New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1869-11-27
LETTERS FROM NEXT DOOR.
VII.

most deliberate and shameless loafer we have en-
countered in the West. Pretending to 60 from the
city of its kin to San Pablo Bay without loss OF time
it gets the carrying trade, and then meanders
through every meadow and loiters by every thicket
of cottonwood and shuffles round every hlock, and
up and down the land. entirely without purpose, and
dsgracefully regardless of its word. 1t by no means
stops to play. That you would cheerfully pardon 10
the pert and nimble spirit of mirth. But any
thing less gamesOme than this dirty, tdeless,
shallow stream within its low dull shores 30 I'M
marked that the schooner in its next bend seems 10
be scraping along the fields one cannot imagine IL
even takes an alias in its determination TO deal
doubly and calls itself Something Bayou, though it
is plainly, or rather snuOusly, the Sacramento as
it's birth-mark can make 1t. The turns are so sharp
and the stream so narrow that the steamboat seems
always running ashore, and does get aground IN
pleasantly often. But byandby even the Sacramento
is too dizzy to turn longer and reforms and with
pretense of dligent spirit lets rs out soberly and
reputably into Suisun Bay, which is calm pond
with shores of hills and wonderfully fertile fields,
through which we float on to Benicia on San Pablo
Bay. don't know whether seven Western cities
win claim that Heenan dead in which the living
Heenan earned his bread, but up to this present
writing the KOsmic fame of Benicia, so to speak,
derives from the Nativity of the Benicia Boy, while
its local celebrity radates from its boarding
of which there be many.
BENICIA.
Benicia is white and fiat, and not interest
ing. But beyond. on either side, are high
hills, coming near together, through whose
gaps we saw a sunset of such green and
rose and gold, such purple seas, the hills them
selves-bare and treeless-so exquistely soft and
warm with that pink-purple flush nowhere seen but
in NO richest
verdure that we seemed to have drfted into new
world just found and fairer than that had known.
And now there are hills all the way rising sometimes
into mountains always treeess and with only little
feckless, Pickering sort of wild oats on them-which
grows everywhere-but always tender, even pathetic,
in their sedate and solemn beauty. Only when the
light is all gone from the sky does their gracious
aspect alter. and then it not much 70 fade
as TO Tipen into darker and sadder loneliness in the
vast serenity of night, and before the untroubled
moon.
Miles and miles of this sailing on Summer seas,
and between these quiet hills stepped in August
laneuors, while up the Bay sweeps wind chill as
and intense fire, thrilling the nerves with
pleasure full of foreboding. BY and by there are
islands, and to the right the hill line recedes, and
later, looking far into the West, we are told that
there opens the Golden Gate. a glttering track of
majestic hills On the eastern shore we build villages
and see their evening lamps cheerful in the distance
and then San Francisco is in sight At night it is
high hill running out into the water beacOns on its
crest, lights all down its slopng sides and on tho
level of its base; it is plain stretching SOUTH all
lights too il IS innumerable dips and swells of
face lifting themselyesl up from the waterfront of
the land-lOcked basin whose western wall they
1t feet of ships and tiny boats idle in the moon
light. shooting masts and tall black smoke-stacks
slender b6wsprit and heavy hull repeated in the
water-ghosts of drowned ships haunting the place
they had gone down in the search for. 1t is city
of domes and spires, and the unbuit spaces
here and there should be hanging gardens with
lanterns all arrow. Yes, indeed, under the moon
light, and from the water. and with such skies San
Francisco might be-let us say Bagdad. it looked
to our beloved Aladdin or Sinbad or to the dear
Black Prince, before his legs turned to marble.
when they went thither a-pleasuTng. However, the
hackmen and the porters and the busy crowd on the
wharf Tesembled only their nineteenth century
American prototypes as everywhere developed, and
the coach Of the Cosmopolitan was as unlike the
splendid litter of Sinbad as possible, though dare
say it cost six times mach and vastly
more comfortable. Nor was the Hotel at
all q Palace of the Vizer but the very
counterfeit presentment of st. Barnabas's or the
Daniel Webster of New-York or Boston, except
that it sacrificed o story OF two to the god Chaos
who presdes over earthquakes, displayed fewer
mirrors and queer carpets, and had general effect
of soft, dark paint instead of glazing and thumby
white.
SAN FRANCISCO.
Why did forget to mention that Committee
and band and the other elements of a process
sion lay in wait for Mr. COlfax, and burst out upon
him. crying NAY us no nays" and brought him.
and incidentally the rest of us, with much pride,
pomp and circumstance to the Hotel door, there
cOnsigning him to the great crowd waiting TO see
himi think it was because the tOot of the Sacra-
mento fife and the cheers Of the Sacramento
voices had not yet died on our ears, and we felt
as if this were only an encore. 1t was
midnight; but San Francisco never goes to bed,
and there seemed to be an animated traffic going
in all the shops along the way. On reflection, think
good many of them were Saloons but the streets
full of people and brilliantly aght and there
was a general air of making night of it, which we
have noticed since, whenever have been out late
There is somber building stone, and there are no
very high buildings, and the windows are plate
glass; that the city lights up well Hooking like
painted beauty who could not perhaps afford the
inspection of the sun-and we Iwent to bed in the
belief that no cheerfuer town had ever made us
welcome.
We had heard so much of CALIFORNIA FRUIT that
think we should not have been surprised to walk
under a grape arbor from our own doors to the
dining-roOm, or to see pomegranates rpening in the
windows usually dedicated to knife-trays or to be-
hold orange trees shoot mp, full grown, out of the
salaabowl, to gather figs of the thistes painted
on the pitchers However. Fate was kind that
morning. and asked us only to compare certain big
musk melons with those which lived in our memory,
Nl,.tN .of
the superlatve. After breakfast two of us were
minded N 90 ont for a WALL Xvas hiQh noon of