hubert howe bancroft - Central Pacific Railroad Photographic History ...

BARRACKS AND STOREHOUSES. 463
were erected, and in the rear of the redoubt a stone
magazine. The barracks for the accommodation of
other troops were erected in the town. In the summer
of 1849 Captain Folsom constructed military
store-houses at San Francisco, the presidio was still
further repaired, and four 32-pound guns and two
8-inch howitzers were mounted on the old fort at the
entrance to the harbor
MILITARY RESERVATIONS AT SAN FRANCISCO, 1849.
Thus passed the year of transition, while California
was under a rule nominally civil, but really military,
yet lacking the power to be wholly either. The local
harbor. Immediate steps were taken to have a custom-house erected, with
what result I have already narrated in a preceding volume.
Postal communication in 1847, 1848, and part of 1649 had been by military
express from post to post, citizens being permitted to avail themselves
of this service without charge, the private expresses patronized in the mines
making exorbitant profits. The arrival of William Van Voorhies, special
post agent of the United States, by the California in March, seemed to promise
relief to the military service. Van Voorhies was superseded in a month's
time by R. T. P. Allen, who received, if he did not merit, innumerable
anathemas from longing and expectant but disappointed miners and settlers,
who believed they were entitled to have delivered to them letters that cost
forty cents from the states, and twelve and a half cents from any point on
the Pacific coast. The agent, however, hardly found time during tne summer
to select sites for post-offices, and the military and private expresses
were even more required than before to accommodate the thousands to whom
the monthly steamers brought news from home.