And thus we continued, sometimes dawdling along at fifteen and then suddenly bursting into full power and shooting along at forty for a minute or two, as Lizzie's peculiar whim would have it. It was annoying, tiring, disheartening, but I felt I should get there. I had long since planned a trip to the Yosemite National Park, returning thence to the north across the border and eastward through Canada back to New York. That little project would certainly never come off. I had had enough already. I made one great big oath to sell Lizzie's carcase for what it would bring in San Francisco. Poor old Lizzie! I pitied her in a way. She must have been born with a curse on her head. But she would have to go, if only for 100 dollars. Already I began wondering who would get her after we had parted.
After ten miles appeared the southern tip of the great harbour that stretches inland to north and south from San Francisco. This bay is fifty miles long and ten miles wide and forms one of the grandest harbours in the world. All the navies of all the nations of the earth could be comfortably tucked away in a corner of it. The road follows within a few miles of the western shore of this inland sea, and at every few miles are small, fast-growing cities comparable with nothing but their prototypes that cluster around Los Angeles. For here we are absolutely in the centre of the wine-making district. Sixty years ago cuttings and rooted vines of every variety found in Europe were brought to California and planted, mostly around this great bay of San Francisco, where the frequent sea-fogs contribute so much to the maintenance of perfect conditions for the growing of vines. They flourished, and now we have Médocs and Sauternes and Moselles and countless others from California, as well as from France.
For miles and miles we see nothing but vineyards and fruit-groves. There is no fence, no ditch, no railing. The orange trees and plum trees fringe the very road. It is not possible to say where one estate ends and another begins. The owners probably know.
The towns are now so thick that with them also it is difficult to say where one ends and another begins. Only another fifteen miles! Poor old Lizzie, she may peg out altogether.
But no. She keeps at it. Sometimes she ceases firing altogether, but only for a moment. On she goes again, now on one, now on four cylinders. Hey ho! We shall get there all right.
'Buses and cars in hundreds pass in both directions. We shall soon be in 'Frisco now.
Tram-lines appear and then trams. Trolley-cars, they call them in America. 'Frisco at last!
I dodge in and out of the traffic as best I may. It is very thick indeed, and in very much of a hurry. I sail down Market Street, the "Strand" of San Francisco. What matter if Lizzie clatters and rattles and stops and shoots on again? She has brought me here. And as I say so, the little indicator on the speedometer moves to 4,950. Just 50 miles short of 5,000 from New York! Gee! it seems like an extract from another life, that departure from far-off New York. And how long? Three months? It feels like twelve at the least!
I found the post office and sang out for mail. Sure enough there was some—forwarded from Cincinnati. I learnt for the first time that the detailed "Schedules" that I had dispatched three months ago at New York had not yet reached England. Hence the reason for the seeming unkindliness of the Post Office en route. But where were they? I was not to know until a week after my return to England, when they arrived suddenly, without any warning, and simultaneously, to all my friends and relatives there. They had been all round British East Africa; Heaven and the New York postal authorities alone know why! I had not counted on such waywardness on their part when in my innocence of American ways I had dropped them in the post-box at New York.
Thus ends my tale of woe. It is a strange thing, but nevertheless true, that now I have done with it and written about it and done with writing about it, I still think what a glorious trip it was and what a perfect ass I was to do it, and what a still greater ass I was to say anything about it!