We first went to the market, to obtain provisions for the ship.  It was already crowded with purchasers.  There was a magnificent display of fruit and vegetables, and fish of all sorts and strange shapes, and huge lobsters and turtle of a size to make an alderman's mouth water; and then in the meat-market there were hung up before the butchers' stalls huge elks with their superb antlers, and great big brown bears--just such monsters as the one we saw captured, for they are considered dainties here--and beautiful antelopes, and squirrels, and hares, and rabbits in vast heaps--not to speak of pigs, and sheep, and oxen.  The beef, we heard, was, and found to be, excellent.  I mention these things to show how the inhabitants of a vast city like San Francisco, though just sprung into existence, can, by proper arrangement, be fed.  A large number of the shops are kept by Chinese, who sell all the fancy and ornamental work, and act as washerwomen.  They are said to be great rogues, and are, under that pretext, often cruelly treated by greater rogues than themselves.  It is a sad thing to see heathen people coming among nominal Christians, who, paying no regard to the religion they are supposed to profess, prevent them from wishing to inquire into the truth of a faith they might, with a good example before them, be tempted to adopt.  One Chinese appeared to us so much like another, with their thick lips, little slits of eyes, ugly parchment faces, in which age makes no perceptible difference, that it seemed as if we were meeting the same person over and over again.  The signs over their shops are written in Chinese, and translated into the oddest English and Spanish I ever saw.  One of the features in the street population of this city which struck us were the shoe-blacks.  Each is provided with a comfortable arm-chair and a newspaper.  He slips his employer into the chair, hands him the paper to read, and then kneeling down, works away till he has polished the leather boots; for which his demand is a quarter of a dollar--the smallest coin in circulation, it seemed to us. The sum is paid without a word; off walks the man with the clean boots, and one with a dirty pair soon takes his place.