THE LAND OF THE GOLDEN FLEECE.

Otago Witness, Issue 1756, 18 July 1885, Page 7

THE LAND OF THE GOLDEN FLEECE.

Bb Geohge Augustus Sala,

I.— ACROSS THE PACIFIC,

Five years ago, in the early spring-time, sojourning for a while at San Francisco, a friend drove me in his spider-waggon one enchanting, 'sunny morning through the leafy glades of the Golden Gate Park, and so to an hotel on the seashore over against the famous Seal Rock. I mind the trip well for more than one reason. Lunching at the hotel I found my dear old friend Edward Askew Sothern, who— as Lord Dundreary— had been playing to crowded houses . at San Francisco during the week, but who had been for a long time in deplorably bad health. He looked

that spring morning at the Cliff - house as

one unmistakably marked for death. All who ••ran might read "Thanatos" imprinted with ghastly distinctness on his forehead. He was so, pitiably weak and ill that he was compelleiSJ^fforego partaking of a little entertainment which we had planned for that afternoon, and to lie down on a couch until it was time for him to return to Eldorado and play Tom-fool — and how inimitably did he play it — for the five or six thousandeth time as the eccentric whom he had taught millions of Americans, and even Englishmen, to regard as the lifelike type of a member of the British aristocracy. I was only to gaze upon his handsome face and listen to his kindly voice once more- on this side the grave. A few months after our meeting on the shore hard by the Golden Gate I just had time to shake his hand, and interchange half-a-dozen words with him in a private box at the Princess' Theatre, London. A very few days afterwards I heard that poor Sothern was dead. But there iff another reason why that trip to the Cliff-house and the Seal Rocks continues to dwell in my memory. 'Twas when the waggon turned a sharp angle of ihe road, shortly before we arrived at our destination, that mine eyes first caught sight of the Pacific. Yes ; the Pacific Ocean, a broad band of ultramarine, gleaming at the end of a vista of graceful foliage. I have heard of travellers who have

expressed themselves as disappointed with the Atlantic, and who have oven failed to be im- ( pressed by the first sight of the Falls of Niagara; and it is related of John Kemble, the tragedian, thajj visiting Charaounix very late in

