years. Out through the dusty streets of the city proper, and through the Mission Dolores, we rode at a gallop, and only paused, at length, to allow our fretting horses a moment's rest, and look back upon the city we were so gladly leaving behind us, from the heights beyond Islais Creek. It is, after all, a goodly city, and a goodly sight to look upon from these hills ; and as we look down upon it, and upon the ancient mission which stood there, as it stands to-day, when the site of San Francisco was a trackless, uninhabited waste, the beautiful lines of one of California's most gifted writers, Ira D. Colbraith, come vividly to our memory:
"Little the goodly Fathers,
Building their Mission rude,
By the lone untraversed waters,
In the western solitude,
"Dreamed of the wonderful city,
That looks on the stately bay
Where the bannered ships of the nations
Float in their pride to-day;
"Dreamed of the beautiful city,
Proud on her tawny height,
And strange as a flower upspringing
To bloom in a single night.
"For lo! but a moment lifting
The veil of the years away,
We look on a well-known picture.
That seems but as yesterday.
"The mist rolls in at the Gateway
Where never a fortress stands,
O'er the blossoms of Sancelito,
And Yerba Buena's sands;
