Clocks Tolled The Hour
Of Midnight From Its Steeples, But The City Was Alive From The Salute
Of Our Guns, Spreading The News That The Fortnightly Steamer Had Come,
Bringing Mails And Passengers From The Atlantic World.
Clipper ships
of the largest size lay at anchor in the stream, or were girt to
the wharves; and
Capacious high-pressure steamers, as large and
showy as those of the Hudson or Mississippi, bodies of dazzling
light, awaited the delivery of our mails to take their courses up
the Bay, stopping at Benicia and the United States Naval Station,
and then up the great tributaries - the Sacramento, San Joaquin,
and Feather Rivers - to the far inland cities of Sacramento,
Stockton, and Marysville.
The dock into which we drew, and the streets about it, were densely
crowded with express wagons and hand-carts to take luggage, coaches and
cabs for passengers, and with men, - some looking out for friends among
our hundreds of passengers, - agents of the press, and a greater
multitude eager for newspapers and verbal intelligence from the
great Atlantic and European world. Through this crowd I made
my way, along the well-built and well-lighted streets, as alive
as by day, where boys in high-keyed voices were already crying
the latest New York papers; and between one and two o'clock in
the morning found myself comfortably abed in a commodious room,
in the Oriental Hotel, which stood, as well as I could learn,
on the filled-up cove, and not far from the spot where we used
to beach our boats from the Alert.
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