Francisco with milk and butter.

Various attempts have been made from time to time, by ambitious cyclers,
to wheel across America from ocean to ocean; but - "Around the World!"

"The impracticable scheme of a visionary," was the most charitable
verdict one could reasonably have expected.

The first essential element of success, however, is to have sufficient
confidence in one's self to brave the criticisms - to say nothing of the
witticisms - of a sceptical public. So eight o'clock on the morning of
April 22, 1884, finds me and my fifty-inch machine on the deck of the
Alameda, one of the splendid ferry-boats plying between San Francisco
and Oakland, and a ride of four miles over the sparkling waters of the
bay lands us, twenty-eight minutes later, on the Oakland pier, that juts
far enough out to allow the big ferries to enter the slip in deep water.
On the beauties of San Francisco Bay it is, perhaps, needless to dwell,
as everybody has heard or read of this magnificent sheet of water, its
surface flecked with snowy sails, and surrounded by a beautiful framework
of evergreen hills; its only outlet to the ocean the famous Golden Gate - a
narrow channel through which come and go the ships of all nations.

With the hearty well-wishing of a small group of Oakland and 'Frisco
cyclers who have come, out of curiosity, to see the start, I mount and
ride away to the east, down San Pablo Avenue, toward the village of the
same Spanish name, some sixteen miles distant. The first seven miles are
a sort of half-macadamized road, and I bowl briskly along.

The past winter has been the rainiest since 1857, and the continuous
pelting rains had not beaten down upon the last half of this imperfect