On the north side of the harbor falls in the Sacramento, a large river, to which all the other rivers of California are tributary, and which is navigable for large vessels as far as Sacramento city, a distance of nearly two hundred miles. The city of San Francisco lies on the south shore, nearly opposite the mouth of the Sacramento, and four or five miles from the ocean. It is built on a semicircular inlet, about two miles across, at the foot of a succession of bleak sandy hills, covered here and there with scrubby brushwood. Before the discovery of gold in the country, it consisted merely of a few small houses occupied by native Californians, and one or two foreign merchants engaged in the export of hides and horns. The harbor was also a favorite watering-place for whalers and men-of-war cruising in that part of the world. At the time of our arrival in 1851, hardly a vestige remained of the original village. Everything bore evidence of newness, and the greater part of the city presented a makeshift and temporary appearance, being composed of the most motley collection of edifices, in the way of houses, which can well be conceived. Some were mere tents, with perhaps a wooden front sufficiently strong to support the sign of the occupant; some were composed of sheets of zinc on a wooden framework; there were numerous corrugated iron houses, the most unsightly things possible, and generally painted brown; there were many imported American houses, all, of course, painted white, with green shutters; also dingy-looking Chinese houses, and occasionally some substantial brick buildings; but the great majority were nondescript, shapeless, patchwork concerns, in the fabrication of which sheet-iron, wood, zinc, and canvas seemed to have been employed indiscriminately; while here and there, in the middle of a row of such houses, appeared the hulk of a ship, which had been hauled up, and now served as a warehouse, the cabins being fitted up as offices, or sometimes converted into a boarding-house. The hills rose so abruptly from the shore that there was not room for the rapid extension of the city, and as sites were more valuable as they were nearer the shipping, the first growth of the city was out into the bay. Already houses had been built out on piles for nearly half-a-mile beyond the original high-water mark; and it was thus that ships, having been hauled up and built in, came to occupy a position so completely out of their element. The hills are of a very loose sandy soil, and were consequently easily graded sufficiently to admit of being built upon; and what was removed from the hills was used to fill up the space gained from the bay. This has been done to such an extent, that at the present day the whole of the business part of the city of San Francisco stands on solid ground, where a few years ago large ships lay at anchor; and what was then high-water mark is now more than a mile inland.