"good herb," because an herb of this name, supposed to possess great medicinal virtues, was found growing abundantly on the neighboring hills. The first houses were built of adobes, or sun-dried bricks. In 1839 it was laid out as a town, the few houses having previously been scattered without regularity. It contained in 1845 about 150 inhabitants. About this time it began to attract the attention of some adventurous Americans, and the population increased in two years to nearly 500. It retained the name of Yerba Buena until it was occupied by the Americans. The first discovery of gold was made at Sutter's settlement, then called New Helvetia, in December, 1847. Early in 1848 the news spread to the four quarters of the globe, and immediately adventurers from every land came thronging to this new El Dorado. The magnificent harbor of San Francisco made this port the great rendezvous for the arriving vessels, and from this period dates the extraordinary increase and prosperity of the Californian metropolis. In the first two months of the golden age, the quantity of precious dust brought to San Francisco was estimated at $250,000, and in the next two months at $600,000. In February, 1849, the population of the town was about 2,000; in August it was estimated at $5,000. From April 12, 1849, to January 29, 1850, there arrived at this port by sea 39,888 emigrants, of whom 1,421 were females. In the year ending April 15, 1850, there arrived 62,000 passengers. In the first part of 1850 San Francisco became a city.

Sacramento City, the present capital of California, is situated on the left bank of the Sacramento River, a little below the mouth of the American River, in the midst of a level and extremely fertile country, 140 miles by water north-east of San Francisco. It is regularly laid out, the street nearest the river being called Front street, the next Second, and so on; these are crossed by others at right angles, distinguished by the letters of the alphabet. J and K streets are the principal business streets of the city. Till within a few years nearly all the houses were of wood; but recently a more substantial mode of building is coming into use. In Sacramento and its vicinity are perhaps the finest gardens in California. As a center of commerce, Sacramento City possesses great advantages. It is accessible for steamers and sailing vessels of a large size, at all seasons of the year; while not only the Sacramento River itself, but its important affluent, the Feather River, is navigable for small steamboats far above into the interior of the country. These advantages have rendered this town the principal entrepot for supplying with provisions the great mining region of the north. The amount of merchandise daily landed on the wharves of Sacramento City in September, 1854, was estimated at 530 tons, of which 150 tons were shipped by the up-country steamers. The regular weekly sales of produce and merchandise were stated to be $1,500,000, and the monthly receipts of gold-dust $2,750,000. The number of stage passengers from Sacramento City to the mines was estimated at 97,000; of wagon passengers, 214,000; travelers on foot and horseback, 97,000; drivers and packmen, 187,000; total, 595,000. Five or six newspapers are issued here.

Steamers run every day from Sacramento to San Francisco and Marysville, and twice a week, or oftener, up the Sacramento River to Red Bluff. During 1860 there were 571 arrivals of schooners and 391 of sloops at Sacramento. There were twenty-five steamboats owned in the city. The California Stage Company, which had its chief place of business in Sacramento, had a capital of $1,000,000. Stages started every morning for Portland, in Oregon, Marysville, Nevada, Downieville, Stockton, Jackson, Mokelumne Hill, and other leading towns in the central mining districts. All the supplies for Washoe, and most of those for the Esmeralda mining districts, passed through Sacramento. The population of the city in 1860 was 13,788.

Marysville is the capital of Yuba County, and lies on the north bank of the Yuba River, one mile above its junction with the Feather River, and fifty north from Sacramento. It contained, in 1858, a population estimated at 8,000. But in the rainy season its population is greatly increased by the influx of miners. It has regular communication with San Francisco by steamboat and stage lines.

Monterey, the capital of the county of the same name, is on the south side of Monterey Bay, 94 miles south-east from San Francisco. It has a fine harbor, affording an excellent anchorage, but exposed to the prevailing north-west winds. The site of the town was selected in 1770, by Father Junipero Serra, for a missionary station. It was the capital of California till 1847. The old town is built chiefly of adobe,

the modern of wood.

Los Angeles, capital of the county of the same name, is situated on the Los Angeles River, 30 miles from its mouth, and 350 south-east from San Francisco. It was founded in 1781, and called Puebla de los Angeles, "City of the Angels," from the beauty of its situation and the pleasantness of its climate.

San Diego, capital of San Diego County, lies on the bay of the same name. It is noted as having been the first civilized settlement in California.

