SATURDAY, SEPT. 12. My partner in the “Californian” has been absent several weeks. All the work of the office has devolved upon a sailor, who has set the type for the whole paper, with fingers stiff as the ropes around which they have coiled themselves into seeming fixtures. Yet the “Californian” is out, and makes a good appearance. Who would think, except in these uttermost ends of the earth, of issuing a weekly journal, with only an old tar to set the type, and without a solitary exchange paper! By good fortune, a hunter brought along a copy of the “Oregon Spectator;” it was quite a windfall, though the only intelligence it contained from the United States, was that brought its editor by some overland emigrant. The “Spectator” speaks of the institutions of the “City of Oregon” with as much reverence as if they had the antiquity of the Egyptian Pyramids; when there is scarce a crow’s nest which does not date further back. But age is no certain evidence of merit, since folly runs to seed as fast as wisdom. CHAPTER IV. FUNERAL CEREMONIES.—ELECTED ALCALDE.—FLIGHT OF GEN. CASTRO.—LOS ANGELES TAKEN.—OVEN-BATH.—GROG IN A CHIMNEY.—THE FLEA.—FIRST RAIN.—RISING OF THE CALIFORNIANS.—MEASURES OF COM. STOCKTON.—MORMONS. SUNDAY, SEPT. 13. Officiated to-day on board the Savannah, and called on my way to see a sick child, whose mother seems at a loss whether to grieve or rejoice in prospect of its death. If it dies, she says it will at once become a little angel: if it lives, it will be subject to sorrow and sin. She desires, for her sake, that it may live; but, for its own, that it may die. This balancing between life and death, is common here among mothers. Their full persuasion of an infant’s future bliss, forbids that they should mourn its loss. They therefore put on no weeds, and utter no lamentations. The child, when its pure spirit has fled, is dressed in white, and stainless roses are strewn upon its little shroud. It is borne to the grave as if it were to be laid at the open portal of heaven, and few are the tears which fall on that threshold of immortal bliss. MONDAY, SEPT. 14. A letter from the Sacramento, received to-day, informs me of the arrival of two thousand emigrants from the United States. They are under the guidance of experienced men, and have been but a little over four months on the way. The Mormons are selecting the site of their city, which they intend shall be the paradise of the west.