as we break our fast; at one he puts us in a drag and sends us out; at three we meet him on a hill above San Mateo, where he is damming a creek and building a town; at five, he jumps into the train, his holiday spent, and hastens to his office in San Francisco, having done a full week's work in fourand-twenty hours-a type of the White conquerors who expend their lives in carrying on the fight!

CHAPTER XVI.

SAN FRANCISCO.

CLOSING the passage by the Golden Gate, a city of white houses, spires, and pinnacles rises from the water-line, and rolling backward over flat and sand rift, strikes a headland on the right, and surging up two hills, creams round their sides, and runs in foam towards yet more distant heights. This city is San Francisco, seen from the ferry-boat; a port and town with ships and steamers, wharves and docks, in which the flags of every nation under heaven, from England to China, flutter on the breeze; a town of banks, hotels, and magazines, of stock exchanges, mining companies, and agricultural shows; a town of learned professors, eminent physicians, able editors, and distinguished advocates; a town of gamblers, harlots, rowdies, thieves; a refuge for all tongues and peoples, from the Saxon to the Dyak, from the Tartar to the Celt.

Lovely the city is; striking in site, brilliant in colour, picturesque in form. The rolling ground throws up a hundred shafts and spires against the sky. A joss-house here, a synagogue there, suggest an oriental town. The houses, mostly white, have balconies adorned with semi-tropical plants, among which flit the witching female shapes. A stream of sunshine lies on painted wall and metalled roof. But one has hardly time to note the details of this outward beauty. You would scarcely have an eye for nice effects in Venice, if you chanced to enter that city while the doge's palace and cathedral were on fire.

This city is in one of her high fevers; her disease a great development' in the Comstock lode.

Most persons in San Francisco are votaries of chance. Luck is their god. Credulous as an Indian, reckless as a Mexican, the lower order of San Franciscans puts his trust in men unknown and builds his hope on things unseen. Thousands of persons in this city, otherwise passing for sane, believe in this 'development,' and are sinking all that they have saved by years of thrift in the several Comstock mines.

The Comstock lode lies on Mount Davidson,

in Nevada; though the mines are chiefly owned by San Franciscans. Some of these mines, such as the Ophir and the Mexican, have been worked for twenty years. The silver veins are long; four or five miles in length; but as no one has yet traced them out, their value is an unknown figure. From the stores of Virginia, built around the openings of these mines, the silver veins run up a gulch to Gold Hill, where they strike on beds of still more precious ore. Owned by rival companies, the mines are wrought on different plans. Much ore is found, and till a year ago owners of Ophir, Mexican, and Consolidated Virginia, had every reason to be satisfied with their gains. Of late, the yield of Mount Davidson has fallen off. The veins run deeper in the rock, needing more costly engines and more skilful labour. Prices have been depressed, and thrifty persons have been laying up their dollars in savings banks, instead of sinking them in Comstock mines.

Sharp as a shot has come a change.

'I'll tell you how it came about,' says a banker, sitting next to me at dinner. Five or six of our worthy citizens, owning shares in Consolidated Virginia, met in a drinking-bar of Montgomery Street one

afternoon. Reports were in the papers, showing the amount of money in the savings-banks; no less a sum than fifty millions of dollars. Tossing off his whisky, one of our worthy citizens said to another, "Guess we ought to have that money out!" They all agreed with him; and having formed a ring, they are now engaged in operations for getting that money out of the savings-banks.'

These citizens understand the farmers, stockmen, and petty dealers whom they mean to fleece. In San Francisco every one is used to changes in the price of shares, and most of all in that of mining shares. With all the coolness of a Redskin, the White Californian will stake his fortune on a street report, begun by any person, spread abroad for any purpose, hardly caring whether the report be true or false. Like brandy in his veins, he feels the devilry that comes with sudden gain and loss. Here is no old and steady middle class, with decent habits, born in the bone and nurtured on the hearth; people who pay their debts, walk soberly to church, and keep the ten commandments, for the sake of order, if no higher rule prevails. In San Francisco, a few rich men, consisting of the various rings, are