The river trip of to-day gives graphic proof of the changes which threescore years have wrought; it shows that agriculture, not mining, is now the basis of the State’s prosperity, just as it must be the basis of every civilisation which is to endure. The interest commenced at the journey’s very start. Swinging out from the unending procession of ferries which form, as it were, a Brooklyn Bridge between Oakland and San Francisco, we churned our way under the cliffs of Alcatraz, the white-walled prison perched upon its summit looking for all the world like the sea-fowl for which this penal isle is named. Though Alcatraz may lack the legendary interest which attaches to the Château d’If, that rocky islet in the harbour of Marseilles where the Count of Monte Cristo was imprisoned, it is no less picturesque, particularly at sunset, when the expiring rays of the drowning sun, striking through the portals of the Golden Gate, transform it into a lump of rosy coral rising from a peacock sea. Off our port bow Tamalpais, a weary colossus wrapped in a cape of shaggy green, looked meditatively down upon the heedless city as, seated upon the hills, he laved his feet—the Marin and Tiburon Peninsulas—in the cooling waters of the bay. Keeping well to the eastern shore, where the lead shows seven fathoms clear, we skirted the city’s shipping front, where fishing-boats, their hulls painted the bright hues the Latins love, and some—the Greek-owned ones—with great goggle eyes at their bows (the better to detect the fish, of course), were slipping seaward like mallards on the wing. To starboard lay the shores of Contra Costa County (meaning, as you doubtless surmise, “the opposite coast”), the long brown fingers of its innumerable wharfs reaching out into the bay as though beckoning to the merchantmen to come alongside and take aboard the cargoes—oil, wine, lumber, grain, cheese, fruit—which had been produced in the chimneyed factories that fringe this coast or raised in the fertile valleys which form its hinterland. Crossing over to the port rail as our steamer poked its stubby nose into the narrow Straits of Carquinez, we could make out Mare Island Navy Yard with the fighting craft in their coats of elephant grey riding lazily at anchor in front of it, while against the hill slopes at the back snuggled the white houses of Vallejo, the former capital. Our first stop was at Benicia, on the right bank of the Carquinez Straits, which lie directly athwart the Overland Route to the East and are familiar to transcontinental travellers as the place where their entire train, from engine to observation-car, is loaded on a titanic ferry. This was the home of Heenan, the “Benicia Boy,” the blacksmith who fought his way upward to the heavyweight championship of the world, and the forge hammer he used is still proudly preserved here as a memento of the brawny youngster who linked the drowsy village with a certain brand of fame. Benicia