life, he made no secret of his opinion that Mont Blanc was a much overrated mountain. I own, myself, that I have gazed without emotion on the Guadalquiver, and that I never thought much of the Manganares. But the first rapid glimpse of the Pacific filled me with almost unmingled delight. It was worth while — well worth while — to have come so many thousands of miles to behold that sea ; to have been jolted in the train day after day from Chicago to Omaha, from Omaha to Ogden, f rora Ogden to Sacramento City ; to have traversed Wearyfoot Common, otherwise the Rocky Mountains ; to have run the gauntlet of the snowsheds and Webber's? Canon and the Devil's Slide) to have threaded the gorges of the Sierra Nevadas ; and) entering at last on the joyous descent Of the Pacific Slope, to have passed through what appeared to you as an eattlily Eden after all the snowy deserts Which you have painfully p! j 1 lad over. And at last you had reached the long-yearned-for Pacific. I said that my delight in reaching a bourne so anxiously awaited was almost unmingled. But there was just one little drop of bitter in my cup of joy. I stood for a long time alone in the verandah of the hotel, satiating my vision with the now unimpeded view of the blue ocean. Over against me, within pistol shot, was the group of rocks up which the brown-furred, black-eyed, good-natured-looking seals were clambering, or lying basking, in the sun by the score and by the hundred. Anon they would descend and dive into the briny breakers, bent, I suppose, on a brief fishing excursion. Now and again there would be a tumultuary splashing in the water, and an ominous popping-up from the surface of one bullet-head after another — bullet-heads displaying teeth likewise as though seal had fallen out with seal, and there was a fight in progress on some disputed question of piscatorial property. All this while the creatures, which were clambering or skylarking on the crags, or scattering the foam from their fur coats, ceased not to bark furiously. The residents of the western extremity of the Marine parade, at Brighton, used bitterly to complain of the nocturnal uproar raised by the sea-lions at tho Aquarium. I wonder what those delicately-nerved people would have thought cf the incessant bow -bowing of the furry denizens of the Seal Rods s ? Surely the narrow waterway between the crags and the cliffs ought to be called " Barking Creek ?" But I looked far ahead — far, far away beyond the waste of blue. I looked to the horizon. Over there was China ; over there was Japan ; over there was Australia. For how many years had I been longing to look at life in the Southern Hemisphere? In the Bay of San Francisco there was a plenitude of stout ships, which, in less than a month, would bear me to Hong Kong, to Yokohama, or to Sydney. And why not return to England by the way of India ? It was not to be this time. I had been globetrotting for many years, but the pardonable ambition to be a circumnavigator was not yet to be gratified.' Besides, I had left responsibilities behind me. I had given hostages to Fortune in the United States. T had come straight to 'Frisco, leaving Utah unvisited. I was morally bound on my return eastward, to turn aside at Ogden, branch off at Salt Lake City and have a peep at what was going on down among the Mormons. There was, besides, a matter of two portmanteaux and a bonnet-box left in the baggage room of the Grand Pacific Hotel at Chicago, aud the remembrance of these impedimenta lay heavy on my soul. And my mind was further troubled by the remembrance that there was a box full of books waiting for me at New York. I must go back by the way which I had come— the Union and Central Pacific, the Chicago and North- Western, and Erie railways, and so, by a Cuhard steamship, to England. Five years are a large slice out of the life of of an elderly wanderer ; yet time and the hour wore out, somehow, the rdughest of the days and months between Christinas '79 and Christmas '84. Once more' I left London at the beginning of the " festive season." Once more I went to sea in a storm, traversed the snowy and ice-bound Eastern States to find strawberries, green peas, oranges, and japonicas growing in the open in California. Once more a friend has driven me down from the Palace Hotel through the Golden Gate Park to the Cliff-house and the Pacific beach ; and once more I watched the gambadoes and listened to the barking of the merry brown seals on the group of rocks. But it has not been wistfully, nor with the sickness of heart of hope deferred, that I have gazed this time upon the huge azure and expanse and scanned the horizon. My baggage is at the wharf, and my barque is in tho bay. This is Saturday, and on Monday the steamer in which I have taken passage— the good ship Australia, Captain Ghest commanding — starts for Honolulu, and Sydney, New South Wales.

But I must now write in the past tense. Many moons, of observation, adventure, and experience have passed, and I have been slowly, sedulously, and laboriously endeavouring to learn something of a country vast, and new, and strange to me. But ere I enter on the narrative of what I have seen, and heard, and thought in the Land of the Golden Fleece — in the Australasian Colonies — some brief space may be allowed to me wherein to tell how I came hither, and what manner of things and people, and what vicissitudes of climate, and the ways of the mighty deep I met with on the way. Especially may I dwell, perhaps, on the last night of my stay in the beloved city of San Francisco. Ay, beloved ! You know what the Romans say of the Fountain of Trevi. The stranger, they aver, who has once drunk of the Trevi waters is bound to return again and again to the Eternal City ; and, indeed, even as I am penning these lines, in a kind of bird-cage opening' on to a verandah looking out on the beautiful Fitzroy River at sultry Rockhampton, in Queensland — we are not far from the .tropics, and one of the leading local journals is called the Capricornian—l am thinking of what a very nice thing it will be if I am spared to bid farewell to Australasia at the height of her summer next Christmas, and travelling homewards by a P, and 0. touching at Brindisi, or an Orient touching at Naples, to find myself in the early spring-time at Rome, and within touch of the Fountain of Trevi. There are no fountains in 'Frisco that I am aware of, but you always preface your breakfast— such a breakfast — at the Palace Hotel, Market street, by quaffing a of iced water and devouring a couple of oranges, to put you in proper trim for the fried oysters, the torn cod, the tender loin steaks, the scrambled eggs, the stuffed tomatoes, tho fishballs, the buckwheat cakes, and the strawberries and cream which are to follow, Pio Nono once told Kaiser Wilhoim that all Christians belonged, somehow or another, to the Pope. The Imperial Hohenzollern was unable to recognise the cogency of the assertion ; still, I am fatalist enough to think that when a traveller has once "drunk his glass of iced water and sucked his oranges in the breakfast-room of the Palace Hotel, he is unconsciously subjected to an obligation to cross the ltookics ami tho Sierra Nevadas again and again ; to " do the block "in Kearney street, and be fascinated by the beauty of the ladies engaged in afternoon shopping in that fashionable

