aited the coming of the morning.

I was up on deck at the earliest dawn of day. The steamer was at anchor
close before the city, and I looked with no admiring eyes upon its flimsy
white-washed houses and wooden spires, scattered about the base and sides
of the cindery, earth-quaky hills upon which it is built. There was hardly
a blade of grass or tree to be seen anywhere, except where the thriving
European and American residents had perched themselves on one of the
acclivities. The dwarfed trees here, moreover, all in a row before the
little painted bird-cage-looking houses, appeared to have no more life of
growth and color in them than so many painted semblances in a toy village.
Familiar looking shanties, of the tumble-down sort, built of pine wood and
shingles, crowded the ground by the water side, and indeed the low land
seemed better suited to their staggering aspect than the steep
acclivities. Painted signs with English names and English words, stared
familiarly from every building. The universal "John Smith" there
conspicuously posted his name and his "Bakery." Mine host of the "Hole in
the Wall" invited the thirsty in good round Saxon to drink of his "Best
Beer on Tap," or his "Bottled Porter," as "you pays your money and take
your choice."

The steamer was enlivened from the earliest hour by the native fishermen,
who, with their fleet of canoes, had sought the shades of our dark hull,
to protect them from the hot sun, which seemed to be fairly simmering the
waters of the bay. They were making most miraculous draughts of fishes. I
watched one little fellow. He was hardly a dozen years of age, but he
plied his trade with such skill and enterprise, that he nearly filled his
canoe during the half hour I was watching him. It was terrible to see with
what intense energy and cruelty the little yellow devil, with bared arms
blooded to the shoulders, pounced upon his prey. With a quick jerk he
pulled his fish in, then clutching it with one hand and thrusting the
fingers of the other with the prompt ferocity of a young tiger into the
panting gills, he tore off with a single wrench the head, and threw the
body, yet quivering with life, among the lifeless heap of his victims
lying at the bottom of his boat. The sea gulls, hovering about shrieking
shrilly and pouncing upon the heads and entrails as they were thrown into
the water, fighting over them and gulping them down with hungry voracity,
seemed to heighten this picture