this election. He refused a nomination to be Governor of the Territory of Nebraska in 1855. Once only he reappeared on the public stage as a member of the "Peace Congress" which in 1861 met at Washington City, composed of able and prominent men who sought in vain to avoid the evil of civil war which then threatened the country. He was a poet of no mean rank, a man of liberal education, of a command

ing personal appearance and courteous manners, of unblemished character, of comprehensive patriotism, unalterably attached to the Union of the States. After a life of devotion to right and truth, and an old age spent in deeds of charity and words of wise counsel, the scarred hero sank to rest at his home in Carrollton, Kentucky, on Friday, August 6th, in the ninetieth year of his age.

CALIFORNIA. The Legislature met January 5th, and closed its sessions April 16th. It was the first Legislature after the adoption of the new Constitution, and had the heavy task to perform of revising the political and criminal codes, the organization of county governments, and the laws of taxation and revenue, so as to make them conform to the alterations in the fundamental law. The Republican majority in both Houses was disposed to place the most conservative possible construction on many of the provisions of the Constitution. An active and aggressive minority, with more radical views, took a prominent part in the introduction of bills, and disputed warmly many of the measures proposed by the other side. The debates were spirited, sometimes stormy, and on a few occasions disorderly. Many bills were introduced upon pressing questions in which all the parties favor some degree of reform, such as the regulation of the mining business and speculation in mining stocks, the protection of farm-lands, rivers, and harbors from dé bris washed into the cañons in hydraulic mining and swept into the valleys by freshets, changes in the land laws to restrict the accumulation of vast landed estates, etc.; but a reaction against the spirit of innovation which has marked recent Californian politics ruled in the minds of the majority, and the projected laws on these subjects were defeated after a long contest, excepting one on the urgent débris question, upon which several bills were discussed, and one was finally framed which became a law, the most important act of the session excepting the Revenue Bill. In hostility to the Chinese all factions were in harmony. A number of anti-Chinese bills were passed without much opposition, of the constitutionality of which many admitted doubts; but, borne out by the requirements of the State Constitution and their electoral mandates, they felt it incumbent upon them to satisfy the general popular sentiment as to the kind of legislation required, leaving the question of its validity to be determined by the courts. There was a determination, in view of the amount of business to be transacted, to question the literal construction of the clause contained in the new Constitution which requires that all bills should be read through three times in each House. The Judiciary Committee of the Assembly declared that the Constitution

required that a bill should be read at length once only. The subject, by vote of the House, was brought before the Supreme Court, but the question whether bills read by title only, but entered as duly read on the record, were valid, still remained open.

Of the bills introduced which failed to become laws, among the most prominent were the bills to regulate the sales of mining stock, intended to reduce the business in mining stocks to a cash basis, forbidding brokers to sell or hypothecate stock belonging to others, making operations on margins a penal offense, and imposing other severe restrictions. A law was passed enabling shareholders owning a majority of stock in mining corporations to remove the company officers and elect new ones. A land bill was brought in the Senate, requiring heirs to large estates to sell all beyond 5,000 acres within five years, and forbidding any one in the future to acquire real property exceeding in area that limit. Other limits proposed were 640 and 1,280 acres, and 5,120 acres for grazing-lands. None of these bills were passed.

A bill was passed forbidding games of cards to be played in saloons for drink.

A bill was passed providing for the appointment of a State Mineralogist and the establishment of a Mining Bureau.

A law regulating the organization of county governments was hastily enacted in the last days of the session. This act was decided by the Supreme Court in September to be in conflict with the Constitution. The revision of the civil and criminal codes was elaborated in committee; it necessitated the passage of a great number of separate acts.

In framing the Revenue Bill under the new Constitution, the Legislature showed great reluctance to carry out the provisions of the instrument. The Constitution defines property as including "moneys, credits, bonds, stocks, dues, franchises, and all other matters and things, real, personal, and mixed, capable of private ownership." All property, except growing crops, school and other public property, is declared subject to taxation, unless exempt by the laws of the United States. The Legislature is enjoined to levy taxes on all descriptions of property at its "full cash value." The Republican Legislature sought to shape

