The frequency of diamonds in the windows is a point certain to catch the stranger's eye, but his interest somewhat diminishes when he finds that they are only "California diamonds." They are exquisite stones, however, and, to my thinking, more beautiful than coloured gems, ruby, sapphire, or amethyst, that are more costly in price. But the real diamond can, nevertheless, be seen in perfection in San Francisco. Go to Andrews' "Diamond Palace," and take a glimpse of a jeweller's fairyland. The beautiful gems fairly fill the place with light, while the owner's artistic originality has devised many novel methods of showing off his favourite gem to best advantage. The roof and walls, for instance, are frescoed with female figures adorned on neck and arm, finger, ear, and waist, with triumphs of the lapidary's art. There is something very fascinating to the fancy in gems, for the one secret that Nature still jealously guards from man is the composition of those exquisite crystals which we call "precious stones." We can imitate, and do imitate, some of them with astonishing exactness, but after all is done there still remains something lacking in the artificial stone. Wise men may elaborate a prosaic chemistry, producing crystals which they declare to be the fac-similes of Nature's delightful gems; but the world will not accept the ruddy residue of a crucible full of oxides as rubies, or the shining fragments of calcined bisulphides as emeralds. No crucible yet constructed can hold a native sapphire, and all the alchemy of man directed to this point has failed to extort from carbon the secret of its diamond--the little crystal that earth with all her chemistry has made so few of, since first heat and water, Nature's gem-smiths, joined their forces to produce the glittering stones. They placed under requisition every kingdom of created things, and in a laboratory in mid-earth set in joint motion all the powers that move the volcano and the earthquake, that re-fashion the world's form and substance, that govern all the stately procession of natural phenomena. Yet with all this Titanic labour, this monstrous co-operation of forces, Nature formed only here and there a diamond, and here and there a ruby. Masses of quartz, crystals of every exquisite tint, amethystine and blue, as beautiful, perhaps, in delicacy of hue as the gems themselves, were sown among the rocks and scattered along the sands, but only to tell us how near Nature came to making her jewels common, and how--just when the one last touch was needed--she withheld her hand, so that man should confess that the supreme triumphs of her art were indeed "precious"! CHAPTER XXIV. Gigantic America--Of the treatment of strangers--The wild-life world--Railway Companies' food-frauds--California Felix--Prairie-dog history--The exasperation of wealth--Blessed with good oil--The meek lettuce and judicious onion--Salads and Salads--The perils of promiscuous grazing.