Were this frantic insurrection sustained by the slightest probability of success, it would relieve, perhaps, its madness and atrocity. But they who instigated it knew it must end in disaster and blood. They knew its only trophies must be a little plunder, cursed by the crimes through which it had been procured. They threw themselves down this cataract, and will never again reascend its steep wave. TUESDAY, OCT. 20. The mode of cultivating land in California is eminently primitive. In December or January they take a piece of wood in the shape of a ship’s knee, dress it down a little with a dull axe, and spike a piece of iron to the lower point. A pole, by which the oxen draw, runs from the inner bend of the knee to the yoke. This pole has a mortise, about eight inches long, made slanting, and about a foot from the after end; a piece of wood, about two inches by six, runs up through the plough and pole, and is so wedged into the mortise of the pole, as to make the plough run shallow or deep as required. But if the ground happens to be hard the plough will not enter an inch, and if there are roots in the ground it must be lifted over, or it will be invariably broken. Such is a California plough; such a fair specimen of the arts here. WEDNESDAY, OCT. 21. If late in the season, the Californian rarely prepares the ground by any furrowing attempts. He scatters the seed about the field, and then scratches it in with the thing which he calls a plough. Should this scratching fail of yielding him sixty bushels to the acre, he grumbles. In reaping he cuts so high, to save a little trouble in threshing, which is done here by horses, that he loses one-eighth of his crop; but this eighth serves for seed the next season; and what to him is better still, saves the trouble of sowing. So that his second crop plants itself from the first, and is often nearly as large as its predecessor. Even the third self-planted crop is quite respectable, and would satisfy a New England farmer for his laborious toil; but here it generally goes to the blackbirds. THURSDAY, OCT. 22. A mother came to me, to-day, with a request that I would summon before me another woman, who had slandered her daughter. I tried to dissuade her from it—told her that persevering virtue would outlive all scandal. But she said she was a poor widow, and the reputation of her family was all she had to depend on. So I summoned the woman, who confessed her injurious words, but said they had been uttered in passion, and that she now deeply regretted them. On her assurance that she would repair as far as in her power any injury she had done, I dismissed the parties.