It was a quaint old place.  The two-story wooden houses with corridor and verandah across the face of the second story, painted in bright colors, leaned crazily out across the streets.  Narrow and mysterious alleys led between them.  Ancient cathedrals and churches stood gray with age before the grass-grown plazas.  In the outskirts were massive masonry ruins of great buildings, convents, and colleges, some of which had never been finished.  The immense blocks lay about the ground in confusion, covered by thousands of little plants, or soared against the sky in broken arches and corridors.  But in the body of the town, the old picturesque houses had taken on a new and temporary smartness which consisted mostly of canvas signs.  The main street was composed of hotels, eating-houses, and assorted hells.  At times over a thousand men were there awaiting transportation.  Some of them had been waiting a long time, and had used up all their money.  They were broke and desperate.  A number of American gambling-houses were doing business, and of course the saloons were much in evidence.  Foreigners kept two of the three hotels; Americans ran the gambling joints; French and Germans kept the restaurants.  The natives were content to be interested but not entirely idle spectators.  There was a terrible amount of sickness aggravated by American quack remedies.  Men rejoiced or despaired according to their dispositions.  Every once in a while a train of gold bullion would start back across the Isthmus with mule-loads of huge gold bars, so heavy that they were safe, for no one could carry them off to the jungle.  On the other hand there were some returning Californians, drunken and wretched.  They delighted in telling with grim joy of the disappointments of the diggings.  But probably the only people thoroughly unhappy were the steamship officials.  These men had to bear the brunt of disappointment, broken promises, and savage recrimination, if means for going north were not very soon forthcoming.  Every once in a while some ship, probably an old tub, would come wallowing to anchor at the nearest point, some eleven miles from the city.  Then the raid for transportation took place all over again.  There was a limited number of small boats for carrying purposes, and these were pounced on at once by ten times the number they could accommodate.  Ships went north scandalously overcrowded and underprovisioned.  Mutinies were not infrequent.  It took a good captain to satisfy everybody, and there were many bad ones.  Some men got so desperate that, with a touching ignorance of geography, they actually started out in small boats to row to the north.  Others attempted the overland route.  It may well be believed that the reaction from all this disappointment and delay lifted the hearts of these argonauts when they eventually sailed between the Golden Gates.