The act making it a felony to incite riots, passed two years previously, was repealed by a large majority. A bill was proposed by members belonging to the Labor party for unseating and punishing members of legislative bodies who violate pledges given to political conventions. A projected law, emanating from the same quarter, proposed that newspaper writers should be obliged to print their signatures at the foot of editorial articles. Another proposed to deduct $500 from the assessed valuation of each tax-payer's property, and others to exempt homesteads of less than $5,000 or $3,000 value from forced sales for taxes. A more complete mechanics' lien law than the existing one was enacted. A bill giving laborers employed about thrashing-machines a lien on the grain thrashed was defeated. A bill was passed anthorizing railroad corporations deriving their charters from other States to do business on an equal footing with California companies. Another bill compels companies to keep their lines in operation. The Board of Railroad Commissioners demanded by the Constitution was created, consisting of three commissioners, with $4,000 salary each, and traveling expenses paid by the State. The McClure charter for San Francisco was bitterly opposed in the Assembly by most of the members from that city, but was carried through by a united Republican vote. The act authorizing San Francisco to provide public water-works was repealed. A new insolvency law was enacted. The principal anti-Chinese bills were one prohibiting corporations to employ Chinamen, one authorizing the authorities of municipalities to remove Chinese residents beyond the city limits, one forbidding the award of licenses to Chinamen, and one forbidding them to fish in the waters of the State. A bill was introduced disquali fying Chinamen from testifying in the courts, but this was defeated in the Senate. In these bills the phrase by which the Chinese are designated, in order to conform technically to the constitutional inhibition of special and class legislation, is "aliens incapable of becoming electors."

The validity of the law prohibiting the employment of Chinese by corporations was tested in a case brought in the United States Circuit Court. Tiburcio Parrott, under arrest for violating this law, was brought before Judges Hoffman and Sawyer on habeas corpus. It was argued that the law was in contravention of the treaties of the United States Government with China, and of the Civil-Rights Bill and the Fourteenth Amendment. Attorney-General Hart, for the people, argued that the law

was

not directed against the Chinese, but against corporations, and that the Legislature possesses the power to amend or modify the charters of corporations of its own creation. The Court held that the right of the State to control corporations did not extend so far, and that the law affected the Chinese and deprived them of personal liberties accorded by the

United States Constitution and guaranteed by the treaty with China. The Burlingame treaty also invalidated the law against the use of the State fisheries by Chinamen.

The engineering aspects of the débris question were treated of in detail in the report of the State Engineer, W. H. Hall, made to the Governor, January 10th. Mr. Hall recommended a system of public works of a scope and on a scale to comprehend the drainage of the bottom-lands, the reclamation of waste and swamplands, the irrigation of dry lands, the improvement and preservation of navigable channels, and the protection of the valleys, river-beds, and harbors from mining débris and other detritus. He criticises the methods of irrigation heretofore in practice in the upper valleys as wasteful; and the irregular, fragmentary manner in which levees have been constructed in the lower valleys, under the policy of granting the swamp lands to any one accomplishing their reclamation, he declares to be often wrongful and mischievous in its consequences, since the improvement of the drainage in the upper portion of a river-valley may cause the submersion of marginal lands farther down. The Sacramento Valley is the portion of the State which especially stands in need of drainage-works at the present time. The main drains of the valley are the Sacramento River and its tributary, the Feather. During the era of hydraulic mining the whole character of these rivers has been altered through the accumulation of sediment, filling up the pools and forming bars. The unmethodical and imperfect construction of levees has hastened the process, reducing the scouring capacity of the streams by allowing a portion of the water to be diverted into secondary channels through breaches and crevasses, and facilitating the formation of bars by producing irregularity of flow. The rise of the low-water level in a river indicates the extent of the average deposit of sediment in its shoal parts. The plane of low water has risen since 1862 from five to five and a half feet in the Sacramento River at Sacramento, three to four feet at its confluence with the Feather, thirteen to fifteen feet at the junction of the Feather and the Yuba, and five to six feet in the Feather at Oroville. The accumulation of drift in the Sacramento River opposite Sacramento, and in other deep parts, has been much greater. The channel has been filled up as much as 15.2 feet on the average at Sacramento since 1854, and in some places the bed has been raised twentyfive feet. Owing to the filling up of the deep channels and pools the flood-level has been raised much higher than the low-water level, so that the riparian lands, which were formerly safe from inundation except in the years of extraordinary floods, and then were not injured, are now threatened with an annual overflow and their fertile soil with obliteration by deposits of sand, gravel, and slickens, and are rendered only partially secure by building the levees higher and higher each year.

