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172 curious round rocks rising from the bosom of the Bay), and glide into the Bay of San Pablo, with the pretty old town of San Pablo peeping out from beneath the evergreen live oaks, and exotic shade trees, on the Contra Costa shore on the right, and San Ouentin, with its gloomy State Prison, on the Marin county shore on the left; and beyond, nestled in a little valley away up under the dark shadow of Tamalpais, the picturesque village of San Rafael, a noted health-resort for San Franciscans. Through the Bay of San Pablo, past Mare Island, with its navy- yard and barracks, our steamer moves, and turning abruptly northward, just as we catch a glimpse of the straits of Carquinez, opening eastward towards Martinez and Benicia, rounds to at the railroad wharf at Vallejo, some thirty miles from San Francisco. We saw two schools of porpoises playing in the waters of San Pablo Bay; thousands of pelicans and shags crowding the rocks at the Dos Hermanos, a number of huge fish, sturgeon or salmon, or both, leaping bodily out of the smooth waters; and a remarkably pretty girl, Spanish- American we judge, among the numerous passengers upon the steamer, as we came along. Masculine and human, we paid comparatively little attention to the birds and fishes.

Vallejo, a large, straggling, ambitious village, standing where a city, like one of those which cluster around New York, may stand years hence, claims and receives but a passing glance, and we are on board the cars, gliding swiftly northward, out of the reach of the cool ocean breezes, and into one of the fairest valleys