SAN FRANCISCO AND THE DISCOVERY OF GOLD San Francisco--Her Hills--Her Landscapes--Population of Different Decades--The Flag on the Plaza in 1846--Yerba Buena its Earliest Name--First Englishman and First American to Build Here--The Palace Hotel--The Story of the Discovery of.

Gold in 1848--Sutter and Marshall--The News Spread Abroad--Multitudes Flock to the Gold Mines--San Francisco in 1849.
As we stand on the deck of the bay steamer and are fast approaching the San Francisco ferry-house which looms up before us in dignity, we look out on a great city with a population of 350,000 souls, and we observe that it is seated on hills as well as on lowlands.

Rome loved her hills, Corinth had her Acropolis, and Athens, rising out of the Plain of Attica, was not content until she had crowned Mars' Hill with altars and her Acropolis with her Parthenon.

Here in this golden city of the Pacific the houses are climbing the hills, nay they have climbed them already and they vie in stateliness with palaces and citadels in the old historic places which give picturesqueness to the coast lands of the Mediterranean.

There is indeed in the aspect of San Francisco, in her waters and her skies, and all her surroundings, that which recalls to my mind landscapes and scenery of Italy and Greece and old Syria.