med, the light canvas
set, and away flies the fleet on the home stretch, to dance for an hour
or two in the sparkling sunshine of San Pablo Bay, then plunge into the
tumbling sea in the lower harbor, and at last end a three days' cruise
with unanimous and hearty congratulations.

A week ago I could have added here that in the annals of the yacht clubs
of San Francisco there has never been a fatal accident, never a
drowning, nor a capsizing, nor a wreck, and this covers a period of
thirteen years; alas! in a single day, on a cruise such as I have been
writing of, there was a shocking death. One yacht nearly foundered, but
fortunately escaped into smooth water, another was dashed upon the
rocks, and is probably a total wreck; while a third lost her
centre-board over a mud bank, where it buried itself, and held the
little craft a helpless prisoner; the crew and guests of the latter took
to the small boats, pulled three miles in a squall, and were rescued by
a passing steamer when they were all drenched to the skin, and well-nigh
exhausted.

You see that inland yachting is not child's play, nor are these inland
yachts without their romantic records. The flag of the San Francisco
yacht club has floated among the South Sea Islands; one of its boats has
beaten the German and English types in their own waters; one has been as
far as the Australian seas; one is a pearl fisher in the Gulf of
California, and another is coquetting with the doldrums along the
Mexican coast. They are staunch little beauties all, and it would be
neither courteous nor healthful to think otherwise in the presence of
inland yachtsmen.

[Illustration: Telegraph Hill, 1855]

IN YOSEMITE SHADOWS

"Yosemite, Sept.--: Come at once--the year wanes; would you see the
wondrous transformation, the embalming of the dead Summer in windings of
purple and gold and bronze--come quickly, before the white pall covers
it--delay no longer. The waters are low and fordable, the snows
threaten, but the hours are yet propitious; and such a welcome waits you
as Solomon in all his glory could not have lavished on Sheba's
approaching queen. * * *"

There was much more of the same sort of high-toned epistolary rhetoric,
written and sent by a dear hand, whose fanciful pen seemed touched by
the ambrosial tints of Autumn. So the year was going out in a gorgeous
carnival, before the Lent-like solemnity of Winter was assumed.

I had only two things to consider now: Fi