Richard Dana discusses a colony of "Sandwich Islanders" in San Diego, 1840 from Two Years Before the Mast (pp. 137 – 8)

During the four months that I lived here, I got well acquainted with all of them, and took the greatest pains to become familiar with their language, habits, and character. Their language I could only learn orally, for they had not any books among them, though many of them had been to taught to read and write by the missionaries at home. They spoke a little English, and, by a sort of compromise, a mixed language was used on the beach, which could be understood by all. The long name of "Sandwich Islanders" is dropped, and they are called by the whites, all over the Pacific Ocean, "Kanakas," from a word in their own language signifying, I believe, man, human being-which they apply to themselves, and to all South Sea Islanders, in distinction from whites, whom they call "Haole." This name, Kanaka, they answer to, both collectively and individually. Their proper names in their own language being difficult to pronounce and remember, they are called by any names which the captains or crews may choose to give them. Some are called after the vessel they are in; others by our proper names, as Jack, Tom, Bill; and some have fancy names, as Banyan, Foretop, Rope Yarn, Pelican, &c., &c. Of the four who worked at our house, one was named "Mr. Bingham," after the missionary at Oahu; another, Hope, after a vessel that he bad been in; a third, Tom Davis, the name of his first captain; and the fourth, Pelican, from his fancied resemblance to that bird.

Dana discussing San Francisco in a post-script for the 1859 edition of Two Years Before the Mast (p. 346)

I might perhaps say quite-every American in California had read it; for when California "broke out," as the phrase is, in 1848, and so large a portion of the Anglo-Saxon race flocked to it, there was no book upon California but mine. Many who were on the coast at the time the book refers to, and afterward read it, and remembered the Pilgrim and Alert, thought they also remembered me. But perhaps more did remember me than I was inclined at first to believe, for the novelty of a collegian coming out before the mast had drawn more attention to me than I was aware of at the time.

Late in the afternoon, as there were vespers at the Roman Catholic churches, I went to that of Notre Dame des Victoires. The congregation was French, and a sermon in French was preached by an abbe; the music was excellent, all things airy and tasteful and making one feel as if in one of the chapels in Paris. The Cathedral of St. Mary, which I afterward visited, where the Irish attend, was a contrast indeed, and more like one of our stifling Irish Catholic churches in Boston or New York, with intelligence in so small a proportion to the number of faces. During the three Sundays I was in San Francisco, I visited three of the Episcopal churches, and the Congregational, a Chinese Mission Chapel, and on the Sabbath (Saturday) a Jewish synagogue. The Jews are a wealthy and powerful class here. The Chinese, too, are numerous, and do a great part of the manual labor and small shop-keeping, and have some wealthy mercantile houses.