Conveyance by deed grants the fee simple; most all the other titles known in other parts of the world are almost entirely unknown in the State.

STATUTE OF LIMITATIONS.-Articles charged in a storeaccount are barred in one year; on an account not in writing, two years; on a contract in writing, promissory note, &c., in four years; on a judgment, five

years.

DIVORCE.-A divorce may be granted for any of the following causes: natural impotency, existing at the time of marriage; want of consent of parents where the female is under fourteen years of age, unless a ratification of the marriage is made after the parties become of age; by an act of adultery of either party; excessive cruelty; habitual intemperance; wilful desertion by either party for a period of two years; failure on the part of the husband to provide the necessaries of life for the wife (he having the ability) for the term of three years; obtaining the consent of either party by fraud; the conviction of either party of a felony. A residence in the State of six months next preceding the action is necessary, in order to give a court jurisdiction.

JUDICIARY.

The Supreme Court of California consists of five judges, elected by the people for a term of ten years each, at a salary each of six thousand dollars per annum. It is the court of last resort in the State. Terms of this court are held at Sacramento on the first Mondays in January, April, July, and October.

The State is divided into nineteen judicial districts, with a district court of original jurisdiction in each. In each of these districts a judge is elected by the people,

for a term of six years, at a salary of five thousand dollars. There are four judicial districts in the city of San Francisco: in these latter the salary is six thousand dollars each per annum. Each of the fifty counties in the State has a court called the county court. There are also other inferior courts of limited jurisdiction.

California constitutes a separate United States judicial district, presided over by a United States district judge, at a salary of five thousand dollars per annum. Courts are held at San Francisco, beginning on the first Monday in April, second Monday in August, and first Monday in December.

The States of California, Oregon, and Nevada constitute the Ninth United States circuit; and a United States circuit court is held at San Francisco, commencing its terms on the first Monday in February, second Monday in June, and first Monday in October. The judge's salary is five thousand dollars per annum.

The legal profession is well represented on the Pacific coast, and judges and attorneys of unimpeachable integrity and eminent attainments may be found all over the States and Territories of the entire country. There are at least from seven to ten lawyers in California where there should be one. In all the towns and villages, and especially in San Francisco, where there are over five hundred of them, there is a great overstock of lawyers, and many of them find it most difficult to earn a livelihood. Some few firms and individuals do a fair business and some few a large business; but when a comparison is made between the lawyers of the State and the merchants, farmers, or other classes and branches of industry, it may be safely said that the lawyers of California as a class are the poorest men in

the State, and that great numbers of them eke out an impecunious and precarious existence, from which there is no hope of relief until they abandon the profession. Three or four hundred of the lawyers now in San Francisco could soon add much to their fortune, health, morals, and the benefit of the State, by tilling the soil, raising stock or chickens, making butter, running sawmills, or conducting some branch of regular industry. The same might in truth be said of doctors and other professional men, who, for the sake of staying in a city, undergo all the pangs of poverty, while the broad acres of a generous soil only await the touch of industry to yield its rich harvest and bounteous rewards.

Throughout the whole Pacific coast, every city, village, and town is overstocked with "professional men' lawyers, doctors, dentists, "artists," &c.—and still thousands of young men in the East anxiously seek the West for a field of professional labor. The anvil and the plow still call for young and active men, promising them peace, health, and plenty, while the occupations suited to woman, and the streets, concert halls, gambling houses, and drinking saloons are crowded with stalwart "loafers" and decayed dandies, who, in our practical age, are but a burlesque upon the sex to which they belong.

CHAPTER XXVII.

Chinese empire-Chinese in the United States-Seeking gold in America-In California-Employments, character, and customs of the Chinese-Chinese in San Francisco-Moral depravityChinese persecuted-Social and political condition of the Chinese -Buddha, Confucius, and Mencius-Religion of the OrientChinese classics-Opium and other stimulants-Small feet of the women-Christianity among the Chinese-Coolyism-Chinese slavery in America-Spanish barbarity:

THE great empire of China, with its four hundred million of people, peculiar in physical type, customs, and religion, has, until a recent period, remained comparatively excluded from the rest of the world.

Commercial intercourse with many of the seaports of the empire has long existed, but the great interior of the country, with its olive-faced, almond-eyed, shaven-headed, sandal-footed people, is still almost unknown.

Merchants, travellers, and missionaries may be found about the seaports, and gradually work their way into the skirts of the country; but European customs and the name of Christ and his mission are all unknown to the people of this vast empire, still dreaming over the philosophy of Buddha and Confucius, plodding along without the appliances of steam and the aid of modern invention. China is to-day as it was centuries ago, and centuries hence will find this vast nation almost as exclusive as it has been since the creation of the

race.

Until a recent period no Chinaman was allowed to leave his country, and if by accident or design any found their way into foreign lands, and returned to their

homes, transportation for life or decapitation awaited them.

Throughout the civilized world to this day the appearance of the strange people of this oldest empire, with flowing robes, sandals, and cue, is a source of wonder and curiosity, always suggesting the Darwinian theory of the creation of our species.

The date of the arrival of the first Chinaman in America is uncertain. A few Chinese and Japanese have, at remote periods, been driven from their native shores to the islands of the Pacific, and occasionally upon the western coast of America; but no effort had been made for thousands of years, either by these people or their governments, to see other lands or affiliate with other people.

In the twenty years from 1820 to 1840 but eleven Chinese had arrived in the United States, and from 1840 to 1850 but three hundred and thirty-five. Of this latter number three hundred had arrived at San Francisco in 1849, induced to seek their fortunes in the new El Dorado. 7

The discovery of gold in California forms a new era in the history of Chinese migration. The proximity of the Golden State to the Orient, with direct ocean communication, soon broke the hermetic seal of the "flowery kingdom," and brought floods of its strange people to the shores of America.

A few years before the discovery of gold in California, vessels trading between China, the Pacific islands, and San Francisco carried a few Chinese as cooks and servants. On the 2d day of February, 1848, the brig Eagle, from Canton, arrived at San Francisco with the first Chinese in the country-one woman and two men