thoroughfare ; to be amazed at the architectural magnificence of the Californian millionaires' redwood palaces on " Nob hill ;" and while admiring the celerity, efficiency, and cheapness of the cable-tram street cars, to do his best to avoid being run over by those swift and silent but somewhat perilous arks. To be plain, San Francisco is one of the pleasantest cities in the whole world ; and you experience the liveliest sense of gratification in "belonging" for the time to Mr Sharon, the manager of the Palace, and to Mr George H. Smith, the courteous, indefatigable, and übiquitous chief -clerk of that coloßsal establishment. There hiul been fearful snow.s in the Eastern StatUs. Winter had put on its ghastliest guise in Cincinnati, and the streets of Chicago had been so many avenues of avalanches. Snow on the summits of the Rockies and snowdrifts in the canons and gullies, and the English mail bound for Australia, via New York and San Francisco, was two days late. Captain Ghest was staying at the Palace, and at least six times a day did we, who had taken our passages to Sydney, interrogate the countenance of that intrepid commander as though it had been a barometer. We were ashamed to ask him orally too often as to the precise time that he thought the royal mail steamer Australia would really start on her voyage to Sydney, for master mariners have much to put up with, both on sea and land, from passengers ; and I have known captains who had qUiCk tenVpers, and wild could give upon occasions short answers. How stinging was the rebuke administered by the late Commodore Judkins, of the Cunard service, to the lady passenger who, when the ship was off the Banks of Newfoundland, asked him if it it were always foggy there.' " Do you think I live here, mum?" quoth stern Commodore Judkins. From CapGhest, who was quite a model of nautical politeness, we did not expect curt replies of the snubdirect order ; but in courtesy we spared him the infliction of perpetual queries amounting to, " When do you really think the Australia will sail, captain?" But 24 hours after 24 hours passed by, and the Australia made no sign of sailing. A rumour ran that the captain had been seen to shake his head in a very despondingmaiinef about luncheon-time, and straightway was it bruited about that the mail train had come to grief somewhere near Ohoyenile. Then several snow-sheds in the Sierras had, it was vehemenently asserted, been burned down ; and then the confident statement got abroad that the mail was hopelessly snowed-up 20 miles west of Ogden. But towards dinner-time it was noised far and wide — in tho world of the Palace Hotel — that Captain Ghest had been seen to smile in a waggish manner, and to interchange jokes' with Mr George H. Smith in the clerk's office. Then hope revived, and valises which in gloomy uncertainty had been half unpacked were joyfully refilled and strapped, and corded. On Sunday we learned that the overdue mail train from England was coming along bravely, and that the Australia would positively sail on . the ensuing Monday at 2 p.m. I shall not readily forget my last night in San Francisco. I had " rested " there some nine days, if it could be called resting to have dined out five time times, lunched out seven times, and attended a wedding, two evening receptions and suppers, and three 5 o'clock teas. But this Sunday night was to be the last one ere I embarked, and I had a double engagement to fulfil. I had an appointment with an officer of police at 9 p.m. to explore the penetralia of China Town, and at 11 I was to attend a " small-and-early " at the Palace Hotel itself. Under ordinary circumstances I might not have felt any violent inclination to revisit China Town. John Chinaman's picturesqueness is apt to become after a time monotonous, and then to satiate, and at length to revolt. Take him at his best, and with the most favourable surroundings, the Celectial somehow leaves an unpleasant taste in your mouth. The ■Roman epigrammatist -who did'nt like Zabidus, and the Oxford undergraduate who didn't like Dr Fell, might be unanimous in the expression of their dislike for the Heathen Chinee, yet as incapable of giving a definite reason for their aversion. It was the Chinese New Year ; and when we plunged into the congeries of narrow streets, where the Yellow Men most do congregate we found this strange excerpt from tho Flowery Land, this assemblage of tea-traj's, chow-chow cabinets, chopsticks, pigtails, and shoes with paper soles so oddly washed up on the Pacific coast, generally and jubilantly en fete. Li Hung Chung was having a " high old time " of it, Quang Choo Loo was entertaining all his wife's relations, aud Go Bang Wiun was giving a banquet in honour of his ancestors under the Ming dynasty. The eaves and bulks of the stores were thickly hung with paper lanterns of divers colours; and on every side was audible the fizzing and bursting of crackers. The police force usually on duty in the Chinese quarter had been largely augmented in view of the festivities of the New Year (February 15), not through any apprehension of the Celestials falling out among themselves — for, as a rule, they are peaceable folk enough — but in order to guard against the contigency of the white " hoodlums " or roughs coming down in force from the Airierican quarter of the city and "going for" the Mongols. To stone, buffet, spit upon, and kick John Chinaman, to haul him hither and thither by the pigtail, and roll him in the gutter, so as to smirch and spoil his nice, clean, New Year's clothes, are recreations dear to the hoodlum heart. Fortunately, on this occasion the hoodlums did not muster very strongly in China Town; while, on the other hand, there was quite a large gathering of re-spectably-dressed ladies and gentlemen mingled with the crowd of Orientals, and tranquilly amusing themtelves by watching the bizarre panorama which was being unrolled. All the leading merchants and storekeepers were keeping open - house or open - shop in honour of the New Year, and in every store which we entered the proprietor welcomed us with gravely punctilious politeness, pressing upon us cakes, oranges, sweetmeats, together with cigars, champagne, and some lukewarm alcoholic preparation served in dainty little porcelain cups, and of which beverage the flavour closely resembled that of very bad whisky— the well-known " silent spirit" or " cocked hat" blend, which had been stirred up with a tallow candle and clarified with an ancient egg. But we should not look the gift horse in the mouth. It did not matter much wherethat villainously nasty alcoholic stimulant came from. I scarcely think, either, that the champagne was in any way affiliated to tho vintages of Epernay, or that the cigars bad had their birth in the island of Cuba, or even in Bocmrei or Hamburg. Those weeds were more probably " domestics," manufactured in Caii'ornia by the- hands of Chinese artisans. Still the wine fizzed and sparkled, and was potable, and the cigars were smokable, and nil was offered with graceful hospitality aud in good faith. If all tho Celestials in China Town resembled the merchants ami manul'acfcurbrs, there would be no need to recall tho unieasoning ill nature of the epigrams on Zabidus and Doctor Fell. Unfortunately the

