TUESDAY, JULY 18. Another bag of gold from the mines, and another spasm in the community. It was brought down by a sailor from Yuba river, and contains a hundred and thirty-six ounces. It is the most beautiful gold that has appeared in the market; it looks like the yellow scales of the dolphin, passing through his rainbow hues at death. My carpenters, at work on the school-house, on seeing it, threw down their saws and planes, shouldered their picks, and are off for the Yuba. Three seamen ran from the Warren, forfeiting their four years’ pay; and a whole platoon of soldiers from the fort left only their colors behind. One old woman declared she would never again break an egg or kill a chicken, without examining yolk and gizzard. SATURDAY, JULY 22. The laws by which an alcalde here is governed, in the administration of justice, are the Mexican code as compiled in Frebrero and Alverez—works of remarkable comprehensiveness, clearness, and facility of application. They embody all the leading principles of the civil law, derived from the institutes of Justinian. The common law of England is hardly known here, though its rules and maxims have more or less influenced local legislation. But with all these legal provisions a vast many questions arise which have to be determined _ex cathedra_. In minor matters the alcalde is often himself the law; and the records of his court might reveal some very exquisite specimens of judicial prerogative; such as shaving a rogue’s head—_lex talionis_—who had shaved the tail of his neighbor’s horse; or making a busybody, who had slandered a worthy citizen, promenade the streets with a gag in his mouth; or obliging a man who had recklessly caused a premature birth, to compensate the bereaved father for the loss of that happiness which he might have derived from his embryo hope, had it budded into life. This last has rather too many contingencies about it; but the principle, which reaches it and meets the offender, does very well out here in California, and would not be misapplied in some of those pill-shops which slope the path to crime in the United States. THURSDAY, JULY 27. I never knew mosquitoes turned to any good account save in California; and here it seems they are sometimes ministers of justice. A rogue had stolen a bag of gold from a digger in the mines, and hid it. Neither threats nor persuasions could induce him to reveal the place of its concealment. He was at last sentenced to a hundred lashes, and then informed that he would be let off with thirty, provided he would tell what he had done with the gold; but he refused. The thirty lashes were inflicted, but he was still stubborn as a mule.