It is
very expensive and of the latest style. One of the engineers here is
Custis Lee, who has just left West Point at the head of his class,- a
son of Colonel Robert E. Lee, who distinguished himself in the Mexican
War.
Another morning I ride to the Mission Dolores. It has a strangely
solitary aspect, enhanced by its surroundings of the most uncongenial,
rapidly growing modernisms; the hoar of ages surrounded by the
brightest, slightest, and rapidest of modern growths. Its old belfries
still clanged with the discordant bells, and Mass was saying within,
for it is used as a place of worship for the extreme south part of the
city.
In one of my walks about the wharves, I found a pile of dry hides
lying by the side of a vessel. Here was something to feelingly
persuade me what I had been, to recall a past scarce credible to
myself. I stood lost in reflection. What were these hides- what were
they not?- to us, to me, a boy, twenty-four years ago? These were our
constant labor, our chief object, our almost habitual thought. They
brought us out here, they kept us here, and it was only by getting
them that we could escape from the coast and return to home and
civilized life.
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