Excerpt from Our Conquests in the Pacific

San Francisco gave us a warm-hearted, royal good-bye. It began early in the morning and continued until the superior speed of the outward-bound troopers left the last cheering, whistling tug behind at the Golden Gate. The Californians swarmed out about the ship to give the boys a last greeting. When the troopers pulled out from their docks last night the throngs on the piers and in the streets cheered and cheered, the bands aboard ship played Hail Columbia and the star-spangled Banner, and over all was the wild uproar and noise that serves the world over to indicate enthusiasm and good-will. To-day it was different. The cheers were there and the shouts. Bands were brought along to help make racket. But under the cheers were the tears and under the tears were the cheers. Sometimes one got to the surface, sometimes the other, sometimes both. Men whose grave faces reflected their sober hearts cheered until their throats refused to utter sound and then took feeble refuge in frantic waving of flags. Women whose hearts were with the bluecoats that thronged the rails of the troopships choked down the sobs that hindered their cheers and laughed and shouted god speeds to their loved ones, while tears that would not be held back ran unheeded down their cheeks. The demon stration of the day before yesterday, when the First Cali formia marched through a mob of howling, struggling, cheering friends from their camp at the Presidio to their troopship at the Mail dock, was but the preparation. The climax came to-day with the real parting.

As the three troopers lay in the stream making their final preparation, and awaiting the order to sail, the good-bye boats flocked about them. There was a new boat every five minutes, but the old ones did not go away. They were of all descriptions, from a ten-foot skiff with a leg-of-mutton sail and a crew of one boy and, a girl, to an ocean liner, her decks black with a tumultuous myriad of hysterically yelling men and women.

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