HOME AGAIN ! 397 



sailed in the S.S. Pacific, on tlie 20tli of December, 

 for San Francisco ; were caught in a white squall off 

 Neah Bay ; the boiler burst ; and Christmas Day 

 came off before we reached our destination. 



The glories of the Grolden City ; the pleasures en- 

 joyed in the society of Mr. Booker, and the other 

 kind members of the Union Club there ; the wonders 

 of the Big-tree Grove in the Mariposa Valley, where 

 grow Wellingtonias (called Washingtonias in the 

 States), upwards of 400 feet high — higher than St. 

 Paul's — on the stumps of which are built ball-rooms, 

 and on the prostrate trunks bowling alleys ; the 

 beautiful ladies of ''Frisco," as the Californians 

 playfully denominate San Francisco, and the frater- 

 nising rowdies of " Copperopolis " and Columbia 

 City, must remain undescribed. These things, and 

 how we dreamed through the voyage down the 

 smooth Pacific, with the languid carelessness of 

 lotos-eaters ; how we escaped the wiles of the 

 grass- widow, (^) and quarrelled with argumentative 

 Northerners on board the steamer Golden City^ are 

 they not recorded in our journals ? 



We reached Liverpool by way of Panama and 

 New York, on the 5th of March, 1864, and entered 

 at once into the ]3leasures of a return home in the 

 company of old friends, who welcomed us as we 

 disembarked from the Chma. 



(^) A grass-widow in America is a woman who has separated or 

 been divorced from her husband. 



