untenances as
their huge tangled beards and whiskers allowed to be visible.

We first went to the market, to obtain provisions for the ship. It was
already crowded with purchasers. There was a magnificent display of
fruit and vegetables, and fish of all sorts and strange shapes, and huge
lobsters and turtle of a size to make an alderman's mouth water; and
then in the meat-market there were hung up before the butchers' stalls
huge elks with their superb antlers, and great big brown bears--just
such monsters as the one we saw captured, for they are considered
dainties here--and beautiful antelopes, and squirrels, and hares, and
rabbits in vast heaps--not to speak of pigs, and sheep, and oxen. The
beef, we heard, was, and found to be, excellent. I mention these things
to show how the inhabitants of a vast city like San Francisco, though
just sprung into existence, can, by proper arrangement, be fed. A large
number of the shops are kept by Chinese, who sell all the fancy and
ornamental work, and act as washerwomen. They are said to be great
rogues, and are, under that pretext, often cruelly treated by greater
rogues than themselves. It is a sad thing to see heathen people coming
among nominal Christians, who, paying no regard to the religion they are
supposed to profess, prevent them from wishing to inquire into the truth
of a faith they might, with a good example before them, be tempted to
adopt. One Chinese appeared to us so much like another, with their
thick lips, little slits of eyes, ugly parchment faces, in which age
makes no perceptible difference, that it seemed as if we were meeting
the same person over and over again. The signs over their shops are
written in Chinese, and translated into the oddest English and Spanish I
ever saw. One of the features in the street population of this city
which struck us were the shoe-blacks. Each is provided with a
comfortable arm-chair and a newspaper. He slips his employer into the
chair, hands him the paper to read, and then kneeling down, works away
till he has polished the leather boots; for which his demand is a
quarter of a dollar--the smallest coin in circulation, it seemed to us.
The sum is paid without a word; off walks the man with the clean boots,
and one with a dirty pair soon takes his place.

There is no want of restaurants and cafes, or of places where food in
abundance could be procured, though the price was rather astonishing.
Captain Frankland had s