A city of hills with a fringe of houses crowning the lower heights;
half-mountains rising bare in the background and becoming real
mountains as they stretched away in the distance to right and left; a
confused mass of buildings coming to the water's edge on the flat; a
forest of masts, ships swinging in the stream, and the streaked,
yellow, gray-green water of the bay taking a cold light from the
setting sun as it struggled through the wisps of fog that fluttered
above the serrated sky-line of the city--these were my first
impressions of San Francisco.

The wind blew fresh and chill from the west with the damp and salt of
the Pacific heavy upon it, as I breasted it from the forward deck of
the ferry steamer, _El Capitan_. As I drank in the air and was
silent with admiration of the beautiful panorama that was spread before
me, my companion touched me on the arm.

"Come into the cabin," he said. "You'll be one of those fellows who
can't come to San Francisco without catching his death of cold, and
then lays it on to the climate instead of his own lack of common sense.
Come, I can't spare you, now I've got you here at last. I wouldn't lose
you for a million dollars."

"I'll come for half the money," I returned, as he took me by the arm
and led me into the close cabin.

My companion, I should explain, was Henry Wilton, the son of my
father's cousin, who had the advantages of a few years of residence in
California, and sported all the airs of a pioneer. We had been close