f the
California, which made her appearance twenty-five days after the Falcons passengers had reached Pan- auid, and with 500 of the more highly favored, the first steamship sailed majestically up the coast, entered the bay of San Francisco, and came to anchor between Yerba Buena island and the Cove, on the 28th of February, 1849.
What an awakening was here along these hitherto slumbering shores ; steam, gold, and Anglo-American occupation, all in a breath I And let it be borne in mind that neitlier of these events grew out of the other ; each was independent, though all simultaneous - -as if this fair land, ripening for untold ages in the womb of time, had with the throes of progress now been born to the sphere, and made ready for the use of civilized man.
Then followed a series of the vilest impositions ever practised upon a travelling public. An opposition line by way of Nicaragua was early established, but this tended rather to increase than to diminish the discomforts of passengers; for the fare was at times reduced so low that it would scarcely pay for the food consumed, to say nothing of compensation for passage. Then combinations would be entered into, and Cali- fornia made ^ to bleed for the shipowner's former losses. Subsequently the Nicaragua company ob- tained control of the Panamd line on the Atlantic side, and the Nicaragua line was discontinued. This made matters worse than ever; for so powerful had this monopoly now become, that it could safely defy opposition from any source, and these heartless and unscrupulous steamship magnates, called by the much abused Californians the scourges of the ocean, were determined to wring from their traffic the last possible dollar, at whatever cost of comfort, health, property, or even life to those who were obliged to commit themselves hito their hands.
The service on the Atlantic at this time would have better befitted the African slave trade than the
