waves with great rapidity, pressed forward by a vast and unprecedented spread of canvas on the tall masts, while from the sloping decks new companies of Argonauts saw the distant Andes break the eastern horizon, or gazed in wonder at the unfamiliar constellation of the Southern Cross.

In those days there were but few farms in the interior, and Oregon had hardly begun to be settled, so that almost all the supplies of the city were brought from great distances. Some flour came in from Australia and Chili, and a little sugar and rice from Asia, but the greater part of the provisions and other goods needed was brought from the North Atlantic States, by the long route around South America. All this was changed upon the opening of the Panama Railway, in 1855, connecting comparatively short lines of steam-navigation on both sides. In a single year 6,000 tons of biscuit were shipped from New York to San Francisco, around the Horn, passing twice through the torrid zone. During the earlier days there were alternate seasons of scarcity and of abundance. At one time, tobacco sold for 8s. a pound, and within a year the market was so overstocked that boxes of the weed were thrown down in the mud, to serve as stepping-stones, and employed also as foundations for buildings. A pound of saleratus was worth £3 in gold. Balances, worth 1s., sold readily for £15. Cotton cloth was as valuable as silk. The completion of the Pacific Railway, in 1869, placed San Francisco within less than a week of New York (the distance being something over 3,300 miles); and it is no longer possible for such vicissitudes to occur. The neighbouring counties produce an abundance of bread-stuffs and other supplies; and the people of the city are rapidly getting into a way of establishing factories, to supply their other needs. The chief manufacturing is connected with the iron-foundries, of which there are nearly fifty, and several brass-foundries, employing 3,000 men. Iron and coal cost twice or thrice as much as in Pennsylvania, or England, yet these works are conducted at a profit, being mainly engaged in making ponderous machinery for the mines, engines of great power and endurance, locomotives, steamship-engines, and other works in iron of the largest class. There are also chemical works, car factories, sugar refineries, powder-mills, ship-yards, cotton-mills, glass-houses, assaying works, petroleum refineries, and other branches of manufacturing industry. The famous Mission Mills employ nearly 400 Chinamen, and make the finest woollen blankets in the world.

The San Franciscan peninsula—although many of its hills have been cast into the sea to make new streets-still retains several bold and picturesque eminences, commanding very attractive views over the surrounding waters and the diversified coast counties. On the north stands Telegraph Hill, from whose summit signals were formerly displayed on the approach of ships, indicating the class and colours of the in-bound vessels, and warning the isolated citizens to make ready for the expected arrivals. On one side it overlooks the placid inland sea, the frowning fortress-walls on Alcatraz, and the distant crest of Mount Tamalpais; and on the other the long streets, crowded with stirring life, stretch away towards the Mission Peaks and Bernal Heights. Farther away appear the fair leagues of the Santa Clara Valley, the rugged Potrero ridges, the populous Bay towns, from Alameda to Berkeley, and many a frowning mountain, many a line of jagged sierras. Under the shelter of Telegraph Hill, on the south, was the famous Happy Valley of the first

immigrants, where the tents of the adventurers stood thick as on the camp-ground of an army corps.

Spanishtown clings to the western slope of Telegraph Hill, and is the abode of the Mexicans and Spanish-Californians. At Carnival-time there are strange festivities in this Latin faubourg, when rival bands of play-day warriors fight for hours, pelting each other with hundreds of pounds of flour, and the victors have the honour of naming the lady who shall be queen of the coming festivities. In 1881 the Cuartel Colorado companies fought the Pueblo Nuevo regiment for many hours, one division preferring the Señorita Guadalupe Carbano, and the other choosing the Señorita Manuela Hermiera, as the sovereign lady of the Carnival-tide.

Barbary Coast, a densely-populated locality at the foot of Telegraph Hill, and close to the busiest streets, is the plague-spot of San Francisco-the haunt of the wicked, the profligate, and the abandoned classes. Within a few crowded squares there is enough human venom to poison a continent, enough misery to plunge the angelic hosts into unavailing grief. Thirty years ago, assassinations were of almost daily occurrence, and the revolver, the bowie-knife, the stiletto, found many a victim among these horrible dens, where desperadoes of both sexes and of all nations held high revelry. Criminals found here a city of refuge; and honest men caught within its purlieus were robbed—perhaps were murdered. The vigilance and activity of a strong police force have averted much of this peril at the present time; but the Barbary Coast and Dupont Street still invite and nourish the libertinism for which San Francisco is so sadly celebrated so mournfully pre-eminent among Anglo-Saxon cities. It is within these precincts that the traveller can comprehend something of what the entire settlement was thirty years ago, when (to use the amply vigorous words of an English traveller) "the scum of Polynesia, desperadoes from Australia, bullies and blackguards from the wild State of Missouri, Spanish cut-throats from the cities of the Pacific coast, dissolute women and reckless adventurers from the slums of Europe, congregated in San Francisco, and there plied their several avocations, and followed their devious courses, in defiance of a law which had lost its terrors for them, and in disregard of any other check save the revolver or the bowie-knife. At that time San Francisco was one-half a brothel and one-half a gaming-hell."

