to the nature of the property within and the price at which it could be bought. This, however, was not by any means peculiar to Sonora--it was the general style of thing throughout the country. The Mexicans and the French also were very numerous, and there was an extensive assortment of other Europeans from all quarters, all of whom, save French, English, and “Eyetalians,” are in California classed under the general denomination of Dutchmen, or more frequently “d--d Dutchmen,” merely for the sake of euphony.