of the Anglo-Saxon race flocked to it, there was no book upon California but mine.  Many who were on the coast at the time the book refers to, and afterwards read it, and remembered the Pilgrim and Alert, thought they also remembered me.  But perhaps more did remember me than I was inclined at first to believe, for the novelty of a collegian coming out before the mast had drawn more attention to me than I was aware of at the time.

Late in the afternoon, as there were vespers at the Roman Catholic churches, I went to that of Notre Dame des Victoires.  The congregation was French, and a sermon in French was preached by an Abbe; the music was excellent, all things airy and tasteful, and making one feel as if in one of the chapels in Paris.  The Cathedral of St. Mary, which I afterwards visited, where the Irish attend, was a contrast indeed, and more like one of our stifling Irish Catholic churches in Boston or New York, with intelligence in so small a proportion to the number of faces.  During the three Sundays I was in San Francisco, I visited three of the Episcopal churches, and the Congregational, a Chinese Mission Chapel, and on the Sabbath (Saturday) a Jewish synagogue.  The Jews are a wealthy and powerful class here.  The Chinese, too, are numerous, and do a great part of the manual labor and small shop-keeping, and have some wealthy mercantile houses.

It is noticeable that European Continental fashions prevail generally in this city,—­ French cooking, lunch at noon, and dinner at the end of the day, with cafe noir after meals, and to a great extent the European Sunday,—­ to all which emigrants from the United States and Great Britain seem to adapt themselves.  Some dinners which were given to me at French restaurants were, it seemed to me,—­ a poor judge of such matters, to be sure,—­ as sumptuous and as good, in dishes and wines, as I have found in Paris.  But I had a relish-maker which my friends at table did not suspect,—­ the remembrance of the forecastle dinners I ate here twenty-four years before.

August 17th.  The customs of California are free; and any person who knows about my book speaks to me.  The newspapers have announced the arrival of the veteran pioneer of all.  I hardly walk out without meeting or making acquaintances.  I have already been invited to deliver the anniversary oration before the Pioneer Society, to celebrate the settlement of San Francisco.  Any man is qualified for election into this society who came to California before 1853.  What moderns they are!  I tell them of the time when Richardson’s shanty of 1835—­ not his adobe house of 1836—­ was the only human habitation between the Mission and the Presidio, and when the vast bay, with all its tributaries and recesses, was a solitude,—­ and yet I am but little past forty years of age.  They point out the place where Richardson’s adobe house stood, and tell me that the first court and first town council were convened in it, the first Protestant