eant that all trouble was
over. One after another followed it. I could not speak, I was so glad. I
could only look at them, and feel that our safety was assured. The wind
had changed. I appreciated the delight of Ulysses in "the fresh North
Spirit" Calypso gave him "to guide him o'er the sea,"--the rest of our
voyage was so exhilarating.

We had one more special risk only,--crossing the bar of San Francisco
Bay. The captain said, if he reached it at night, he expected to wait
until daylight to enter; but I knew that his ambitious spirit would
never let him, if it were possible to get over. About three o'clock in
the morning, I heard a new sound in the water, like the rippling of
billows, as if it were shallow. I hastened upon deck, and found that we
were apparently on the bar. The captain and the mate differed about the
sounding. Immediately after, I heard the captain tell a man to run down
and see what time it was; and, upon learning the hour, heard him
exclaim, in the deepest satisfaction, "Flood-tide, sure! Well, we had a
chance!" I felt as if we had had a series of chances from the time we
left Port Angeles Harbor, to the running in without a pilot, and
drifting, as we did, into the revenue-cutter, just as we anchored. We
had a beautiful entrance, though. It is a long passage, an hour or two
after crossing the bar. San Francisco lay in misty light before us, like
one of the great bright nebulae we used to look at in Hercules, or the
sword-handle of Perseus. It is splendidly lighted. As we drew nearer,
there seemed to be troops of stars over all the hills.

ASTORIA, ORE., October 17, 1868.

In making the voyage from San Francisco, I could hardly go on deck at
all, until the last day; but, lying and looking out at my little
port-hole, I saw the flying-fish, and the whales spouting, and the
stormy-petrels and gulls.

On Sunday the boat was turned about; and when we inquired why, we were
told that the wind and sea were so much against us, we were going to put
back into Crescent City. It came at once into our minds, how on Sunday,
three years before, the steamer "Brother Jonathan," in attempting to do
the same thing, struck a rock, and foundered, and nearly all on board
were lost.

Crescent City is an isolated little settlement, a depot for supplies for
miners working on the rivers in Northern California. It has properly no
harbor, but only a roadstead, filled with the wildest-looking black
rocks, of strange fo