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HARBOR OF SAN FRANCISCO, Thursday, October 24.

At last! noon, 24th, and there she lies--the Belgic at her dock!
What a crowd! but not of us; eight hundred Chinamen are to return
to the Flowery Land. One looks like another; but how quiet they
are! Are they happy? overjoyed at being homeward bound? We cannot
judge. Those sphinx-like, copper-colored faces tell us no tales.
We had asked a question last night by telegraph, and here is the
reply brought to us on the deck. It ends with a tender good-bye.
How near and yet how far! but even if the message had sought us
out at the Antipodes, its power to warm the heart with the sense
of the near presence and companionship of those we love would only
have been enhanced. In this we seem almost to have reached the
dream of the Swedish seer, who tells us that thought brings
presence, annihilating space in heaven.

We start promptly at noon. Our ship is deeply laden with flour,
which China needs in consequence of the famine prevailing in its
northern provinces, not owing to a failure of the rice, as I had
understood, but of the millet, which is used by the poor instead
of rice. Some writers estimate that five millions of people must
die from starvation before the next crop can be gathered; but this
seems incredible. And now America comes to the rescue, so that at
this moment, while from its Eastern shores it pours forth its
inexhaustible stores to feed Europe, it sends from the West of its
surplus to the older races of the far East. Thus from all sides,
fabled Ceres as she is, she scatters to all peoples from the horn
of plenty. Favored land, may you prove worthy of all your