who never comes. The bay of San Pablo is nearly-all visible, and the bay of Suisun, with its surface dotted with sails, lies uncovered before us. The blue of the sky overhead mingles with the blue of the sea in the west, all the middle ground is emerald green, and white and cold gleam the summits of the Sierra along the whole eastern horizon. Martinez, Pacheco, Alamo, San Ramon, Lafayette and Clayton lie at our feet; it seems as if you might toss a stone into either of them from where we stand; and, on the other side of the straits of Carquinez, Benicia, and Vallejo, with every building plain and distinct, are to be seen. Suisun, Rio Vista and Freeport, farther northward, are plainly visible, and we see Sacramento, embowered in shade trees, distinctly in the northeast. Nearer where we stand, we see long threads of yellow water twisting and winding among tule marshes and low plains. It seems hardly possible that one of these is the lordly Sacramento, whose waters are thick with the earth from a thousand hills, being washed down by the miners in their search for gold, and on whose bosom is borne the commerce and treasure of the State, and the lands beyond the Sierra. Coming in from the southwest is another winding stream of somewhat purer water, and the eye follows it up through vast, treeless plains to the southward, until the limit of vision is reached, and it glitters in the sunlight on the edge of the horizon like a broken bit of rainbow on a cloud; this is the San Joaquin. The dozen lesser rivers emptying into one or the other are hardly distinguishable in the bayous and natural
