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16 years. Out through the dusty streets of the city proper, and through the Mission Dolores, we rode at a gallop, and only paused, at length, to allow our fretting horses a moment's rest, and look back upon the city we were so gladly leaving behind us, from the heights beyond Islais Creek. It is, after all, a goodly city, and a goodly sight to look upon from these hills ; and as we look down upon it, and upon the ancient mission which stood there, as it stands to-day, when the site of San Francisco was a trackless, uninhabited waste, the beautiful lines of one of California's most gifted writers, Ira D. Colbraith, come vividly to our memory: