In from ten to twenty minutes the boats are along-side again, the messes are marshalled separately on the deck, and the picnic goes ashore, to find the band and the impromptu bar awaiting them.  Then come the hampers, which are piled upon the beach, and surrounded by a stern guard of stalwart asses, axe on shoulder.  It is here I take my place, note-book in hand, under a banner bearing the legend, “Come here for hampers.”  Each hamper contains a complete outfit for a separate twenty, cold provender, plates, glasses, knives, forks, and spoons:  an agonized printed appeal from the fevered pen of Pinkerton, pasted on the inside of the lid, beseeches that care be taken of the glass and silver.  Beer, wine, and lemonade are flowing already from the bar, and the various clans of twenty file away into the woods, with bottles under their arms, and the hampers strung upon a stick.  Till one they feast there, in a very moderate seclusion, all being within earshot of the band.  From one till four, dancing takes place upon the grass; the bar does a roaring business; and the honorary steward, who has already exhausted himself to bring life into the dullest of the messes, must now indefatigably dance with the plainest of the women.  At four a bugle-call is sounded; and by half-past behold us on board again, pioneers, corrugated iron bar, empty bottles, and all; while the honorary steward, free at last, subsides into the captain’s cabin over a brandy and soda and a book.  Free at last, I say; yet there remains before him the frantic leave-takings at the pier, and a sober journey up to Pinkerton’s office with two policemen and the day’s takings in a bag.

What I have here sketched was the routine.  But we appealed to the taste of San Francisco more distinctly in particular fetes.  “Ye Olde Time Pycke-Nycke,” largely advertised in hand-bills beginning “Oyez, Oyez!” and largely frequented by knights, monks, and cavaliers, was drowned out by unseasonable rain, and returned to the city one of the saddest spectacles I ever remember to have witnessed.  In pleasing contrast, and certainly our chief success, was “The Gathering of the Clans,” or Scottish picnic.  So many milk-white knees were never before simultaneously exhibited in public, and to judge by the prevalence of “Royal Stewart” and the number of eagle’s feathers, we were a high-born company.  I threw forward the Scottish flank of my own ancestry, and passed muster as a clansman with applause.  There was, indeed, but one small cloud on this red-letter day.  I had laid in a large supply of the national beverage, in the shape of The “Rob Roy MacGregor O” Blend, Warranted Old and Vatted; and this must certainly have been a generous spirit, for I had some anxious work between four and half-past, conveying on board the inanimate forms of chieftains.