the entertainment almost sumptuous--in my imagination. A cup of water
cheerfully given to the weary and thirsty traveller, by him who has no
more to part with, is worth a cask of wine grudgingly bestowed by the
stingy or the ostentatious churl. Notwithstanding we preferred sleeping
on our own blankets, these poor people would not suffer us to do it,
but spread their own pallets on the earth floor of their miserable hut,
and insisted so strongly upon our occupying them, that we could not
refuse.

_September 21_.--We rose at daylight. The morning was clear, and our
horses were shivering with the cold. The mission of San Francisco is
situated at the northern terminus of the fertile plain over which we
travelled yesterday, and at the foot, on the eastern side, of the coast
range of mountains. These mountains are of considerable elevation. The
shore of the Bay of San Francisco is about two miles distant from the
mission. An _arroyo_ waters the mission lands, and empties into the
bay. The church of the mission, and the main buildings contiguous, are
in tolerable repair. In the latter, several Mormon families, which
arrived in the ship Brooklyn from New York, are quartered. As in the
other missions I have passed through, the Indian quarters are crumbling
into shapeless heaps of mud.

Our aged host, notwithstanding he is a pious Catholic, and considers us
as heretics and heathens, gave us his benediction in a very impressive
manner when we were about to start. Mounting our horses at sunrise, we
travelled three miles over low ridges of sand-hills, with sufficient
soil, however, to produce a thick growth of scrubby evergreen oak, and
brambles of hawthorn, wild currant and gooseberry bushes, rose bushes,
briers, etc. We reached the residence of Wm. A. Leidesdorff, Esq., late
American vice-consul at San Francisco, when the sun was about an hour