SATURDAY, OCT. 3. A heavy mist hung over the landscape this morning till the sun was high in the heavens, and many began to predict rain, a phenomenon which I have not yet witnessed in California. But towards noon the mist departed like a shadow dissolved in light. The scorched hills lifted their naked summits, and the deep ravines revealed their irregular lines of lingering verdure. In these the cattle still graze, though the streams which once poured their waters through them exist now only in little motionless pools, hardly sufficient to drift a duck. A stranger looking at these hills might be excused if he inquired the distance to Sodom. It would never enter his most vagrant dreams that he had reached that land towards which the tide of emigration was rolling over the cliffs of the Rocky Mountains. SUNDAY, OCT. 4. The presiding priest of this jurisdiction applied to me a few days since to protect the property of the San Antonio Mission. A Spaniard, it seems, who owns a neighboring rancho, had, under color of some authority of the late administration, extended his claims over the grounds and buildings, and was appropriating the whole to his private purposes. I summoned the Spaniard before me, and asked for the evidence of his right and title to the establishment. He had no document to exhibit. His sole claim evidently rested in some vague permission, in which the lines of moral justice were wholly omitted, or too faintly drawn to be seen. I therefore ordered that the mission buildings and grounds should be delivered back to the presiding priest, and that the fixtures, which had been removed, should at once be restored. The order was forthwith carried into effect. This decision is of some moment, as it will serve as a precedent in reference to other missions. These sacred domains are the patrimonial inheritance of the Indian, and they once embraced the wealth of California. But they have fallen a prey to state exigencies and private rapacity. They ought at once to be restored to their primitive objects, or converted into a school-fund. MONDAY, OCT. 5. A courier arrived to-day from San Francisco, bringing the intelligence that the Savannah had sailed for San Pedro. They will there land a large force, which will march at once to the Pueblo de los Angeles, and, if possible, bring the insurgents to an engagement. But the probability is, that they will instantly disband and fly to the forests. If they declined battle, with Gen. Castro and his regular troops at their head, they will undoubtedly do it when left to themselves, unless frantic passion has entirely overcome inherent fickleness.