San José, the capital of Santa Clara County, and formerly of the State, is fifty miles south-east from San Francisco. It is in Santa Clara Valley, seven miles from the head of San Francisco Bay, on which it has a number of vessels. The New Almaden quicksilver mines are south of San Jose, and not far from it.

ERUPTION OF MOUNT HOOD-EARTHQUAKE.—-Mount Hood, in Oregon, which had not previously since the settlement of California, beer in a state of eruption, commenced, on the 23d of September, 1865, giving signs of activity, and continued for a month or more to belch forth smoke and flame. On the 8th and 9th of October following, several shocks of an earthquake were felt along the whole coast, from Petaluma to Santa Cruz. It was most severe at San Francisco, where the injury to buildings, etc., was estimated at more than $200,000. Some of the shocks were accompanied with a loud rumbling noise in the earth, and the crash of falling walls, the ringing of bells, the barking of dogs, the screams of fainting women, and the general stampede of men and horses in every direction.

EDUCATION. The statistics of the California public school system for the year 1865 were as follows: Number of children between the ages of four and eighteen years, 95,067; in attendance in the publie schools, 41,370; in private schools, 12,470. The total amount received for school purposes was $870,406.69, an increase over the receipts of 1863 of $286,350.92. The number of schools in the State was 947, taught by 1,155 teachers, in 685 school-houses, of which 69 were rented buildings. There were eight colored schools, with an attendance of 278 children.

There were school funds in each county arising from the sale of the school sections. The State had also a school fund derived from the sale of swamp and other lands, amounting to $696,020, and yielding an income of $48,721.40. The State school tax was half a mill on the dollar, and there was also a county tax the minimum of which was $3 per scholar. The normal school was in a flourishing condition, and had proved of great advantage to the teachers in the schools, in elevating the standard of their qualifications. There were numerous chartered colleges in the State. Some of these had maintained a severe struggle for existence from insufficiency of resources, but had succeeded in attaining a respectable rank among the collegiate institutions of the country; the College of California, especially, occupied a very high position. Some of the Roman Catholic colleges were giving very full courses of instruction.

CORRECTIONAL INSTITUTIONS.-The State Reform School had, in 1865, 47 children under training, and had met with encouraging success. There was also an industrial and reformatory school at San Francisco, receiving aid from the State. The State-prison had been greatly improved in its management. The prisoners no longer manifested the spirit of insubordination which some time previously had issued in a mutiny, and was put down at a fearful cost of life. Under the provision for reducing the term of imprisonment as a reward for diligent labor and good behavior, the greater portion of the convicts were striving to gain this reduction of their term of imprisonment.

MINNESOTA.

MINNESOTA was admitted into the Union in 1858, making it the thirty-second State and the nineteenth admitted under the Federal Constitution. It is bounded on the north by British America, the dividing line being formed west of the Lake of the Woods by the forty-ninth parallel of north latitude, and east of that lake by the Rainy Lake River, Rainy and other lakes, and Pigeon River; east by Lake Superior and Wisconsin, from which it is separated by a line drawn due south from the first rapids in the St. Louis River to the

St. Croix River, and by the St. Croix and Mississippi Rivers; scuth by the State of Iowa, and west by Dakota Territory, from which it is divided by the Red River of the North, the Bois des Sioux River, Lake Traverse, and Big Stone Lake, and a line drawn directly south from the outlet of the last-named lake to the Iowa boundary.

Minnesota lies between forty-three degrees thirty minutes and fortynine degrees of north latitude, and twelve degrees twenty-nine minutes and twenty degrees five minutes of longitude west from Washington. Its extreme length from north to south is three hundred and eighty miles, and its breadth varies from one hundred and eighty-three miles in the middle, to two hundred and sixty-two miles on the south line, and three hundred and thirty-seven miles near the north line. The area of the State is 81,259 square miles, or 52,005,760 acres, being two and seventy-three hundred hs per cent. of the total area of the United States.

