Chatting gaily, we admired now the bridge, and now the city.

"Where are you from, folks?" we suddenly heard a flagrantly Volga basso say.

We looked around. Before us stood a sailor of the ferry-boat in a uniform which disclosed the striped sweat-shirt common to all the sailors of the world. On the black ribbon of his blue cap we made out the name of the ferry-boat: Golden Gate. He had a broad red face, grey temples, and blue eyes.

"Are you really from Russia?"

"From Moscow."

"Oh, my God!" exclaimed the deck hand of the ferry Golden Gate. "Really from Moscow! Don't you worry, now; I'm no enemy of yours. Well, how is Russia? How is Moscow? Have you ever been to Siberia?"

And without waiting for a reply to any one of his questions, he hastily began to tell us about himself. Evidently he had been dying to talk for a long time, and he talked rapidly, glancing now and then at the approaching shore.

"And you have never been at Blagoveshchensk? That's a pity, because it`s my home town! The devil only knows me! I pulled out in the year `nineteen, at the time of Kolchak. It isn't that I ran away, but you know

...And yet, to tell the truth, I did run away ... I am disgusted with myself when I recall it. I have three brothers navigating on the Amur. They're all like me, only a little bit wider. All three of them are captains, each in command of a steamer. And I, too, you know, used to be a captain.Everyone in our family was a captain. We were a family of captains. And here, now ... ekh, the devil! A common sailor! And where? On a ferry-boat! And I have to be thankful that they took me on ..."

"How did it all come about? You would have been a captain now!"

The whistle resounded. The ferry was rapidly approaching the shore.

"But I have comforts!" He pronounced the word English fashion. "I have comforts," he said.

We do not understand to this day whether he was speaking seriously or bitterly, with irony, about his comforts on a ferry-boat.

"Well, good luck to you!" he cried. "I've got to run! My job!" We hurried down, arriving just in time, because the gang-plank was being dropped from the ferry and all the automobiles except ours were already sputtering impatiently.

"Quick! Give me the key to the motor!" cried Mrs. Adams to her husband.

From the rapidity with which Mr. Adams began to dig in all his pockets, we understood that a catastrophe would occur immediately. Not finding the key in his vest, he began to look for it in his coat. "Well, what's the matter with you?" Mrs. Adams urged him on. The first machines had already driven to shore. "Right away, Becky, right away!" An impatient signal sounded behind us. "You lost the key!" cried Mrs. Adams.

"Oh, Becky, Becky!" muttered Mr. Adams, digging in his pockets and bringing up some folded pieces of paper to his eyes. "Don't talk like that: 'you lost the key!'"

But we were already enveloped in the honking of automobile horns. The machines behind us roared, and the machines awaiting their turn on the shore did likewise. A group of sailors ran up to us. "Quick, quick!" they cried.

Deafened by the outcries, Mr. Adams, instead of searching systematically, began to go through utterly incomprehensible motions. He rubbed his eyeglasses and looked under the automobile, then he looked at the floor, lifting each one of his legs, then he made an attempt to run to the upper deck.

But it was simply impossible to wait any longer. The sturdy sailors, among whom we noticed our Amur captain, quickly put us into the machine, and with a cry which sounded very much like "Veeraah," began to push us to the dock.

"I'm very, very sorry!" muttered Mr. Adams, bowing to either side like a President. "I'm terribly sorry! I'm terribly sorry!"

To the sound of the uninterrupted blaring of the ferry-boat, the honking of automobile horns, and the taunting laughter of chauffeurs, the sailors rolled us out on the rocky dock, and ran back to the ferry. Mr. Adams was left to face his angry wife.

"I'm terribly sorry!" Mr. Adams continued to mutter, still bowing.

"Well!" exclaimed Mrs. Adams. "How long are we going to stand here on the dock?"

"Oh, Becky, don't talk like that!" said Mr. Adams, regaining his composure. "It hurts me to hear you talk like that!"

"Well, all right, I only want to know what we are going to do here on the dock? What have you done with the key?"

Interrupting each other, we tried to recall how Mr. Adams took the key and how he told us at the time that caution is the traveller's best friend.

"Well, now, try to remember, try to remember where you put it!"

"Oh, Becky! How can I tell you where I put it? You talk like a little girl! You must not talk like that!"

"Let me do it!" Mrs. Adams said decisively, and, sinking her two fingers into her husband's waistcoat pocket, she immediately pulled out the key. "What is this?"

Mr. Adams was silent.

"I'm asking you: what is this?"

"Becky," muttered Mr. Adams. "Don't talk like that: ' what is this ?'! It's a key, Becky. You can see perfectly well for yourself."

A minute later we were rolling over the streets of San Francisco.

This is the most beautiful city in America, apparently because it is in no way reminiscent of America. Most of its streets rise from hill to hill. An automobile journey through San Francisco looks more like a sideshow tailed "American Mountains" and presents the passenger with a number of strong sensations. Nevertheless, in the centre of the city is a piece which looks like the flattest Leningrad in the world, with its squares and broad avenues. The other parts of San Francisco form a remarkable seashore mixture of Naples and Shanghai. The resemblance to Naples we can certify from personal experience. The Chinese find the resemblance to Shanghai. There are many Chinese in San Francisco.

Among the triumphs of the city is the fact that its principal street is called neither "Main Street" nor "Broadway," but simply "Market Street." We sought in vain for uptown and downtown. No, in San Francisco there is no upper town and no lower town, or rather there are too many of them, several hundred upper and lower parts. No doubt, the denizen of Frisco, as the city is called in friendly familiarity by the sailors of the entire world, might take offence at this and tell us that San Francisco is no worse than New York or Gallup and that the denizen of Frisco knows very well where his uptown and where his downtown are located, where business is carried on, and where people rest after business in their family circles, and that it's no use our trying to isolate San Francisco and tear it away from its family of other American cities. Possibly, it is so. But to our foreign view San Francisco looked more like a European than an American city. Here, as everywhere else in America, was limitless wealth and limitless poverty standing side by side, shoulder to shoulder, so that the faultless dinner jacket of the rich man touched the dirty blouse of an unemployed stevedore, but wealth here did not seem as depressingly monotonous and dull, while poverty was at least picturesque.

San Francisco is one of those cities one begins to like from the very first moment and continues to like more and more every day thereafter.

From the height of Telegraph Hill opens a beautiful view of the city and the bay. Here a broad platform has been constructed with a white stone balustrade surrounded by urns.