To the southward of Telegraph Hill, just beyond the heart of the city, rises Rincon Hill, at one time the aristosratic quarter, but latterly well-nigh ruined by street-cuttings. Farther west is Russian Hill, 360 feet high, and, with the adjacent Clay Street and California Street Hills, forming the third wall of the triangular amphitheatre in which most of the buildings are placed. Farther towards the sea is Lone Mountain, which is neither lone nor a mountain, but a shapely conical hill, crowned with an enormous white cross, and surrounded with graves. The hill belongs to the Roman Catholic Church, and is entirely enclosed by the burying-ground of that sect. In the vicinity are several other large and beautiful cemeteries, pertaining to the non-Catholics, and adorned with costly monuments. This entire district, where Romanists, Freemasons, Dissenters of all sorts, the soldiers, statesmen, and financiers of the infant commonwealth, are buried, is popularly known as Lone Mountain, and the term has in it something weird and sad, befitting such a locality. From the flowery crest of the hill (Calvary the Romanists call it) one may

look westward across the undulating sand-hills to the vast expanse of the Pacific Ocean, superb under the light of sunset; or northward, over the glittering strait of the Golden Gate, to the fore-shortened masses of the Coast Range; or eastward, where the lengthening streets of the city of sorrow and of hope, of ancient crime and rising prosperity, stretch towards the horizon of the Sierra Nevada. It may well be wondered whether the angels look down with greater joy upon the complex civilisation of New York and Boston than they felt when gazing upon the wigwams of the simple and devout Red Indians which have been swept away. In their eyes the San Francisco of to-day must be a pandemonium, a conclave of evil spirits even when compared with the lowly pastoral life of the vanished Mission Dolores. And to all this human faithlessness, this feverish strife for place and preferment, this insincerity so sad, this dogged refusal to think, this practical negation of a life beyond, Lone Mountain is the end, as Greenwood is out on the Atlantic side, or Père-la-Chaise, still farther afield.

Turning from the silent bourne of so many chequered lives, eastward into the new metropolis, a nervous and buoyant life is seen on every side, thrilling with excitement and quivering with indomitable ambition. The Happy Valley has vanished, and a semiEuropean city stands in its place. When the present transitional era is over, and a certain degree of architectural harmony, already beginning, is rounded out, the city will be as fair as it is strong and energetic. Market Street, the widest and longest of the thoroughfares, runs south-westward from the water-front towards the beach which faces the Pacific-passing from a region of stately commercial buildings and hotels to a dusty limbo of suburban shanties, and then to the bleak sand-hills around Mission Dolores. This is rapidly becoming the chief street of the city, and is almost the only highway leading to the open country. It also divides the older wards, on the north, from the new and inchoate city on the south. There are upwards of fifty miles of tramways here, some of the cars being drawn through the streets and up the steep hills by an ingenious system of stationary engines and endless wire cables. Midway between the two rails are two parallel bars of iron, an inch apart, between and below which is the ever-moving cable; and the driver, by moving his lever (connecting with a "grip" which projects through the crevice towards the cable), can attach the car thereto, and thus have it set in motion; or he can release the cable, and then the car is stopped by brakes. Strangers in San Francisco gaze in surprise at the heavily-laden cars gliding smoothly up the steep hills, and without any apparent means of locomotion. One of these cables is three miles long, and daily carries thousands of passengers out to Golden Gate Park.

Kearney Street is the busy main thoroughfare-the favourite resort of the promenaders -the region of the most brilliant and attractive shops. Here is the famous Maison Dorée, the most aristocratic of San Francisco's thousand restaurants, where the gilded youth of both sexes, the local actors, the visiting tourists, seek their mid-day lunches or their after-theatre suppers. There are many who prefer the triumphs of the Italian cuisine at Campi's, or the simpler indigenous fare at the "United States;" while along the harbour-line the "Sailors' Delight," the "Fair Wind," and similar alluring names summon the mariners to less sumptuous tables. The shop-windows of Kearney Street are skilfully arranged, and exhibit a great variety of tempting wares to the eyes of the

passers-by. The Quarterly Review was quite within bounds when it asserted that in no other city are such extravagant prices asked (and cheerfully paid) for the unnecessary things of life-splendid furniture, costly apparel, rare jewels, and fancy horses. The miner comes down from the mountains as rich and reckless as a sailor after a long voyage, and his heavy twenty-dollar gold pieces soon vanish, unregretted, in a bout of unlimited drinking, of dinners at the best of restaurants, of conflicts with the faro-bank, of revellings still worse in form. He speaks of the

metropolis only as "Frisco," or "The Bay," and reckons a month spent among its pleasures as ample compensation for a year of weary labour in the distant and gloomy sierras.

