A SAN FRANCISCAN DAY. 269 



Ships sail by me as they make their exits and their entrances. 

 I cannot help comparing the lively times of now with the 

 quietude of twenty years ago, when at rare intervals a vessel 

 came for hides, or to supply the few wants of the Mission. 



I return to the wharf. The steamer from the States has 

 been telegraphed and is momentarily expected. It rounds 

 the peninsula and soon bumps against the pier, and the eager 

 passengers tumble pell-mell down the crowded gangway. A 

 crowd of hotel runners, wharf-rats and loungers are crowding 

 around the reporters and the few welcoming friends of the 

 emigrants. Almost suffocated by the yelling, surging crowd, 

 I am glad to get away, leaving the greenhorns to the tender 

 mercies of the sharpers and runners. 



I am once more in the heart of the city and on the fashion- 

 able promenade. Gaily attired women of varying characters 

 rustle by me in those silks and satins, scarlets and velvets 

 which Franklin notes as kitchen fire extinguishers. To those 

 who have been living for months on a lonely ranch or in an iso- 

 lated mining camp the sight is a novelty indeed. 



Again at the Plaza. An omnibus is about starting on its 

 hourly trip to the Mission Dolores. I am curious to see 

 this venerable reminder of the sway of the Spanish fathers, so 

 I pay my "bit," jump in the coach and am soon rolling over 

 a smooth plank road to the Mission of Sorrows. The two 

 miles intervening are sandy and uninteresting, and I am glad 

 when we arrive in front of the old adobe sanctuary. A quaint 

 old church it is with its unhewn rafters, its three large bells 

 arranged in a triangle in the gable, and its stuccoed columns 

 in bas relief. It is the work of the rude Indian converts, who 

 less than a hundred years ago were gathered from heathen bar- 

 barism into the folds of the Catholic Church by the preaching 

 and unselfish efforts of the old Spanish padres. Adjoining is 

 the Campo Santo, or Holy Field, where lie buried the dead of 

 generations. Here are inscriptions in many tongues, graven 