mass of the inhabitants of the Chinese qu&tev are the nastiest of nasty creatures. We went to the largebt of tho two large theatres. The hoitse w;f3 rf a mined almost to suffocation by a hilarious and strongly" malodorous audience. So densely, indeed, was 'the playtfW^ packed, and so very powerful was the perfuilio cMMieVjl by the audience, that thcjobliging manager infi-islc'd' that we should witness the performance frofll the stage itself, where stools, cigarettes, and tea were brought for our accommodation and refreshment. It needed but to strew the stage with rushes to imagine that the Elizabethan age of the drama had come again on the shores of tile fgfc'tHfc': .What tho play itself, was about, of course I editld ndt tel I,- if ctf did It irtetteif one cent what was its sc'dp'e tft j/u'rpori- Possibly it was a portion of the sclfsftme drama of which I had been a spectator when 3 $'a's Jalst in 'Frisco, in March 1880, and which rWd been going on without a solution of continuity ever since. It was much more interesting to enter the dressing-rooms and watch the actors bedizening themselves and " making up " their faces. In the prOperty-room, too, I saw a large number of appallingly hideous, rtrfeks; while in the wardrobe I was shown stieK&*' ltfle'd with dresses realty extraordinary in the spioYt'dotyr of their fabric and ornamentation. The Chinese' theatres of San Francisco, at which performances take place twice a day, Sundays not excepted, are, they tell me, always full. Surely Hi Quang, or How Long, or Yew Bit must be very prosperous managers indeed. From the theatre we" we"iit to a very grand entertainment indeed, the cookery being exclusively Chinese, and the use of chopsticks iii .p'r'eie'fe'nde to knives and, forks de rigueur.. We did ntft partake of the banquet, which 'was laid oiit in an infinity of little round saucers. What they contained — pickled eels' feet a la daiibe, or salmi of frogs' giblets, birds-nest soup, dried ducks, beche-de-mer, snips, or snails, or puppy dogs' tails — I know not. The banqueting table was very prettily decorated with artificial flowers cut out of coloured paper ; and, as a preliminary to the feast, there was a vocal and instrumental concert, given by a body of Chinese maidens, ranging, to all appearance between 14 and 17 years of age ( and were clad ill loose casa quints and white trousers of rich materials, sumptuously brocaded. None of the damsels were "Golden Lilies" or small-footed. Their complexions were ivory-hued, their eyes almondshaped and sable as sloes, their hair very black and lustrous, and very well dressed. They wore a profusion of jewellery, and their eyebrows and lips were manifestly painted. They would really have boon pretty but for the sickly, dejected, down-trodden, almost imbecile simper playing about their ruddied lips — the simper of the slave continually deprecating the always imminent bamboo. They were indeed professional glee maidens, the apprentices, and while their apprenticeship lasts the mere slaves and chattels of their master — a fat, tall Chinaman, with a face like an over-ripe vegetable marrow. The singing was the usual Chinese whine, rising now and again to a screech — an ululation no doubt delightful to Oriental ears, but to the Occidental tympanum distressingly dissonant. We left this scene of revelry to pay a visit to a joss-house. The temple was situated up three, pairs of stairs, kept scrupulously clean, and carefully oil-clothed, but the stairs were rather inconveniently crowded by pilgrims to the Joss, and among this closely- packed throng there seemed to be fully as many Americans as there were Chinamen. The josshouse itself was an octagonal