NOTES FROM A RECENT VISITOR.

Otago Witness, Issue 2719, 25 April 1906, Page 33

NOTES FROM A RECENT VISITOR.

(From Ocb Own Correspondent.) WP]LLINGTON, April 22. Mr Dickie, of the General Post Office, Wellington, who made eeveral trips to 'Frisco as mail agent, say 6 the Sutro Baths are right alongside Cliff House. They are the largest 6alt-water baths in the world, ■and are arranged on a magnificent scale. Included in the buildings is a museum where visitors can spend hours, if they do not care to bathe. The baths were erected by Mr Sutro, a former Mayor of the city, at a cost of 1,000,000d0l (£200,000). At the ferry boat depot are to be seen the largest passenger steamers in the world. Some of those plying between the city proper and Oakland are capable of carrying 5000 passengers each. They are quaintly constructed vessels, with ' what Mr Dickie described as tailboards fore and ait. Most of them"" have three decks. Horses, waggons, and carriages, * etc., find a place on the lower. Passengers leaving tho ship come off from the second, and those embarking gain the ship by the unDer deck. The " tailboard " is simply dropped on to the wharf, and the boat has disgorged her freight and i 6 off again in 20 minutes, 'ihe magnificence and greatness of the Stanford University at Palo Alto, he said, was beyond description. It was erected by Mr Stanford to commemorate the death of his son at a cost of eight niillions sterling. The church attached to the University surpasses perhaps anything of the kind in the State?. It is a mass of sculpture and mosaics of great costliness. The engineering school alone cost £200,000. The museum attached to the college is maintained on a. gorgeous scale. Amongst the collections within the walls are valuable Maori curios purchased by Mrs Stanford in Rotorua. The Hopkins Art Institute, mentioned in the cablegrams as having been demolished, was situated on Nob Hill. Mr Dickie made the observation car trip at a cost of Is in English money. The cap starts on its journey at 2.30, and gets back to town «t 5.45. On the way the official guide who accompanies the car enlightens the sightseers with details of the various places of interest. The Palace Hotel was massed. It maintained 900 employees, and had accommodation for 1900 guests. Six and a-half million dollars was the cost of its construction. It was completed in 1875. The St. Francis Hotel, which has been destroyed, Mr Dickie etated, was the finest hotel in the city. Tne observation car also travelled through Vaness avenue, of which mention is made in our cablegrams. This thoroughfare is 125 ft wide. Holy Cross Church, which Is built on it, contains one of the most costly altars in the world. Of Chinatown Mr j Dickie had a good deal to say. It is really { a town withie • iown, agd i§ the centre

of more depravity and wickedness than, perhaps, exists on any similar area on the earth's surface. It is two blocks deep and six long. The yellow man is there in all his native ugliness and repulsiveness. Chinese guides will take you through Chinatown for a payment of bard cash, and you run the risk of losing all you possess before you emerge again from its Asiatic smells and associations. Your fate, of course, largely depends on your "greenness."' The Mission Dolores which was destroyed, was a very old building. It -was founded in 1776. The observation car a'so passed the South Pacific Hospital, an institution maintained by the South Pacific Railway Co. When you g-et injured on the company's railways you don't get an opportunity to go away in a private institution and spend your spare time in faking bills of cost. The comoanv finds it cheaper to look after its injured itself. This hospital appears to have •p.scaped destruction.