Not only are the agricultural bottom-lands in these valleys threatened with destruction by submersion or detrital deposits, and the harbor and river-channel in danger of being choked up and rendered unnavigable, but, if the sedimentation is allowed to continue, in not many years the sites of Sacramento and Marysville will lie below the high-water level, and no riverwalls will be sufficient to save the cities from their consequent doom. The State Engineer considers that the rivers can be soon restored to their condition of twenty years ago by the elaborate system which he proposes. This embraces the widening of the channels in some places, the deepening of them and the removal of bars in others, the deflection of some of the creeks into a new outlet, improving the channel of the lower Sacramento so as to obtain the maximum effect of the tidal scour, a relief-canal in the lower basin to divert a portion of the flood-waters for the security of the delta islands, and the construction of a uniform system of levees along the river-banks which shall be higher than the present ones and capable of confining the waters of the ordinary annual winter freshets, though not intended to hem in the extraordinary floods which occur at intervals of about ten years. None of these works would be of effective and permanent utility without first solving the debris problem and finding means to prevent the constant silting of the river-bed with mining detritus. A part of his plan was to dam several of the more heavily charged rivers, notably Bear and American Rivers, at different points in the valleys below, and spread their waters over the low swamptracts, where the sediment which is injuring the river-channels would be arrested and precipitated at all times of the year, except in the freshets, thus answering the useful purpose of building up ground in these extensive sinks, and rendering their now worthless area ultimately productive and valuable.

A report of Lieutenant-Colonel Mendell to the Chief of Engineers at Washington recommends a similar system of dams and storage reservoirs for the preservation of the navigable channels of the rivers fed by mining streams. The most convenient place for such dams he thinks is in the foot-hills, where the material for their construction is at hand. He estimates the quantity of débris washed annually from the mines into the Yuba at from fourteen to fifteen million cubic yards. The quantity now lying in the beds of the Yuba and its branches between Marysville and the mines, ready to be swept down into the valleys by the next great flood, is estimated at 143,551,864 cubic yards. The accumulations in the bed of the Bear River are estimated at 148,248,000 cubic yards, of which 86,160,000 yards are in the bed of the stream above the foot-hills, and 62,088,000 in the plains below. The quantities of tailings which are being dumped into the cañons every year are so great that the mining streams change their channels almost yearly. The bed of the

Yuba has been filled with this material at Smartsville to a depth of one hundred and twenty-five feet, and about fifteen feet at Marysville, increasing the slope of the river between the two places by one hundred and ten feet, about doubling the original fall. By the increase in slope in the upper mountain-streams, the gravel is rolled farther and farther down, and will in time be washed into the Feather and Sacramento Rivers, and form obstructions which will destroy navigation and the alluvial valleys. The quantity of workable auriferous drift on the Yuba is estimated at 700,000,000 cubic yards. The quantity of silt which has already been washed down into the plains, and deposited in the beds of the rivers, is calculated at 40,000,000 cubic yards in the Feather, and 100,000,000 in the Sacramento to below the mouth of the Feather. The fine sand and clay, or slickens, is not precipitated on the river-bottoms, but is carried on by the current into the outer bay or ocean. Colonel Mendell recommends the construction of nine dams in the Yuba to stop the drift of detrital matter into the river-channels. He suggests that Congress make an appropriation of $250,000 to commence the improvement, which will cost altogether nearly four times that sum.

The area of the Sacramento Valley is 4,769 square miles, of which 2,331 square miles are high plains situated above the reach of overflow, 755 miles are hill-lands and rolling country adjacent to the foot-hills, and the remainder consists of low alluvial bottom-lands, swamplands, delta islands, lands covered with débris, and all other land subject to annual flooding. The area under water after the March freshet of 1879 along the Feather and Sacramento Rivers was 847 square miles. The area of good farming-land in the valley which has already been destroyed by mining débris is estimated by Mr. Hall at 43,546 acres.

Four or five different bills for débris relief were drafted, in accordance with the suggestions of the State Engineer, and discussed in the Legislature. The question whether the expenses should be raised by general taxation, or whether only the districts immediately benefited should be taxed, was the chief point of difference. The Young bill, which was finally passed in an amended form, imposes a general and equal tax of five cents in the hundred dollars for this object, and lays a special tax of a maximum rate of $3 per acre upon overflowed lands which are benefited by the drainage-works, graduated according to the extent of the benefit received, and levies another on the miners, which will yield an amount equal to about one quarter of the general State tax, by taxing the quantity of water used in hydraulic mining.

