Alexandria Gazette

Letter from a Live Californian,
From the New York Tribune.
[A friend has handed us the following extracts of a letter from a New York boy, who has been to California, seen the Elephant, and is now on his way home:]

San Francisco, December 11, 1849,

Venerated C.: I am to sail on the 15th for home. There's no getting over the Rocky Mountains without waiting until Spring, which would not suit me. I am half tempted to run off to the Sandwiches and Oregon before going home, and should certainly, were it not that I am completely beggared by the horrid expense of "seeing California." We were all green enough when I left New York. Things were going to be cheap here as in the States! Tell that to marines. I don't believe there'll be much change for five years to come. I had to pay one dollar last night for a grizzly bear steak, without "fixins." Milk is in demand at $5 per quart. Cabbages at $5 a head, onions $1 each. Likely Newfoundland dogs sell at $1,000, and I leave you to guess the price of "passengers." I enclose you a bill of fare for one to which I was invited to supper the other night. There were fifteen present—among them Dr. Gwin, Butler King, Captain Ringgold, Major Gray, &c. It was a good ordinary supper, with champagne, &c., and might have cost $25 at home. The cost I have since learned was $225. If you multiply New York prices by ten, you will have California prices, except shoes, for which you must take twenty, and for vegetables fifty.

Well, I have had a good time of it, and except some jolly adventures on the homeward road, 's picture of me sweating over the hills in leather breeches, was pretty near right, though I still wear my corduroys and nothing else. Weigh 178 lbs., am round in visage, and ruddy in complexion, rough in aspect, blunt in manner, bold in voice, brazen in general deportment, heartily jolly when in good humor, and bloodily insatiate in revenge. I have not carried knife and pistol four months for nothing. No sir-ree! I can rassle with the grizzly bear till make him yell, and then garter my stockings with the glittering rattlesnake! Indians I devour with great relish, requiring only a little salt. * * * I think I shall be at home about February 15. It is my intention to leave the steamer at Acapulco and ride through Mexico in the guerilla style, and I anticipate having a nice time of it with the robbers.

It rained like blazes last night. I thought the house would have been stove in, but it wasn't, though I have seen so much of the rainy season that it seems hard to go off and miss the paradise that follows it. I must stop at last. No more from me on the coast. In about two months expect a fat, rough, outlandish individual dressed in sombrero, Mexican jacket, calzoneras and other accoutrements, rushing up street with a crowd of boys running behind. Yours, very decidedly,

L. W.
* Excelsior.