The less to weary the reader, the book has been broken up into chapters, in which the author proposes to discourse familiarly upon what he has seen and felt, as he would in a friendly letter, rather than to write a formal essay or treatise upon California. In pursuing this plan, it is his intention to confine himself exclusively to facts, and to describe those facts as clearly as possible, so as to leave no ground for a conjectural filling up of those outlines which his negligence may have left vague and indistinct. In this country, where almost every event that occurs is as momentous and unaccountable as the wonderful exploits of Habib’s and Aladdin’s genii, to deal with any thing aside from actual matters of fact, is at once as silly and profitless a business as that of whistling against the winds. Yet, in nine-tenths of the descriptions of life and times in California, truth and facts have been set aside, and the writers, instead of confining themselves to a faithful delineation of that which actually exists, have made astonishing and unwarranted drafts upon their imaginations. Instead of detailing facts, they have written fictions; instead of making a true record, they have interwoven falsehoods with the very web of their story. They have chronicled dreams instead of realities, and have registered vagaries as actual events and undeniable certainties. But they have themselves been deceived. They have been duped in listening to the delusive whispers of mischievous sirens, whose flattering suggestions and plausible stories have had such a magical influence upon their excited minds, that they have become accustomed to consider every thought of wealth that occurs to them a veritable mountain of gold;--that is to say, they have, by some strange hallucination, been converted to the belief that whatever California ought to be for their own particular ends and interests, it really is. In the night-time they have arranged and matured prodigious plans of profit, and although many days have dawned upon them since, that time has yet to come which shall reveal to them the utter nothingness of their nocturnal reveries. But the day will come, and it is fast approaching, when the spell must be broken. The iron utensils, which have been transmuted into golden urns and palaces night after night, shall once and for ever resume their true quality at the approach of day. The spell-bound shall be freed! The reverie shall be dissipated, the false wealth analyzed, and resolved into its component parts; and when these things are done, California will be seen in its true light. Then the eyes of the people will be opened. The golden haze which has hung over this land of romantic hopes and deadly disappointments will then be rolled away, and the clear, naked sunlight of Truth will shine upon this ugly cheat, revealing it in all its naked deformity to the eyes of the abused and misinformed public. Then, and not till then, will