The great stone cross, commemorative of the first religious services held on the Pacific Coast in the time of Sir Francis Drake, loomed up grandly at some distance from us, but we could not get our Jehu to drive us to it; there was always some excuse at hand. The late George William Childs, of Philadelphia, caused its erection, to commemorate these first services of the Church of England; but a cunning myth is circulated in San Francisco that it is an advertisement for a stone quarry! San Francisco, situated as it is, on a series of precipitous hills, presents some magnificent and picturesque views. It is a sort of gigantic and altogether exaggerated Edinburgh. When one thinks of Edinburgh, however, with its castled crag and Holyrood, and the gardens right through the city, one is almost ashamed to compare a bijou like it, with a huge creature like San Francisco, which suggests, somehow, a kind of prehistoric being, of dragon-like shape and unimagined power. This prehistoric suggestion which San Francisco gives, is further carried out by the untempered breath of its climate. The trade winds blow in fiercely in the afternoons, and the chill sea fog creeps over everything with a ferocious persistency quite appalling. The promontory on which the city stands is open to all gales, and one's clothing, throughout the year, must be of such a kind, as always to be capable of resisting borean blasts. This strange, unfamiliar look of San Francisco, is further carried out by the huge, reddish-yellow bars which mark its form. These are the streets, which ride up and down in uncompromising straight lines and parallels, right over every obstacle which they meet. The barbaric forcefulness which laid out straight streets sheer over little mountains, has developed in San Francisco the cable-car system, which here reigns supreme, tugging everything along with it. It is no easy matter for a tenderfoot from the East, to ride in such cars on a first attempt, with either comfort or dignity. On one stretch you are ascending at a fearful angle, then for a brief space you are on the level, only to be whirled up or down, as the case may be, in a few minutes more. When one is sitting sideways, as is usual in street cars, it requires a certain diffused consciousness to preserve one's equilibrium, which, those accustomed to the use of seats always on the level, cannot readily attain. This self-adjustment once reached, however, and the pivot of permanence properly adjusted, one can proudly keep one's position like a native, and not flop over one's neighbors at every change of angle, as one must do, to one's utter confusion, on a first ride in a San Francisco cable-car on a steep incline.