Volumes might be written about its Spanish and Mexican families, its adobe buildings, its gambling places, its haunts of vice, its public assemblies, its crowds of men from all lands, its social and civic histories.
But all this is of the past, and it seems like a dream of by-gone days.

When I visited it on two occasions, in company with friends, it was a quiet place enough; and the casual observer could never have thought or realised that around this romantic spot fortunes made by hard toil of weary months and years had been lost in a few short hours in the saloon and gambling places for which the vicinity was noted, that the worst passions of the human heart had been exhibited here, and that betimes amid the laughter of the merry throng in midnight revelry and above the strains of the "harp and viol" one could have heard the voices of blasphemy and the sharp, loud reports of pistols in the hands of careless characters, whose deadly bullets had sent many a poor unfortunate wayfarer or unwary miner from the gold fields to his long home.
If, in your saunterings, you go through the central part of the city you will find Lafayette Square, Alta Plaza, Hamilton Square, Columbia Square, and Franklin and Jackson Parks, at varying distances from each other and affording variety to the tourist.

In the south section you will see Buena Vista Park and Garfield Square, while to the west you have Hill Park and Golden Gate Park.

The Golden Gate Park is now famous the world over and vies in beauty and splendour with Central Park in New York, nay, in some respects surpasses this, in that it has a magnificent frontage on the Pacific ocean, a long coast view and a wide range of sea with the Farallone Islands, about twenty 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.