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is the right thing to do in San Francisco, and _not_ to go to the Cliff-House is not to see or know California. In the summer, people drive there in the early morning, to breakfast and return before the sea-breeze rises, and then hundreds of gay equipages throng the well-kept road. Even in winter, at the right hour, you are always sure to meet many driving out or in. Of course, we went to the
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Cliff --wouldn't have missed going there for anything. Past Lone Mountain Cemetery, that picturesque city of the dead, the fine graveled road strikes straight through the sand-hills, for five or six miles, to the Pacific; and when you reach the overhanging bluff, on which the hotel perches like an eagle's nest, you have a grand view of the Golden Gate and the far-stretching sea beyond. On the very verge of the horizon hang the Farallones, pointing the way to Japan and China, and the white sails of vessels beating in or out the harbor dot the ocean far and near. Just in front of the hotel are several groups of high shelving rocks, among which the ocean moans and dashes ceaselessly, and here the seals or
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as 'Frisco lovingly calls them, have a favorite rendezvous and home. The day we were there, there appeared to be a hundred or more of them, large and small, swimming about the rocks or clambering over them, while pelicans and gulls kept them company. Some were small, not larger than a half-grown sturgeon, while others again were huge unwieldy monsters, not unlike legless oxen, weighing perhaps a thousand pounds or more.
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Ben Butler was an immense, overgrown creature, as selfish and saucy, apparently, as he could well be; and another, called
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Gen. Grant, was not much better. They kicked and cuffed the rest overboard quite indiscriminately, though now and then they were compelled to take a plunge themselves. Many contented themselves with merely gamboling around the water's edge; but others had somehow managed slimily to roll and climb forty or fifty feet up the rocks, and there lay sunning themselves in supreme felicity, like veteran politicians snug in office. Sometimes two or three would get to wrangling about the same position, as if one part of the rocks were softer than another, and then they would bark and howl at each other, and presently essay to fight in the most clumsy and ludicrous way.
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Ben Butler, or
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Gen. Grant, would usually settle the squabble, by a harsh bark, or by flopping the malcontents overboard, and then would resume his nap with becoming satisfaction. Uncouth, and yet half-human in their way, with a cry that sometimes startled you like a distant wail, we watched their movements from the piazza of the hotel with much interest, and must congratulate 'Frisco on having such a first-class
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May her
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long remain to her as a