FACE OF THE COUNTRY.-Lying near the center of the continent, Minnesota occupies the summit of the interior plain of North America, formed by the counterminous basins of the Mississippi, the St. Lawrence, and the rivers flowing into Lake Winnipeg, and at once incloses the head-waters and the navigable limits of the three great converging river systems of the continent. The group of low sand-hills in the north-east part of Minnesota, formed by huge deposits of drifts overlying a local outcrop of the primary and metamorphic rocks, which terminates the Superior basin on the west, forms the "heights of land" between the waters which flow respectively into the Gulf of Mexico on the south, the Atlantic Ocean on the east, and Hudson's Bay on the north. The heights of land rise by scarcely perceptible slopes from the general level, in no instance higher than 1,680 feet above the level of the sea, which is not more than 600 feet above the average elevation of the country. These hills are commonly flat at the top, varying in height from eighty-five to one hundred feet above the surrounding waters. The principal group of these drift-hills is subdivided into several ramifications. A prominent span extends in a southerly direction from the Itasca crest of the Mississippi for perhaps one hundred and fifty miles, known as the Leaf Mountains, and the Coteau du Grand Bois of Nicollet, and forms a low dividing ridge between the waters of the Mississippi and Red Rivers. The crest of the dividing ridge between Lake Superior and the Mississippi is not more than 1,400 feet high; and the highest of the trap summits north of the lake is but 1,475 feet. Lake Superior is 641 feet above the sea. With this exception, the surface of the country is generally an undulating plain, with an average elevation of nearly one thousand feet above the ea, and presents a succession of small rolling prairies or table-lands, studded with lakes and groves, and alternately with belts of timber. Two-thirds of the surface slopes south-east with the waters of the Mississippi, the northern part of the State being nearly equally divided between the alluvial levels of the Red River Valley on the north-west and the broken highlands in the north-east, which are mainly divided by the precipitous streams which flow into Lake Superior and the Rainy Lake chain.

GEOLOGY. Notwithstanding the large area of Minnesota, the rock formations it contains, so far as they have been explored, appear to be limited almost exclusively to the azoic and lower protozoic groups; and over the greater part of the State these are concealed beneath the diluvial deposits which make the superficial covering of these boundless prairies. The north-west coast of Lake Superior is made up of metaphoric lake and sandstone, intermingled with grits of volcanic origin, and other bedded traps and porphyries. These are intersected by frequent dykes of greenstone and basalt, and among them are occasional deposits of red clay, marl, and drift. Behind this group are traced westward, and along the northern boundary of the State, formations of hornblende and argillaceous slates, succeeded by granite and other metaphoric rocks. These groups extend south-west into the central portions of the State. Along the southern boundary the division formation is found in the extreme west; the Niagara limestone succeeds this toward the east; the next occurs the galena limestone, and then the Trenton limestone and the upper or St. Peter's sandstone, which overlies the Potsdam sandstone. These sandstones crop out up the valley of the Mississippi nearly as far as Fort Snelling, when the lower silurian limestones-which, on both sides of the river, lie behind and over the sandstone-meet in the valley and form the bluffs of the rivers. They are traced up the Minnesota River, curving round and almost reaching the southern boundary of the State again, and cutting off the continuation of the higher groups further northward. Thus, throughout the State, there appears to be no room for the carboniferous group, so that no coal may be looked for. The lead-bearing rocks traced from the Iowa line are of little extent, and probably of little importance.

CLIMATE.--The winters in Minnesota are cold, but generally clear and dry, and the fall of snow is usually light. The summers are warm, with breezy nights, during which occur most of the rains. The general purity of the air and the salubrity of its climate recommend it for the residence of invalids. At the Pembina settlement, under the 49th parallel of latitude, the cold is frequently so great as to freeze quicksilver. According to observations kept by the officers stationed there in January, 1847, the mean temperature of the month, from three observations a day, at 9 A. M. and 3 and 9 P. M., was 121° below zero; and the greatest cold 48° below the same point. The average of sixty-six days' observations was 221° below zero; and the highest point reached in the month of January, 30° above zero. The hottest day in the month of July was 96°, showing a range of 144° between the greatest cold and greatest heat. From the 17th of June to the 17th of July, 1848, the mean temperature was 69°. Even as late as in the latter weeks of March, and as early as in November, the thermometer often falls below zero. Observations made at St. Paul's, in latitude 44° 56′ north, in December, January, and February, of the winter of 1850-51, gave the following results: Clear days, 22; variable, 45; cloudy, 23; rain, 5; snow, 24; and hail, 1. Greatest height of the mercury, 47°; lowest point, 32° 5' below zero; average of the winter,