Colonels Stevenson, Freemont and Captain Sutter will stand pre-eminent in the future history of the State as its most prominent founders.

I sailed out of the port of San Francisco on the steamer Ecuador for Relago, Central America, expecting to return to California within sixty days.  In a few days, out at sea, we began to hear unfavorable rumors about our vessel; that the engineer had left the day before our sailing; that he did not consider it safe to go in it; that it could not carry coal enough to take it to Acapulco, the next coaling place.  And we were informed that it was a steamer that had been running from Panama to Valparaiso, and had been bought up by a speculator and sent up to San Francisco as an experiment, to see if it would pay.  The officers and men had never been up the coast before, and knew nothing about the port.  One day we were startled in mid ocean by the stopping of the engine.  We soon found the cause.  The captain was about to try his sails so as to save coal (which verified the reports about being short of coal).  We made some headway with the sails, but lost it again when the wind subsided, by the currents of the ocean; so that project was abandoned, and after some days we put into the port of San Blas, in Mexico, for fuel.  There was no coal there, so we laid in all the wood we could to try and reach Acapulco (here we could not buy any thing with our $5 gold pieces, but they were ready to sell for silver).  The cholera had been there, they said, but had left.  The priests had had a procession, and, with their incense boxes, had marched through the streets and driven it out.  We took in all the wood we could get and started to make the port of Acapulco, the regular coaling port for all the steamers on that coast.  It was Sunday P.M.  We could raise fuel enough to make only four knots an hour.  It was an iron steamer.  We were burning what there was of the woodwork of the vessel, for if we could not make the port before dark we were lost.  The officers were not acquainted with the coast.  We had not fuel enough to keep steam up all night, and we would be on the broad Pacific ocean, six thousand miles across, without the remotest possibility of meeting any other vessel, without any control of our steamer, subject to be driven in any direction.  I heard the mate talking to the captain about the propriety of wrecking the vessel and saving what lives they could, although we were in sight of land.  The captain said the under-tow was so great that none could be saved in that way.  It is twice as great on the Pacific as the Atlantic.  There were no female passengers.  One man said he had $10,000 in gold with him; if his wife and children only had that he would be content to meet his fate, under the circumstances, but it was hard to leave them without it.  All the passengers had more or less gold, or they would not have been returning.