WEDNESDAY, NOV. 15. Another day had dawned fresh and brilliant; we breakfasted with our friends, who ordered up their horses, and started with us for Stockton, twelve miles distant. Our lady hostess and myself led off; she had crossed the Rocky Mountains on horseback into California, and was, of course, at home in the saddle. She was mounted on a spirited animal, and my little Indian almost blew the wind out of him to keep up. My companion, though accomplished in all the refinements of metropolitan life, was yet in love with the wild scenes in which her lot had been cast. The rose of health blushed in her cheek, and the light of a salient soul revelled in her eye. “I would not exchange,” she said, “my cabin for any palace in Christendom. I have all that I want here, and what more could I have elsewhere? I have tried luxury without health, and a wild mountain life with it. Give me the latter, with the free air, the dashing streams, the swinging woods, the laughing flowers, and the exulting birds; and “Let him who crawls enamored of decay, Cling to his couch, and sicken years away.” We were now at Stockton, the nucleus of a town at the head waters of a narrow arm of the San Joaquin. The site is well chosen; its central position to the gold mines, the broad fertile plain which spreads around it, and the water communication which connects it with the commerce of the Sacramento and San Francisco, will lift it into a town of the first importance. Charles Weber, a gentleman much esteemed for his liberality and enterprise, is the owner of the land now occupied by the town, and many leagues adjacent. He has given spacious lots to all who would erect buildings. His policy is marked with wisdom; he will find his advantage in the results. His ample store is well filled with provisions, groceries, and ready-made clothing. The amount of business is immense, and the profits would phrensy our Philadelphia merchants. We found Stockton without a hotel, the private houses unfinished; and, caring but little for either, camped under the trees. We took supper with Mr. Weber, and, at a late hour, wound ourselves in our blankets for repose. The dew fell heavy, but we slept through it without the least harm. A hydropathist might have exchanged his sheet for a twist in one of our wet blankets. But we had no rheumatic joints to be relaxed, and no bone-burrowed mercury to be douched. What an envied lot, that of the pearl-diver! He gets not only his bath, but a pearl besides. And what a happy fellow is a fish! He is always head and tail in the hydropathic process. I wonder if it is not this that gives the shark such an appetite, and lends wings to the flying-fish. Even the bullfrog comes up only to twang his joy, and the whale to blow off his excess of pleasure, while the mermaid, lost in transport, sings in her coral hall till the listening naiads feel “Their souls dissolve in her melodious breath.”