The hackney carriages of San Francisco were infinitely superior to those of any other city in the world. One might have supposed that any old cab which would hold together would have been good enough for such a place; but, on the contrary, the cabs--if cabs they could be called--were large handsome carriages, lined with silk, and brightly painted and polished, drawn by pairs of magnificent horses, in harness, which, like the carriages, was loaded with silver. They would have passed anywhere for showy private equipages, had the drivers only been in livery, instead of being fashionably dressed individuals in kid gloves. A London cabby would have stared in astonishment at an apparition of a stand of such cabs, and also at the fares which were charged. One could not cross the street in them under five dollars. The scale of cab-fares, however, was not out of proportion to the extravagance of other ordinary expenses. The drivers probably received two or three hundred dollars a month (about £700 a year), and the horses alone were worth from a thousand to fifteen hundred dollars each. None of the private carriages came at all near the hacks in splendor. They were mostly of the American “buggy” character, and were drawn by fast-trotting horses. The Americans have a style and taste in driving peculiarly their own; they study neither grace nor comfort in their attitudes; speed is the only source of pleasure; and a “three-minute horse”--that is to say, one which trots his mile in three minutes--is the only horse worth driving; while anything slower than a “two-forty (2_m._ 40_s._) horse” is not considered really fast. A great many very fine horses had been imported from Sydney, but these were chiefly used in drays and under the saddle. The buggy horses were all American, and had made the journey across the plains. The native Californian horses are small, with great powers of endurance, but are generally not very tractable in harness.