The following account of the journey home, via San Francisco, is from the pen of an old Canterbury settler, who recently paid a flying visit to the colony. It is dated Oct. 18. I reached my house in London on the 27th ult„ just 52 days from Auckland. I wrote to you from Honolulu, stating the time occupied by the Wonga Wonga, We arrived there at midnight on the 24th, or rather very early in the morning of the 25th August. The weather was excessively hot; the situation of Honolulu is pretty, and the vegetation quite tropical. We got any quan tity of fruit. I exchanged £5 into Ame rican dollars, and after prospecting the place and paying Is for a glass of ale, took my passage in the Ajax for San Francisco. We left at 12.20 p.m, on the 25th. The Ajax is a regular old washing tub, and did not do more than 7£ knots an hour. We had it very fine, till we were two days from Frisco, when we had a jolly good gale. We reached the wharf at Frisco at midnight on the sth Sept. I cleared out immediately and went to the Cosmopolitan Hotel, a very large structure. Everything very good and toler ably moderate for California. I wfent out first thing in the morning, and ob tained a good idea of the place ; it is very like Melbourne. Superior to it in some respects, and inferior in others ; on the whole it is a wonderful place, and the hotels are not equalled anywhere. I took my pas sage after breakfast for New York, via Niagara Falls, for which 1 paid £22 10s in English money, and £4 10s for my bed in the sleeping car. I left-San Francisco on the 7th Sept., at 8 a.m., and got to Sacramento about 1.30 p.m., and by 7.30 p.m. was on the sum mit of the Sierra Nevadas. The scenery is magnificent. Next morning, the Bth, we were in the midst of a dreary desert, and all day long, the ground being covered with salt or alkali ; the dust contained quantities of these ingredients, which made my face and the backs of my ears smart. On the 9th we got to Ogden, Great Salt Lake. 