Captain Eads afterward visited the country, and, in consultation with Colonel Mendell, offered some new suggestions to the Washington authorities. He approved in the main of the plans of Mr. Hall, but opposed the division

of the current and the construction of an outlet canal, either at Grand Island, as proposed by the State Engineer, or above, as had been favored by other experts. He proposed planting willows in the mud of the river-beds near the mines, to form screens to check the descent of the heavier débris, instead of the construction of expensive stone dams to impound the débris. This he thought would afford a sufficient guard against the coarser material of the tailings, while the scouring action of the current, if the channels of the Sacramento and Feather were rectified and graded, would keep the river below clear of deposits of the finer detritus. He regards the danger to the harbor of San Francisco as imminent, unless steps are taken to prevent the silting of the bay from this source.

According to the decision of District Judge Keyes, in the case of Keyes against the Little York Gold Washing Company et al., farmers whose land is flooded by mining tailings are entitled to relief by the common law for the damage done. The plaintiff was a farmer in the Sacramento Valley, and the defendants were hydraulic mining companies, whose works were situated about sixty miles distant in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, and nearly three thousand feet above the defendant's farm, which lies along the banks of Bear River. The effect of the débris law enacted by the Legislature is not to debar the farmers from the rights of recovery from the miners which they possess at common law.

The report of the Fish Commissioners states that, since the organization of the commission, 13,150,000 young salmon have been hatched and placed in the Sacramento River, and that 2,500,000 must be added annually to keep the canning establishments supplied, unless the close season is strictly observed. An attempt was made in the Legislature to substitute a close time between Saturday morning and Sunday night throughout the year for the close season between August 1st and September 15th. The fishermen, who petitioned for the change, alleged that the close season was not observed; that the American fishermen were disposed to respect it, but that the Greek and Portuguese fishermen would not. They declared that they would compel all to observe the close season during Saturday, Saturday night, and Sunday. The bill was objected to by FishCommissioner B. B. Redding, who was present during the discussion. A petition was presented at the same time regarding the protection of small fish in the Bay of San Francisco. Mr. Redding stated that the subject was of great importance. There are a large number engaged in catching shrimps, mostly Chinamen. They use a net in the shape of an inverted stocking, which is sometimes thirty or forty feet long. The Chinamen go along the shores of the bays and use a net so fine that a leadpencil only will pass through it, and catch immense quantities of not only shrimps, but every kind of small fish, which they put through a

process of salting in brine, and then drying on the ground, after which they rub their feet over them and break off the shells, etc., a portion of which is used for food and the balance as a manure for fertilizing the worn-out teafields of China. In one year there was shipped to China of these products about $600,000 worth, and the average per year is about $300,000. The Portuguese and Greeks are also destroying the small fish in a similar mode by using small, fine-mesh nets, but they make no use of the small fish, and leave them on the ground. On account of their destruction of fish in San Francisco Bay, the law protecting seals and sea-lions was repealed. Mr. Redding stated that these animals destroy more fish than are caught in the nets of the fishermen. Acts were passed by the Legislature providing for the removal of obstructions in the streams so as to greatly extend the area of the spawning-grounds of the salmon. The annual catch of salmon in the Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers has been as follows: In 1874, 5,098,781 lbs.; 1877, 6,493,563 lbs.; 1878, 6,520,768 lbs. ; 1879, 4,482,250 lbs. The falling off in the latter year was due to a quarrel about prices between the fishermen and the canners, which lasted a large part of the fishing season, during which time no salmon were canned. Catfish, introduced into the ponds and streams from Eastern waters a few years ago, are now so plentiful as to be a common article of food. Shad and white-fish have been planted in large numbers, and are succeeding; but brook-trout from the Atlantic coast do not thrive in California.

The returns of the State census give as the entire population of the State 864,836, a gain of 304,589 in ten years. The counties of Alameda, Colusa, Humboldt, Lake, Lassen, Los Angeles, Merced, Mono, Shasta, Tehama, and Tulare have increased their population over one hundred per cent. Among the agricultural counties, Alameda has shown the most remarkable growth, from 24,237 inhabitants to 63,639; but this increase is largely due to its vicinity to San Francisco. Owing to mining discoveries, Mono has increased its population from 403, the smallest of any county in 1870, to 5,416. Tuolumne, Mariposa, and Alpine Counties have receded in population. San Francisco has advanced from 149,473 to 233,066.

Funds were appropriated for the completion of the branch prison at Folsom, the building of which had been two or three times begun since the purchase of the grounds in 1858. But, owing to the failure of contractors and changes of plan, the work is not yet complete, though $300,000 have been expended upon it. The accommodations at the State's prison of St. Quentin had long been of the most imperfect description. In 1874 there were 941 convicts, confined in only 444 cells. The prison was gradually enlarged, until in 1879 there were 696 cells; but the requirements for sleeping space increased with a like pace, the