Backwards 3Iarch. 333 



On the side of yon sand-hill the tufts are scattered with perfect regularity. 

 I do not know whether they were planted there or " just growed." But one 

 thing is certain : give this grass a hold and all the apparatus and tackle of 

 nature can not jerk it or shake it loose. Each root is a real-estate pin, and 

 whenever you get it driven you may buy your corner lot with a reasonable 

 certainty that it will stay with you over night. I never could understand 

 how real estate fluctuates until I saw the sand-hills back of San Francisco ! 

 Golden Gate Park was built or created, or, at least, organized, on these ridges 

 of sand, and the park shows conclusively what the genius of man is able to 

 accomplish when assisted by dune grass and water. Ah, but it is a green 

 and lovely place ! And the conservatory ! I was never before inside of such an 

 inclosure. Oh, the palms, and the ferns, and the tropical luxuriance ! Never 

 before did I breathe an atmosphere so dead -drunken with the fragrant effluvia 

 of exhaling leaves and the drowning perfume of flowers. I thought of Per- 

 sia, and Ceylon, and the Arabian Nights, and finally of . My schol- 

 arly friend, Augustus L. Mason, was always by my side in my hurried ram- 

 bles around San Francisco. By the courtesy of Captain D. D. Wheeler, of 

 General Howard's headquarters, we two were armed with tickets and took 

 to the water — that is, we took to a little government cutter and made the 

 circuit of the bay. Every day at noon this cutter goes the rounds of the 

 military stations about the harbor. They are three or four in number, and 

 are sufficient, I suppose, to give a sort of mythical sanction of force to the 

 doings of civil society. But as an actual protection against, say a fleet of 

 iron-clads, they would not amount to a scarecrow. The first station, which 

 is on the peninsular side of the bay, is a sort of military prison, in which 

 every poor fellow who gets off his base is shut up under penal regulations. 

 A squad of oftenders were just being brought in as we passed. They were 

 quite chop-fallen. I noticed one of the prisoners who stepped off the gang- 

 plank under guard still holding to a little bouquet of roses and pinks. The 

 guard knocked it out of his hand, and I saw through the pallor of his fore- 

 head these letters, which I could not for a while make out, r-i-a-p-s-e-D. 



On the north side of the harbor is another post and drilling station for 

 cadets. The shore-line is very beautiful here, and the mountains make, as 

 everywhere, a fine horizon. The officers of the cutter and they on the land 

 side exchange salutations, and away we go into the city. In one thing I am 

 disappointed. There is not in the harbor nearly so much shipping as I had 

 expected to find. The display was not at all comparable with that to be seen 

 at all times of the year along the wharves and around the lake-shore at Chi- 

 cago. The few ships anchored here and there are of a highly respectable 

 character —foreign and American vessels of large size, just in from long voy- 

 ages in Pacific and Australian waters ; but the array is insignificant in com - 

 parison with the forest of tall masts and black smoke-stacks stretching from 

 Fulton Ferry around to the Battery and along the east bank of North Eiver, 

 at New York. 



It appeared to me that the general outside conditions of life in and 