apartment, with a high altar covered with painted mats, and behind it a kind of reredos of wood, elaborately carved, gilt in some places, and in others daubed with garish hues. On the altar itself was a' heterogenous assemblage of lacquer trays, porcelain vases full of cutpaper flowers, bronze and ivory ornaments, table napkins tied up with ' parti-coloured ribbons, pastry, confectionery, dried fish, nuts, oranges, and little saucers full of what appeared to be respectively saffron and indigo. These last, together with a number of gaudy little paper purses, which looked suspiciously like Christmas crackers, were, I apprehend, offerings to the Joss. That which struck me as passing strange in this temple was that there was not the slightest devotional expression on the countenances of the crowd of Chinamen who passed before the altar. They gazed on the display with the usual listless simper, and refrained not from cracking languid jokes to each other in 'their own inscrutiblo lingo. Perhaps it is not in accordance with Chinese etiquette to be religious in a joss-house when Fanquis are present. Perhaps the really devout Chinaman reserves his genuflections and his i^rostratious for a time when he can be alone with his Joss. A mysterious race. John Chinaman always reminds me of a cat from Montaigne's point of view. You may laugh at Grimalkin, but don't be too sure that he is not laughing at you. John Chinaman, I fancy, knows a great deal more about you than you do about him. When we left the joss-house we began to sink lower and lower in the social scale, and contrived at last to got very low indeed. Although it was New Year's Night, and a high holiday, tho Chinese pawnbrokers were doing a roaring trade. Why should Mine Uncle have been immersed in business at this festive season? Simply for the reason that most of the Chinamen who were not at the play or the joss-house, or who were not smoking opium or dead-drunken with that drug, were gambling, and that, as a Chinaman when he is gambling will stake not only his money to the last cent., but the worth of his wearing appavel and his minutest personal belongings, it naturally follows that the pawnbroker ' is a very convenient accessory to tho gambling-table. Is our Uncle wholly unknown in the luxurious haunts of Monte Carlo? When Madame la Princesse Katorichassoff has been losing heavily by backing zero, hah she not been known over and over again, en -plein tripot, to slip from her fair arms her dazzling diamond bracelets, to push from her rosy ear-lobes their gleaming pendants, and by tho hands of a watchful servitor send the glittering gew-gaws to the pawnbroker's. The world, after all, is not so big a village as we sometimes take it to be. Humanity in far distant lands does not vary half so much as we think, or pretend to think, that it varies from our own types ; and between this villainous pawn-shop in the Chinese slum at 'Frisco and tho elegant establishment of Mine Undo at Monaco or of Mine Uncle in London, oi" Ma Tante in Paris, v.ho shall say that there was not a close bond of union ? Yes ; there is really much brotherhood among mankind, although, perhaps, there is a much larger amount of fraternity in vice than in virtue. As Cor the Celestial '• spout " at San Francisco, tho objects pledged woi'o cortainly more remarkable for their miscellaneous character than for their intrinsic value. A few rusty revolvers — possibly " snabbled " or stolen froni their original " Mellican " owners, for the Chinaman, as a rule, is not a shooting animal — shoes with paper soles, broad-brimmed hats, umbrellas, bundles of wearing apparel, fans, fryingpans, handbells, saddles and bridles, lanterns,

