My memories of San Francisco are at any rate a trifle hazy now, for it is many, many years since I last saw the sun set over the Marin hills. An era has passed since the glamour of the Coast of High Barbaree claimed my youthful attention. But I remember a city as evil within as it was lovely without, a city where were gathered the very dregs of humanity from the four corners of the earth. What Port Said is now, San Francisco was then, only worse. For every crime that is committed in the dark alleys of the Suez port or the equally murky callejons of the pestholes of Mexico, four were committed in the beautiful Californian town when I first went there. Women as well as men carried "hardware" strapped outside, and scarcely one who had not at some time found this precaution useful. The city abounded with footpads and ruffians of every nationality and description, whose prices for cutting a throat or "rolling a stiff" depended on the cupidity of the moment or on the quantity of liquor their capacious stomachs held. Scores of killings occurred and excited little comment. Thousands of men were daily passing in and out of the city, drawn by the lure of the Sierra gold-fields; some of these came back with the joy of dreams come true and full pokes hung around their necks, some came with the misery of utter failure in their hearts, and some--alas, they were many, returned not at all. The Barbary Coast was fast gaining for itself an unenviable reputation throughout the world. Every time one walked on Pacific street with any money in pocket he took his life in his hand. _"Guard Your Own!"_ was the accepted creed of the time and woe to him who could not do so. Gold was thrown about like water. The dancing girls made fabulous sums as commissions on drinks their consorts could be persuaded to buy. Hundreds of thousands of dollars were spent nightly in the great temples devoted to gambling, and there men risked on the luck of a moment or the turn of a painted wheel fortunes wrung from the soil by months and sometimes years of terrific work in the diggings. The most famous gamblers of the West at that time made their headquarters in San Francisco, and they came from all countries. England contributed not a few of these gentlemen traders in the caprices of fortune, France her quota, Germany very few and China many; but these last possessed the dives, the lowest kind of gambling places, where men went only when they were desperate and did not care.