He Sailed Around the Horn in '49. Thirty-One Years Later, He Went Home.

Mr. S. S. Bassett, who lives at the mouth of the Snohomish river, has just returned from a protracted visit east. He came up from San Francisco on the last trip of the Dakota. Leaving home last May, his visit has extended over a period of six months. His appearance is that of a man who had enjoyed himself, as he is the perfect picture of health.

He left San Francisco, on his way east, by the Pacific R.R., May 24th, via Omaha, St. Joe, St. Louis, Indianapolis, Cleveland, and Buffalo, N.Y. From thence to Albany via the N.Y. Central. From the latter place, in one of the Madison river palace steamers, to New York city. At a glance it will be seen that his route took him through the heart of the great American republic, where most densely populated, and allowed him to spend a few days in the largest cities of the Union.

From New York city he visited Union Head, N.J., where he has relatives living. At Westerly, R.I., was his birth place, from which he had been absent since 1849. Not one in a hundred of the present inhabitants could he recognize, yet 31 years ago he could call every one by name. A large granite quarry is located near the place; its development has caused the place to grow from a small village to a town of several thousand inhabitants, and for the same reason many of the surrounding villages have retrograded. Similar change meets the visitor in every locality at the east.

Mr. Bassett is a member of the original band of '49ers. He left N.Y. in the first vessel that sailed that year, for San Francisco via Cape Horn, passing Golden Gate the last day of June of that memorable year.

While east, this being his first visit, he was at Saratoga, Long Branch, Rockaway and Narragansett Pier, all famed watering places. He was in Washington, going through all the prominent buildings while there. To Philadelphia and the Centennial he made two trips, and speaks in unmeasured terms of the magnificent spectacle.

He returned via the Penn. Central, to Cleveland, St. Louis, Omaha and San Francisco. Our esteemed friend W. H. Reeves and family, whose interesting letters from the east and Philadelphia have appeared frequently in the Sun, were his companions on the Dakota from San Francisco to Seattle.

Though, on one hand, there are all the advantages of wealth, accumulation of money and taste, exhibiting the merchant-like enterprise of the East, yet the evidences of poverty, destitution, want, and with very many a struggle for bread and the necessities of life, were equally if not more glaringly abundant. Very many of the rich places of the East, the granary of America, are impoverished — plagued with the grasshopper, parched by drought and devastated by floods and rains. Though there are evidences of refinement and higher civilization, as it should be in older communities than ours, yet Mr. Bassett is strongly prejudiced in favor of Washington Territory for his future home.