On the pier-head there was a cool sea-breeze, and we spent much of our time there while waiting for the return train. A pier was built here in 1868; but a storm of unusual severity soon after destroyed it, and the present structure was built in a more substantial manner. The piles are of cast iron and hollow, fitted with auger-points, by which they are screwed down into the sand. The end of the wharf is covered by a shed, where are provided three steam hoisting-engines. As San José is, like most of the ports on the Pacific coast, merely an open roadstead, vessels do not care to wait long there, and stout lighters are provided to bring cargo between ship and pier. Even with lighters of some twenty-five tons, the task is not always easy, and many a passenger gets a wetting in jumping from the small boat to the iron cage used in rough weather to hoist the human freight to the pier-top. Since the completion of the railroad, in 1880, the tracks have been laid along the pier,—thus facilitating the handling of freight, much of which is lumber coming from the Oregon coast, and sugar, coffee, and hides going to San Francisco. To-day two ships were at anchor, and a steamer was expected. [Illustration] As we sat in the cool shade on the end of the pier, looking dreamily over the Pacific, I felt that the journey across the continent, as we had made it, was far pleasanter than when, in 1869, I had used the railroad,—then but a week old. We decided unanimously that the difference between the two oceans was not a matter of fancy merely. I had seen the middle Atlantic smooth as a mill-pond, and had been miserably seasick on the raging Pacific; so without going deeper into this question, our thoughts wandered from one thing to another, mine going back to the days when Istapa, the old port at our left hand, was more than a swamp, and when the Spanish shipyards there were humming with the busy workmen who had learned their craft on the Rio Tinto at Palos or on the sandy shores of Cadiz. Why had the place become so changed? My eye wandered up and down the coast for an answer to a suggestion that came to me. But only a rather steep beach was there,—no cliff, not even a detached rock, to solve the problem of whether the coast was at the same level as in the seventeenth century; for this was the way I was trying to answer my own question. A rise of eight feet would explain everything about that deserted harbor; but there was nothing except the steep slope of the beach to indicate any change of level. Had I been able to see any rocks within the limit of two miles, I should have left the cool pier and trudged through the hot black sand to ask them. Frank’s more practical mind was working in another direction; and he took up the conversation with a question whether a railroad to the Atlantic would change this port as well as the rest of the republic. Then we discussed the several schemes proposed for infusing a commercial spirit into this