wers in the parks is
not easily paralleled in public domains elsewhere. Of these, rather
than of its stockyards and its lightning rapidity in pig-sticking,
will the visitor who wishes to think well of Chicago carry off a
mental picture.

The man who has stood on Inspiration Point above Oakland and has
watched the lights of San Francisco gleaming across its noble bay, or
who has gazed down on the Golden Gate from the heights of the
Presidio, must have an exceptionally rich gallery of memory if he does
not feel that he has added to its treasures one of the most entrancing
city views he has ever witnessed. The situation of San Francisco is
indeed that of an empress among cities. Piled tier above tier on the
hilly knob at the north end of a long peninsula, it looks down on the
one side over the roomy waters of San Francisco Bay (fifty miles long
and ten miles wide), backed by the ridge of the Coast Range, while in
the other direction it is reaching out across the peninsula, here six
miles wide, to the placid expanse of the Pacific Ocean. On the north
the peninsula ends abruptly in precipitous cliffs some hundreds of
feet high, while a similar peninsula, stretching southwards, faces it
in a similar massive promontory, separated by a scant mile of water.
This is the famous Golden Gate, the superb gateway leading from the
ocean to the shelters of the bay. To the south the eye loses itself
among the fertile valleys of corn and fruit stretching away toward the
Mexican frontier.

When we have once sated ourselves with the general effect, there still
remains a number of details, picturesque, interesting, or quaint.
There is the Golden Gate Park, the cypresses and eucalypti at one end
of which testify to the balminess of the climate, while the sand-dunes
at its other end show the original condition of the whole surface of
the peninsula, and add to our admiration of nature a sense of
respectful awe for the transforming energy of man. Beyond Golden Gate
Park we reach Sutro Heights, another desert that has been made to
blossom like the rose. Here we look out over the Pacific to the
musically named Farralone Islands, thirty miles to the west. Then we
descend for luncheon to the Cliff House below, and watch the uncouth
gambols of hundreds of fat sea-lions (Spanish _lobos marinos_), which,
strictly protected from the rifle or harpoon, swim, and plunge, and
bark unconcernedly within a stone's throw of the observer. The largest
of these