sanguinary duels, and deeds of violence. The most
prominent is the attempted assassination of deputy-sheriff
Freaner, by a squatter named M'Carthy. In the execution
of a writ of restitution of a lot in San Francisco,
Mr. Freaner was, without provocation, shot through the
hip, the ball almost touching the great artery. Mr.
Freaner in return fired three or four shots, two of which
penetrated the lungs of M'Carthy. Mr. Freaner's wound
was not dangerous, and M'Carthy was slowly recovering.
Squatting upon public or private property has been
carried on in the city to an unparalleled extent.
Wherever a vacant lot could be found, it has been seized
upon without regard to title, and in some cases fences
have been pulled down, and others, together with houses
erected, and lots within lots fenced off. The courts
having jurisdiction are overrun with cases growing out
of these difficulties, and several criminal convictions
have been had. In some places owners of land have not
only been despoiled of their property by squatters, but
have been resisted in the attempt to drive off their own
cattle.

Joaquin, the bandit, whose daring and romantic career
has been the subject of numerous remarks, and who has
for several months been the terror of the southern
portion of our state, has been captured by a company of
volunteers, and beheaded. Several of his band were
killed in the fight, and three escaped. Several
unsuccessful attempts have recently been made to fire the
city. The alarm of fire occurs almost daily. Accounts
from Los Angeles state that robberies and murders had
been committed in various parts of the county, and
large sums of money had been taken from various
persons, and in various manners. In one instance, two
gamblers charged with robbing a store of $8000 were
tried, but sufficient evidence not being produced to
warrant their conviction they were discharged. The
crowd then determined upon hanging the supposed
culprits, and it was with the greatest difficulty they were
dissuaded from doing so. Mr. David Porter, a lawyer
from Virginia, was murdered near the town of Los
Angeles. These offences have created a feeling of
intense excitement. A man was hung near Jackson, in
Calaveras county, by the people for horse-stealing, a
short time since.

A relic of antiquity has been discovered in California
which seems to rival the Pyramids of Egypt in age and
magnitude. It is thus described in a Californian paper,
the Placerville Herald:—A party of men, five in
number, had ascended the Colorado for nearly 200 miles
above the mouth of the Gila, their object being to
discover, if possible, some large tributary from the west,
by which they might make the passage of the desert,
and enter California by a new, more direct, and easier
route, inasmuch as there are known to exist numerous
small streams upon the eastern slope of the mountains,
that are either lost in the sands of the desert or unite
with the Colorado, through tributaries heretofore
unknown. They represent the country on either side
of the Colorado as almost totally barren of every
vegetable product, and so level and monotonous that any
object sufficient to arrest the attention possesses more or
less of curiosity and interest, and it was this that led to
the discovery and examination of this hitherto unknown
relic of a forgotten age. An object appeared upon the
plain to the west, having so much the appearance of a
work of art, from the regularity of its outline and its
isolated position, that the party determined upon visiting
it. Passing over an almost barren sand plain, a distance
of nearly five miles, they reached the base of one of the
most wonderful objects, considering its location, it being
the very home of desolation, that the mind can possibly
conceive of, nothing less than an immense stone
pyramid, composed of layers or courses of from 18 inches
to nearly 3 feet in thickness, and from 5 to 8 feet in
length. It has a level top of more than 50 feet square,
though it is evident that it was once completed, but that
some great convulsion of nature has displaced its entire
top, as it evidently now lies a huge and broken mass
upon one of its sides, though nearly covered by the
sands. This pyramid differs, in some respects, from the
Egyptian pyramids. It is, or was, more slender or
pointed; and, while those of Egypt are composed of
steps or layers, receding as they rise, the American
pyramid was, undoubtedly, a more finished structure.
The outer surface of the blocks was evidently cut to an
angle, that gave the structure, when new and complete,
a smooth or regular surface from top to bottom. From
the present level of the sands that surround it, there are
52 distinct layers of stone, that will average at least two
feet; this gives its present height 104 feet, so that before
the top was displaced it must have been, judging from
an angle of its sides, at least twenty feet higher than at
present. How far it extends beneath the surface of the
sands it is impossible to determine without great labour.
Such is the age of this immense structure, that the
perpendicular joints between the blocks are worn away
to the width of from five to ten inches at the bottom of
each joint, and the entire of the pyramid so much worn
by the storms, the vicissitudes, and the corrodings of
centuries, as to make it easy of ascent, particularly upon
one of its sides. We say one of its sides, because a
singular fact connected with this remarkable structure
is, that it inclines ten degrees to one side of the vertical
or perpendicular.

There are accounts from New York to the 14th inst.
The yellow fever at New Orleans continued to abate
in virulence, and the daily deaths from the pestilence
had decreased to fifty. At Mobile, however, the disease
was on the increase, the rate of mortality having
reached fifty per day.

The operation of the Fugitive Slave Law is creating
a great sensation throughout the United States. A
decision in the case of a fugitive slave at Cincinnati, by
a judge of the Supreme Court of the United States,
sitting in chambers, has attracted much attention.
There was no dispute as to the facts. Washington
M'Querry, a negro, who had escaped from Kentucky,
had lived four years as a free man in Ohio. His former
master, Henry Miller, came there and claimed him.
But a writ of habeas corpus was granted, and Henry
Miller had to show that M'Querry was a fugitive from
labour in Kentucky; and this he did so fully that there
remained no doubt upon the subject. The judge
decided that the slave should be remanded back to his
master; because the Constitution provides for the
rendition of persons who have escaped from one State
into another, on the claim of the party to whom they
owe "service or labour." He showed that Congress,
not any separate State, has the power to enforce the
provisions of the Constitution, and that all laws of the
States opposed to the Constitution are null and void.
"Nor can there be a doubt (he said) that the term
'persons held to service or labour,' applies principally
to persons held as slaves. Madison, while assenting to
the provision, objected to the use of the term 'slave,'
because it expressed a thing repugnant to his sentiments;
he did not wish the idea that one man could
hold property in another recognised in the organic law
of his country." An appeal was sought from this
decision to the full Court; but Judge M'Lean held that
he could not grant it. He gave time, however, to
investigate the question. Can there be an appeal from
the decision of a judge of the Supreme Court sitting in
chambers? Miller was bound to return M'Querry to
Ohio should an appeal be found to lie. In the mean time,
M'Querry was lodged in Covington gaol, on the slave bank
of the Ohio river. This law is sometimes enforced with
a degree of barbarity disgraceful to a civilised country.
The following circumstance occurred in the beginning
of the present month at Wilhesbarre, in Pennsylvania.

At one of the hotels in that place there lived as
waiter a mulatto, nearly white, who went by the name
of Bill. There arrived in the town Deputy-Marshal
Wynkoop, and several assistants from Virginia, to
arrest poor Bill as a "fugitive from labour." These
persons came behind him, and knocked him down with
a mace; but Bill, who, as it appears, was a strong and
active man, recovered his feet and threw his assailant
off. Finally, he managed to break from the house, with
the handcuffs fastened only on his right wrist, and
made his way to the river. Into this he plunged,
exclaiming "I will rather be drowned than taken
alive." His pursuers fired at him before he reached
the water, and when he was swimming they deliberately
levelled their revolvers, and fired four or five shots. One