These great Companies also act, as express-agents and bankers, all over the Coast. In all the chief towns and mining districts, wherever you enter a Chinese quarter or camp, you will find a representative of one or more of them, who will procure anything a Chinaman needs, from home or elsewhere; and faithfully remit to the Flowery Kingdom whatever he wants to send, even his own dead body. Both parties appear to keep their contracts well--a breach of faith being seldom recorded. Here, surely, is evidence of fine talent for organization and management--the best tests of human intellect and capacity--and a hint at the existence of sterling qualities, which the English-speaking nations are slow to credit other races with. Such gigantic schemes, such far-reaching plans, such harmonious workings, and exact results, imply a genius for affairs, that not even the Anglo-Saxon can afford to despise, and which all others may ponder with profit. A race that can plan and execute such things as these, must have some vigor and virility in it, whatever its other peculiarities. Some days after the Banquet, we were driven out to the Mission Woolen Mills, where Donald McLennan, a Massachusetts Scotch-Yankee, was converting California wool into gold. The climate being so favorable to sheep, the wool-product of the coast was already large, and everywhere rapidly increasing. In 1867, California alone yielded ten million pounds, and the rest of the coast fully two millions more. Of this amount, about one-half was consumed on the Pacific Coast, and the balance exported to New York and Liverpool. The average price per pound in San Francisco was about seventeen cents, coin; but this was lower, than it had usually been.[16] There were several other Woolen Mills on the Coast; but the Mission-Mills were the largest, and had a great reputation for honest work. They were then doing a business of about a million dollars per year, coin, in cloths, cassimeres, blankets, flannels, shawls, etc., and the demand for their goods was constantly on the increase. Their work, on the whole, was of a superior character, and Californians were justly very proud of it. They were supplying all the Army blankets in use on the Coast, and what a contrast they were to the "shoddy" webs, issued to our Boys in Blue east during the war! The troops transferred from the east now threw their old Army blankets away, on arriving in San Francisco, and gladly furnished themselves with these Mission blankets, at their own expense, before leaving for the wilds of Washington and Arizona. Some extra specimens, intended for the Paris Exposition, as white as new-fallen snow and soft as satin, had the American and French coats of arms embroidered very handsomely on them. Another pair, meant for General Grant, were lustrous with the Stars and Stripes, and traditional eagle, and now no doubt help to furnish the White House. A pair sent to Gen. M. in the east, a