■8 AH' LIFE 



Here my brother John, whom I had not hmi since I left 

 r the Amazon in [848, mel me, and we went on to the 

 Baldwin Hotel in San Francisco, where he had taken moms 

 and had made arrangements for me to give two lectures 

 on Wednesday and Friday. In the afternoon we had many 

 callers, including Professor Holden of the Lick Observatory, 

 Dr. Lecomte, Mr. Davidson of the Geological Survey, and 



many others, as well as one or two interviewers. Dr, 1 lolden 

 kindly invited ns to dinner on Thursday, where we met Pro- 



sor Hilgard and Mr. Sntro. The latter gentleman invited 

 us to breakfast with him at his beautiful cottage on the cliff, 

 looking- over the Pacific and the seal rocks, and surrounded by 

 beautiful gardens. Mr. Sutro was a wealthy merchant and one 

 of the magnates of San Francisco ; he gave us one of the most 

 luxurious and pleasant breakfasts I ever enjoyed, beginning 

 with cups of very hot, clear soup, followed by fish, cutlets, 

 game, etc., with various delicate wines, tea and coffee, hot 

 cakes of various kinds, and choice fruits. He entertained us 

 also with interesting conversation, being a man of extensive 

 knowledge and culture. My two lectures on " Darwinism ' 

 and " Colour " were fairly attended. 



On Saturday Dr. Gibbons of Alameda, on the Bay of San 

 Francisco, took me for a drive into the foothills to see the 

 remains of the Redwood forest that once covered them, but 

 which had all been ruthlessly destroyed to supply timber for 

 the city and towns around. Our companion was Mr. John 

 Muir, whose beautiful volume, " The Mountains of Califor- 

 nia," is, in its way, as fine a piece of work as Mr. Hudson's 

 " Naturalist in La Plata." On our way we passed a dry 

 hilly field, brilliant with hundreds of the lovely Calochortus 

 luteus, which grew in a soil of stiff, hard-baked clay. We 

 wound about among the hills and valleys, all perfectly dry, till 

 we reached a height of fifteen hundred feet, where many 

 clumps of young redwoods were seen, and, stopping at one 

 of these, Dr. Gibbons took me inside a circle of young trees, 

 from twenty to thirty feet high, and showed me that they all 

 grew on the outer edge of the huge charred trunk of an old 

 tree that had been burnt down. This stump was thirty-four 



