he world. Let us guess San
Francisco at ten inches, I doubt if it is so much. Here in England
put it down at thirty-two inches, though the west coast of Ireland
is, I expect, nearer fifty inches. In the tropics, say, 130 inches,
though I have been in one place where 300 fell. But there is a spot
in Bengal which has the largest rainfall in the world, viz. 600
inches. Fancy, fifty feet of rain! The place is a hill-station, by
name "Cherra Poonjee," and the country is so steep none of the rain
can lie on it.

With so little rain, fine weather at San Francisco is nearly
continual the year round. The air is very dry. It is seldom too hot,
never too cold; there are no dark, gloomy days. What more can any one
desire? Verily it is, without exception, by far the finest climate on
earth.

But there is an odd feature. The above is the climate of San
Francisco; it is _not_ the climate of a dozen miles off, either
north, south, or east (the west is of course the ocean). For
instance, Sacramento, a large town lying north-east about fifty
miles, is a very hot place, and abounds with mosquitoes, which are
unknown in the capital.

San Francisco resembles New York in the paucity of cabs. Here again
nearly every one travels in the street cars. Horses are used in a few
of them, but with most the motive power is steam at one end of the
route, which works an endless rope. This wire rope runs on rollers
under ground between the rails, and there is an orifice from end to
end in the roadway above the said rope. Through this said orifice or
narrow slit, a pair of pinchers, connected with the car, descends and
nips the rope, which runs continually. The said pinchers are made to
grip and loose the rope as required.

When you first see these monster cars, with no apparent motive power,
rushing about the roads and streets and climbing the steep hills of
the town, the effect is very strange. When I first did so I made sure
they were driven by electricity. The said cars are of great size, and
most luxuriously and conveniently fitted up; with excellent springs
and smooth rails, they glide over the ground at about eight miles an
hour, with no perceptible motion. A ride in them is most enjoyable.

Market Street is the principal one. It is a noble thoroughfare, at
least twice the width of Broadway in New York, with trees on either
side, and very wide pavements. The buildings, mostly stone, cast into
the shade anything we can show in London, and now