RETURN TO SAN FRANCISCO. 219 
posed to be under the especial care of a ‘Saint 
Somebody,’ a lady whose image, attired in very 
dirty finery, figures in niches cut in the rocks at 
the mine. No miner ever leaves or enters the 
mine without prostrating himself before this 
dirty effigy. 
March 9th.—Return to San Francisco by 
road; dine at San Mateo, as lovely a spot as I 
ever gazed on. The grass is kneedeep, and the 
clumps of buck-eye (/sculus flava) and handsome 
oaks besprinkling the rounded hills and banks 
of the clear stream winding its way past the 
village to the Bay of San Francisco, like a lake 
glistening in the distance, reminded me of a 
park in fertile Devonshire. Completely shut in, 
and sheltered from the wind that blows nearly 
all the summer, withering up the vegetation ex- 
posed to its influence, everything round about 
this favoured spot grows in wild luxuriance. In 
the garden belonging to the roadside house, the 
summer flowers are in full bloom, and vege- 
tables of all kinds in rare abundance, such as for 
size and quality equal anything Covent Garden 
Market can show. 
The bay runs inland about forty miles, and the 
land on its shores is particularly fertile, and 
employed in great measure for dairy-farms and 
stock-ranches. 
