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Lovely the city is; striking in site, brilliant in colour, picturesque in form.
The rolling ground throws up a hundred shafts and spires against the sky. A joss-house here, a synagogue there, suggest an oriental town.
The houses, mostly white, have balconies adorned with semi-tropical plants, among which flit the witching female shapes.
A stream of sunshine lies on painted wall and metalled roof.
But one has hardly time to note the details of this outward beauty.
You would scarcely have an eye for nice effects in Venice, if you chanced to enter that city while the doge's palace and cathedral were on fire.
This city is in one of her high fevers; her disease a great “development” in the Comstock lode.
Most persons in San Francisco are votaries of chance.
Luck is their god.
Credulous as an Indian, reckless as a Mexican, the lower order of San Franciscans puts his trust in men unknown and builds his hope on things unseen.
Thousands of persons in this city, otherwise passing for sane, believe in this “development,” and are sinking all that they have saved by years of thrift in the several Comstock mines.
The Comstock lode lies on Mount Davidson,
1875.
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