30 THE SEA. 



and one turns this to good advantage. When her corn-merchants go down to their 

 offices in the morning they find on their desks a report of the Liverpool market of that 

 morning; each morning paper has two or three columns filled with telegrams of the 

 preceding evening from all parts of Europe, and not unfrequently there appears among 

 these telegrams a notice of the following kind : ' The Times of to-day has an article in 

 which it says/ &c., Sec., giving the substance of that morning's leader." The present 

 writer can illustrate this point by an actual occurrence in his own experience. Every 

 reader will remember the terrible explosion in the Regent's Park, which did so much 

 damage, and which happened about half-past three in the morning. He was then occupying 

 the post of " telegraphic editor/' &c., on the staff of the Alta California, the oldest journal 

 published on that coast. The news of the explosion reached him by telegram at 11.30 the 

 evening before, that is, apparently, before it happened ! The Alta therefore was able to give 

 the sad intelligence to all its readers some few of them as early as four o'clock the next 

 morning, while the London newspapers of the early editions could natui-ally have nothing 

 about it, as they were printed before its occurrence. 



Mr. "W. F. Rae, a writer before quoted in regard to the character which the city 

 unfortunately acquired in early days, says of it : " From being a bye-word for its 

 lawlessness and licentiousness, the city of San Francisco has become in little more than 

 ten years as moral as Philadelphia, and far more orderly than New York." The fact is 

 that one must obtain a " permit " to carry a revolver at all, and that permission cannot 

 properly be obtained by anyone of dissipated or dangerous character. A heavy fine is 

 inflicted on any one wearing a pistol without having secured the necessary authority. The 

 same writer says : " That the Golden State is of extraordinary richness is well known 

 to every traveller. To some, as to me, it may have been a matter of rejoicing to 

 discover that California is also a laud teeming with unexpected natural beauties and 

 rare natural delights." He quotes approvingly Lieutenant-Governor Holden's speech 

 at a festive meeting held in Sacramento, California, on the completion of the Pacific 

 Railway. " Why, sir/' said the Lieutenant-Governor, a gentleman who had himself 

 done much towards the successful consummation of that grand enterprise, " we have 

 the bravest men, the handsomest women, and the fattest babies of any place under 

 the canopy of heaven ! " Baron Hubner. in his published work,* says of the climate, 

 "It is a perpetual spring/' and then, alluding to the decreased yield of gold, 

 remarks truly, " Its real riches lie in the fertility of the soil." And once more, 

 Margharita Weppner, the German lady-traveller before mentioned, says, speaking of a 

 fruit-show she visited : IC What I saw there could only be found in California, for I have 

 never seen anything to equal it, even in the tropics." She adds, enthusiastically : " This 

 beautiful city of the golden land I prefer to any other in America. My preference is due 

 to the agreeable kind of life which its people lead, and to the extraordinary salubrity of 

 the climate." The present writer has preferred to collate from these independent sources 

 rather than from his own long experience ; but he can testify to the truth of every 

 one of the above statements. One of the grandest featHres in San Francisco's present 



* " A Ramble Round the World." Translated by Lady Herbert. 



