_June 10th._--In the spacious courtyard of the Palace Hotel, at 7 o'clock this morning, there might have been observed three well-appointed waggons (as Americans call the vehicle more appropriately termed "spider" at the Cape), each with two horses of race, fast trotters, panting for a spin through the city and the Park out to the shores of the Pacific. The Duke and Sir H. Green and Mr. Stephen were driven by Mr. Howard. Mr. Wright was "personally conducted" by Mr. ----, and I was put behind a pair of as handsome chestnuts as could well be seen anywhere, of which the owner and driver (General Barnes) was very reasonably proud. The streets of San Francisco, like those of most of the American cities we have visited, are atrociously paved; the torture of driving over boulders is aggravated by the sharp ribs of the tram ways, so that it is not pleasant, if, indeed, it be possible, to drive rapidly till the limit of municipal incompetence or fraud be passed. But once out on the suburbs the chestnuts were invited to step it, and were bowling along at a good fourteen miles an hour on our way to the Park, over as good a road as horse or man ever felt under hoof or foot. The Park not long ago was a waste of sand, it is now swarded and planted with shrubs, and luxuriant with flowers. Notices that it was unlawful to do more than ten miles an hour were posted up, but the General did not pay strict attention to them till he came near shady places, where experience warned him that policemen might be lying privily in ambush. The pace was quickened till the waggon seemed to fly through the air rather than move over the ground. It was the perfection of travelling on wheels--almost as buoyant as a headlong gallop. The waggon weighed but 180 lb., the powerful animals "scarcely felt it more than their tails." I had a turn at the reins by "kind permission" of the General. The art of driving trotters needs practice. You must keep a strong, steady pull on the head, or they "break." Very soon I had the satisfaction of making the chestnuts break the law with a vengeance, and of hearing the General say, "We are just within the three minutes! not ten seconds inside it!"--that is, of trotting at the rate of just twenty miles an hour. Up hill and down hill, and along the flat out of the Park and over the smooth road, and in half an hour the Pacific was in sight, and the murmurs of the surf rose above the rhythm of the regular beat of the eight hoofs in front of us! Cliff House was in view. Seal Rocks, in their setting of foam, lay before us, and in forty minutes from the time we left the hotel, despite policemen, miles of bad pavements, and tramways, we drew up at the steps of Cliff House, nine miles from San Francisco, and the trotters had not turned a hair. From the verandah at the sea front of the hotel, we enjoyed for half an hour a spectacle which is, as far as I know, unique. At the distance of 500 or 600 yards