The natural treasury of the country is an object of especial interest. To break away peaceably is hardly possible. But slavery needs more ground for the increasing blacks. It must be toward the Pacific that the new Confederacy will gain ground. Gold, sea frontage, Asiatic trade, forests and fisheries,--all these must come to the South. It is the final acquisition of California. It was APPARENTLY for the Union, but REALLY for the South, that the complacent Polk pounced upon California. He waged a slyly prepared war on Mexico for slavery. As the restraints of courtesy and fairness are thrown off at Washington, sectional hostilities sweep over to the Western coast. The bitterness becomes intense. Pressing to the front, champions of both North and South meet in private encounters. They admit of neither evasion nor retreat. Maxime Valois is ready to shed his blood for the land of the palmetto. But he will not degrade himself by low intrigue or vulgar encounter. He learns without regret of the extinction of the filibusters in Sonora, on the Mexican coast, Cuba, and Central America. He knows it is mad piracy. Valois sorrows not when William Walker's blood slakes the stones of the plaza at Truxillo. A consummation devoutly to be wished. It is for the whole South he would battle. It is the glorious half of the greatest land on the globe. For HER great rights, under HER banner, for State sovereignty he would die. On some worthy field, he would lead the dauntless riflemen of Louisiana into the crater of death. THERE, would be the patriot's pride and the soldier's guerdon of valor. He would be in the van of such an uprising. He scorns to be a petty buccaneer, a butcher of half-armed natives, a rover and a robber. In every scene, through the days of 1859, Valois bears himself as a cavalier. Personal feud was not his object. In the prominence of his high position, Valois travels the State. He confers with the secret councils at San Francisco. He is ready to lead in his regions when needed. The dark cabal of Secession sends out trusty secret agents, even as Gillespie and Larkin called forth the puppets of Polk, Buchanan and Marcy to action. Valois hopes his friends can seize California for the South. Fenced off from Oregon and the East by the Sierras, there is the open connection with the South by Arizona.