clocks,- a* bamboo 1 vhtiif and musical box. An<J t'bW pledging continued jwrarrily late into the night tf^sonVfor "'fan-faa" was at its height, and gambfa/g ceased not in it* fastness and its fni'V.

From the pawnshop of"*tt"*ophim joint —a kind of soporific tavern, aff opium-smokers " mtb," where Tor a paltry fee the 1 slave to narfi'6*i<!s'enjoyment is privileged to consflMa© a certain qiftniuiiity di the drug and to occupy a bunk or a poi'tiofl of a! bunk until he has slept an the effects of his tfotefch. It was an illicit" joint' of course, quite coiiteflry to the law ; but we saw many more illegal spetfM?lfls-that night of flowery f estivity ; and grosser wa# the violation of the law, state or municipal, the greater was the alacrity of the law-breakers to adroit the officer of police. It was as though they \rere saying, " Take us a's -we really are ; see us #at our very worst; arid then judge candidly for ytfwftelve'S whether y&a white-skinned lawmakers vie' morally very ranch better than we yellow-fafeyftnted 1 law-breakers are.'^ _In some of the vilest ctf the" dens which we visited on that night of feasttesj ahd reveby— cellars beneath cellars, tier below ttetf of infamy and squalor too dreadful, too shatrteful, and too si'ckenmg to describe — our coming was evidently expedte'd. (Hieofficer of police was dreaded, and p^vAajhs hated', still he was a personagt? to bes conciliated' aWI propitiated. Thus every door of an exCc^iottrflly illegal ' haunt was instantaneously opened in response to the slightest tap from our concittef.or's- knuckles, and in some of the sub-subtemtrtssns, in which the passages were unusually dark, noisome, and tortuous, and the constantly recamng stairs usually ricketty &t$ rotten, the kerosene lairtp platted at intervals on the filthy floor wofafel be supplemented by cleft sticks, holding tin mcli or two' of candle, lighting which the experlone'e'd! tlguaoJl would pilot us through fresh crtves,- fresh dens of hideous stenches and hideotift doings. The faces that I saw that night— face's more abominable in their distortion and depravation, from the normal aspect of humanity, faces which, in their demoniacal grotesqueness and their pallid horror made pale and sickly toe wildest efforts of the graphic imagination of Jaques Callot and Breughal d'Enfer, and the Spaniard tfrftncisco Goya^those faces haunt me now as 1 am writing in the sunshine and among the vivid greenery of a beautiful land. And they were the faces not only of men,but of women. The ghost of that last New Year's night in China Town, Ban Francisco, I contrived, however, to lay hi the Red Sea ; for,bidding farewell to our catttious and courteous cicerone, the officer of police, Who would take neither fee nor reward for his pains, I had to hasten back to the Palace Hotel and array myself in the war-paint of civilisation— that is to say, evening dress, for, as I have previously said, I was to be a guest in one of the suites of rooms of the hotel, at a "small and early," organised on a scale commensurate with the San Franciscan ideas of smalhiess and earliness ; so that when I went, very late indeed, to bed my dreams were, fortunately, not of the Mongolian, hut of the Caucasian race — they were dreams of bearded beaux and beauteous ladies in radiant toilettes, of the glittering of diamonds, and curling fumes of Cabanas "regalias imperiales" at 75 cents apiece— dreams of champagne which really came from Epernay, and cost four dollars a bottle, with perhaps some transient visions of a peculiar Californian punch, which, I am informed, contains 12 ingredients, consisting, its concoctors proudly boast, not one single drop of water.

