les, muddy like a river. When we made the passage (bound,
although yet we knew it not, for Silverado) the steamer jumped, and the
black buoys were dancing in the jabble; the ocean breeze blew killing
chill; and, although the upper sky was still unflecked with vapour, the
sea-fogs were pouring in from seaward, over the hilltops of Marin
County, in one great, shapeless, silver cloud.

South Vallejo is typical of many Californian towns. It was a blunder;
the site has proved untenable; and although it is still such a young
place by the scale of Europe, it has already begun to be deserted for
its neighbour and namesake, North Vallejo. A long pier, a number of
drinking-saloons, a hotel of a great size, marshy pools where the frogs
keep up their croaking, and even at high noon the entire absence of any
human face or voice--these are the marks of South Vallejo. Yet there was
a tall building beside the pier, labelled the _Star Flour Mills_; and
sea-going, full-rigged ships lay close alongshore, waiting for their
cargo. Soon these would be plunging round the Horn, soon the flour from
the _Star Flour Mills_ would be landed on the wharves of Liverpool. For
that, too, is one of England's outposts; thither, to this gaunt mill,
across the Atlantic and Pacific deeps and round about the icy Horn,
this crowd of great, three-masted, deep-sea ships come, bringing
nothing, and return with bread.

The Frisby House, for that was the name of the hotel, was a place of
fallen fortunes, like the town. It was now given up to labourers, and
partly ruinous. At dinner there was the ordinary display of what is
called in the west a _two-bit house_: the tablecloth checked red and
white, the plague of flies, the wire hencoops over the dishes, the great
variety and invariable vileness of the food and the rough, coatless men
devouring it in silence. In our bedroom, the stove would not burn,
though it would smoke; and while one window would not open, the other
would not shut. There was a view on a bit of empty road, a few dark
houses, a donkey wandering with its shadow on a slope, and a blink of
sea, with a tall ship lying anchored in the moonlight. All about that
dreary inn frogs sang their ungainly chorus.

Early the next morning we mounted the hill along a wooden footway,
bridging one marish spot after another. Here and there, as we ascended,
we passed a house embowered in white roses. More of the bay became
apparent, and soon the blue peak of Tamalpai