miles off in the foreground of the picture, and visible on a clear day always, and most enchanting in the sunset hour as we gazed on them.  The Golden Gate Park dates back only to the year 1870, when the California Legislature passed an act providing for the improvement of public parks in San Francisco.  At that time this lonely spot, now so like a dream of fairy land, was but a waste, a wide stretch of sand dunes among which the winds of the ocean played hide and seek.  Its entrances, with a wide avenue in the foreground running north and south, are some five miles from the Market Street Ferry.  The afternoon that my friend Ashton and I visited it was clear and balmy.  Just as we were entering the park carriage I was greeted by a young friend from the East, whom I had not seen for years; and then, more than three thousand miles away from home, I realised how small our planet is after all.  As we rode along the flowery avenues with green lawns stretching out on either hand and losing themselves in groups of stately trees and hedges of shrubs and Monterey Cypress we were filled with delight.  We could see the birds, native and foreign, flying from branch to branch of trees which grew within their gigantic cages, and occasionally we heard the notes of some songster.  Yonder, too, we saw deer browsing, and elk and antelope.  There also were the buffalo and the grizzly bear; and apparently all forgot that, shut in as they were in wide enclosures, they were in captivity.  We could not fail to observe the bright flower-beds on every hand, the pleasant groves, the shady walks, the grottoes of wild design, the woodland retreats, the sylvan bowers.  The park, we were told by our communicative driver, John Carter, comprises ten hundred and forty acres of ground.  He also pointed out various places and objects of interest.  The Museum, by the wayside, in its Egyptian architecture, is like one of the old temples of the Pharaohs on the banks of the Nile.

You are carried into the realm of immortal song when you gaze on the busts of Goethe and Schiller, and your patriotism is stirred afresh as you behold the monument of Francis Scott Key, author of the Star-Spangled Banner.  The Muses also have their abode here on the colonnaded Music Stand or Pavilion erected by Claus Spreckles at a cost of $80,000.  Another interesting feature is the Japanese Tea Garden.  Then there is the well equipped Observatory on Strawberry Hill from which you can look far out to sea, and where star-gazers can study celestial scenery as the Heavens declare God’s glory.  Seven lakelets give charm to the landscape, but the eye is never weary in looking on Stone Lake, a mile and a quarter in circuit, beautiful with its clear waters, its shelving shores, its bays and miniature headlands, while on its calm bosom, ducks of rich plumage and Australian swans are disporting themselves.