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 along shore, 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 devoting 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 Tamalpais rose above
the green level of the island opposite. It told us we were still