On the morrow one- had, much against the grain, to bid farewell to 'Frisco. Jordan, we all believe, is a hard road to travel. So is it hard to get to El Dorado; but it; is much harder, morally, to get away again, simply because the city is so beautiful, the people so hospitable and so kind, and life in general so thoroughly enjoyable. There is, perhaps, a little too liberal employment of the revolver in the adjustment of political and journalistic difficulties, but it Avas not my luck to quarrel with anybody during my brief and happy stay among the Argonauts, and -no descendant of Admiral Jason offered to put the contents of a six-shooter into me. At 2 p.m. on Monday the Pacific Steam Navigation Company's ship Australia steamed away from the wharf down the harbour to the Golden Gate, and I was busy unpacking my belongings in the handsomely-furnished and roomy deck cabin, dubbed the "bridal chamber," which the agent of the company had politely placed at my disposal. If the bridal chamber had a drawback, it lay, perhaps, in the circumstance that the bridal bed was about three sizes too large for an inmate who was temporarily a bachelor. Thus, during the exceedingly rough weather which was my frequent fate to endure on our passage, I was fain to avoid being flung out of my too spacious nuptial couch, by packing, jambing, and blocking myself up therein with bags and bundles, which, as we neared the tropics, proved somewhat embarrassing accessories to those bed-clothes with which, in the tropics themselves, you would willingly, in the intolerably sultry nights, have dispensed with altogether. I am bound to admit that the Golden City did not behave very well to us after her citizens had bidden us so cordial' a farewell at the company's wharf. Indeed, she sent afAer us a most abominable sea fog, which first blurred and then wholly eclipsed the glories of a magnificent sunset ; and when this detestable brumous mist cleared away iust before the gorgeous but all too brief afterglow was succeeded by blackest night— night that descends, as it 'wore, as swiftly and vertically as the curtain at the playhouse veiling tho many-coloured splendours of one of Mr William Beverley's transformation scenes — we had the mortification to see the Australia passed, and passed quickly, too, by an audacious steamer called the Alameda, which had left San Francisco at least an hour after our departure. I had had the advantage of an offer of a passage on board the Alameda, which was bound to the Sandwich. Islands ; and had I had eight or 10 hours' leisure in the capital of the realm of King Kalakauaj I might perhaps have transacted some profitable business there; but I was pledged to the Australia and Captain Ghest, and you arc bound, I think, under all circumstances, to stick to your ship and your skipper. So, with magnanimous indifference, we suffered the saucy Alameda to pass us, consoling ourselves with the reflection that she was only bound for Honolulu and other roadsteads of the Hawaiian group, on business connected with tho sugar trade mainly intent; whereas our groat ocean steamer was on her course right through Polynesia with the Royal British and United States mails, to say nothing of an assorted cargo, a locomotive engine, several tons of St. Jacobs Oil and Dr Quack's Somebody's Parcelsian pills, a couple of Calif ornian lions, an Anglican pastor, several missionaries en route for Fiji, the Now Hebrides, the Samoan Iblands, and New Guinea, and an American lady doctor bent on practising the healing art in Melbourne. A fig, then, for the Alameda and her saccharine concernments.