What I saw on the west coast of South and North America, and at the Hawaiian Islands.: By H. Willis Baxley, M.D.

PETALUMA.
Petaluma is a flourishing and fresh-looking town of twentyfive hundred people, and the point of divergence of numerous
routes of travel to the surrounding interior country. As a fair
specimen of this, the Sonoma Valley was selected to look at. A
Kentuckian, a rare sample of nature's noblemen, was my cicerone. Two or three miles in an easterly direction brought us to
the foot of a not very elevated ridge dignified by the name of
Sonoma Mountain, ascending which by a good road, in dry
weather, the magnificent Sonoma Valley was seen from its sumnmit stretching to the eastward as far as the Napa spur of the
Coast Range Mountain, which separates it from the like beautiful and fertile valley of Napa, in which are some of the finest
farms of the State, and also the medicinal springs that have
made Napa the fashionable watering-plaee of California. While
descending the eastern slope of Sonoma Ridge, an opportunity
was afforded to see a roodero, a Mexican custom of driving up
herds of wandering cattle, lassoing, marking, and branding them.
On such occasions notice is given to neighbors, that they may
attend for the identification and protection of their like property that may have strayed fromn their ranches; and, if they
choose, to partake of the dainty of cruelly caught and primitively
cooked "mountain oysters "-always found in great abundance
where many calves are herded. It is a scene of intense excitement. Thousands of almnost wild animals are crowded into one
corral; and being run down by fleet horsemen-especially dexterous when they happen to be remnants of the old M]exican
tribe-are twined by the unerring lasso, flung, hacked by the
rudest rhinoplastic surgery, forming superfluoi noses, abbreviated ears, and cervical pendents of strange shape, and otherwise
degraded, cauterized, and branded by the red-hot iron, sinking
deep into the quivering flesh and hissing an accompaniment to
the cries of the suffering victims; while the frantic bellowing of
the surging herd around startles the very air with fear, and fills
the inexperienced spectator with commingled terror and pity.
Mr. S, on whose ranche this barbarous enforcement of property identification was practised, was one of the twelve Americans who, on the anticipated outbreak of the Mexican war, undertook, and, as it resulted, successfully achieved, the hazardoTM
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