of us all, as well as for those who first set foot upon these shores ten years ago to-day-it has given happiness unalloyed to none. If we take this band of early comers as a type of those who succeeded them, all upon the same common errand-the acquisition of fortune and happiness-we shall find, as their good and evil fortunes have been, so, too, have been our own. The grim Reaper with his relentless sickle, has not been more busy with them than with us, nor has their lot been more varied, and deeper tinted with misfortune and bitterness than our own.

As they have been, so we, too, are crowned with these years of hope, fear, joy, misfortune, and the thousand and one mixed experiences of California life; so we, too, may profit if we will, by the lesson which this anniversary affords.

While, therefore, we contemplate with a just pride and pleasure, the proud empire of civil and religious liberty, which we have, during this period, so firmly established upon these shores, let us not forget how rapid has been this flight of time, and how much of misfortune has fallen from its wings upon us all, because of our own errors, in the pathway along which we chose to wend our way, during so much of existence as is comprised in the decade just closed.

ORIGIN OF THE WESTERN PRAIRIES.

M. LEO LOSQUEREUS, the well-known geologist, who has carefully studied the prairies of the Mississippi valley, ascribes their general formation to the agency of water. He says:

"All the prairies still in a state of formation along the great lakes of the north are nothing else but marshes slowly passing to dry land by slow recession of water. When land is continually covered by low stagnant water, its only vegetation is that of the rushes and of the sedges. When the same land is alternately subjected to long inundations and to dryness, during some months of the year, the same plants continue to cover it. By their decomposition these

marshy plants produce a peculiar ground, either black, light, permeable when it is mixed with sand, as it is near the borders of the lakes, or hard, cold, impermeable when it is mixed with clay or muddy alluvium, as in some marshes underlaid by shales or clay, or along the banks of some rivers. Land continually covered with stagnant water can not produce any trees, because the trees require for their growth, like most of the terrestrial plants, the introduction of atmospheric air to their roots. Neither do trees germinate and grow on a ground alternately covered with stagnant water and exposed to dryness for some months of the year. From these considerations, the law of the general formation of prairies can be deduced. While a land or part of country is slowly passing from the state of swamp or marsh to the state of dry land, the annual alternation of stagnant water and dryness causes vegetation of peculiar plants, which, by their decomposition, form a peculiar soil unfavorable to the growth of the trees. From this general rule of formation, which regards only the prairies of the Mississippi valley, all the different phenomena or peculiar appearances of the prairies can be easily explained.

THE PIONEER OVERLANDERS OF 1841.

CORRESPONDENT sends us a list of the first regular emigration to California of 1841, and we are assured it is the fullest which has yet appeared in print. This enterprise occasioned at the time much excitement on the Missouri frontiers, and accounts of it were published in several of the Western journals, as it was then considered a great undertaking to cross the Rocky Mountains and explore a new road through the snowy ranges and howling deserts south of the Columbia, the only well-ascertained points being the Great Salt Lake and the mystical St. Mary's, now Humboldt River, so called afterward by Fre

mont.

An interesting sketch of this 1841 adventure appeared a few months after in Chambers's Edinburgh Magazine, which seems to have been written by some one well acquainted with all the particulars, and who foretold the effects on the future prospects of California. At the period of these important events, the Western people were much excited by the different works written by Dr. Gregg on New Mexico, and Washington Irving on the explorations and tradings of Astor's fur trappers, and on those of Capt. Bonneville in the Rocky Mountains, the results of which were this emigration to California, and several months after that, to Oregon, and also from Texas to Santa Fé. Our correspondent says: I have just received the following information from Albert G. Toomes, now of Tehama, who formerly lived at Monterey, and is well known in that town, where he resided from 1842 to 1851 :

I sat down with my old partner Thomas a few days ago and got talking of old times in California, and all that sort of thing. It occurred to us to make a list of our ancient companions in the hard journey we made from Independence a long twenty-seven years ago, and, Sandy, our hairs are getting gray, and we often remember those blessed old bailies and merianders of gay Monterey. I claim that we were the first regular emigrants who ever started from the States to California, as those who arrived in the country before us, dropped in by mere chance, as old trappers, whalemen, and sailors from the islands and Boston ships. Our party was divided into two companies, who left Independence on the 6th of May, 1841, and we got into California on the 10th November of the same year. The first company was headed by Robert H. Thomes, who crossed over by the way of Salt Lake, and the second was headed by William Workman, who went by the way of Santa Fé and the middle route to Los Angeles; and both got into the country at nearly the same time.

We were all armed with rifles, and mounted on horseback, and had literally to smell our way every day of that long, hard journey of 176 days; but we arrived all safe and hearty, and nearly every one of the immigrants mentioned