The drive out to the cliffs is enchanting.  I had never seen a live sea-lion before, and here were thousands of them, barking, diving in the water and wriggling out of it, and basking in the sun on the rocks.

General McDowell took us out for an early tour the next day in his steam-launch.  At five o’clock there was a dense fog covering everything, but suddenly it lifted as we approached.  We made the circle of the Angel Island, then landed in a paradise of flowers.  I don’t think I ever saw such flowers as these.  The heliotropes looked as big as cauliflowers, and I saw an ambitious and enormous tomato resembling a pumpkin, on the top of a veranda.  The fuchsias were as large as dinner-bells, and when the sun rose over the bay no words can describe how beautiful it was—­like one of Turner’s pictures, only more exaggerated.

I think if I am going to be an angel, as I certainly am, instead of going to Paris when I die, I should prefer to go to this angelic island.

We ladies were invited by a well-known Chinese tea merchant to a Chinese feast.  The table looked rather bare, having only a teacup and a plate before each person.  The cups are double, the smaller one being placed on the other to keep in the tea-leaves.  After drinking the pale water in which the leaves have soaked, we were served the viands.  Each dish is brought in separately and put on the table.  Every one of them is a ragout of some kind.  The Chinaman dives in with his chopsticks, and aims for the best piece he sees.  Everything is eaten from the same plate—­indeed, why should the plate be changed, since everything tastes and looks alike?  I waited in vain for birds’-nest pudding, but I could probably not have distinguished it from the other ragouts if it had been there.

The gentlemen went off on a purely masculine tour, with a policeman in tow.  They wanted to see opium-dens and slums.  They never told us a word of what they did see—­the mean things!  Philip V.R., accompanied by an American policeman, took us to a Chinese theater in the evening.  I was so nervous I hardly dared to look about me.

The dusky mass of uncanny Chinamen with their shaved heads and their black pigtails sitting underneath us in the parquet was not pleasing, and the stage was merely a platform where some privileged of the audience sat unconcernedly.  The scenery was—­screens.  How easy to shift.  We had the policeman of course; but, though he kept a vigilant eye on us to prevent anything from happening in the way of an assault, as frequently happens here, the idea of fire frightened us to such a degree that our one wish was to get away.  The upper gallery in which our box was situated was so low that you could touch the ceiling with your hand.  The gas-jets had no globes, and the flickering flames suggested everything that was horrible.  If there had been a fire no one could possibly have been saved.  We felt no interest in the play.  It had begun a month ago; the hero had not yet advanced further than his childhood.  Perhaps next year when he grows up the play will be more interesting.