Montgomery Street is devoted to the better class of retail trade, and its sidewalks are filled with hurrying crowds, ruddy-faced men and richlydressed women. The shops leave nothing to be desired, exhibiting the costliest jewellery, the daintiest toilettes, the most efficient weapons, and the favourite table delicacies of half a dozen nationalities. At one time this was the chief street of San Francisco, but Kearney Street, parallel and close to it, being broader and more uniformly built up, usurped (or at least divided) its pre-eminence. Montgomery Street runs plump up against Telegraph Hill, which is ascended from its head by a line of steps.

The larger hotels and theatres are on or near these two streets, and so are the club-houses, the chief of which, occupied by the aristocratic Union

Club, was constructed of stone quarried and dressed in China. Some of the most important buildings in this district were built with fortunes acquired in the mines; and the Palace Hotel thus commemorates the Crown Point Bonanza, the Nevada Block represents the Consolidated Virginia Mines, the Baldwin House arose from the Ophir and Mexican Mines, and other handsome structures, as tall and as ornate as the fear of earthquakes will allow, bear witness to the unburied treasures of many other famous hills.

The best of the few public buildings is the new City Hall, a picturesque and costly structure on Yerba Buena Park, with a dome which is visible for a great distance. Near this monument of civic ambition and wealth are the celebrated Sand Lots, where the

San Francisco workmen and "hoodlums" have for years been accustomed to assemble, to listen to wild and incendiary harangues from their leaders. The chief of these is one Denis Kearney, a teamster, whose rude eloquence has often powerfully swayed thousands of men assembled here, and insured prompt action against abuses of the people's rights, or fomented outbreaks of lower-class prejudice and hatred. The civic soldiery have need to be kept in a high state of efficiency to check these wild communards of the West. The volunteer militia force of the city numbers 2,500 men, well drilled and organised, and forming a powerful conservative force in the midst of this conglomerate population. There is a battalion of cavalry and a battery of light artillery, and the remainder of the brigade is composed of three regiments and fifteen companies of infantry. The population of the city exceeds 233,000, according to the census of 1880.

In the early days of San Francisco, the number of immigrants was so great that no adequate accommodation could be provided for them, even at the exorbitant prices which were freely offered. Great buildings of red-wood, with cloth partitions and paper ceilings, arose on all sides, affording such tempting bait to the flames that in a single year upwards of £1,500,000 worth of property was destroyed by fire. Several old ships were beached, and became the hotels of this nomadic horde. These primitive inns have been replaced by a group of huge modern hotels, which would be noteworthy even in London or Paris for their extent and luxury. The Palace Hotel is the most famous caravanserai of the Pacific States, the paradise of the flush speculator, the day-dream of thousands of weary prospectors among the arid mountains of Arizona and Nevada. This vast structure, seven storeys high, and covering nearly three acres, cost about £600,000, and has accommodation for 1,200 guests. Externally, it is remarkable for a great number of bow-windows projecting from every room; and within is the broad court-yard, paved with marble, and covered with a glass roof at the top of the building. At evening, when this inner square is brilliantly lighted up, and frequent carriages pass in and out, the scene becomes full of interest and variety. The court is surrounded by rows of balconies projecting from every floor, and adorned with countless flowers and tropical plants. The water used in the hotel comes from four deep artesian wells on the premises, which afford ample means for fighting fire; while an intricate network of iron rods and bars, riveting all parts of the building together, is intended for a defence against earthquakes. Upon the lofty roof, overlooking the city and bay, a promenade a third of a mile long has been constructed. This huge inn was built by Senator Sharon, with a part of the wealth which he had acquired from the famous Comstock Mines, in Nevada. The Baldwin House is another enormous and magnificent hotel, erected at a cost of £700,000, a part of the profits of a speculator in shares during a single winter, and upon its lofty roof supporting a broad promenade and a half-score of domes. In its court-yard is a superb opera-house, with seats for 1,700 persons, and so richly decorated that the frescoing alone cost £6,000, the curtain also being of rich crimson satin. The Lick House and the Cosmopolitan, the Grand and the Occidental, are scarcely less magnificent than the Palace and the Baldwin; and below these there are as many as a hundred other public hotels of various grades.

In and near California Street are the financial head-quarters of the Pacific Coast, the banks, exchanges, safe-deposit vaults, and other general offices. The great Bank of