sailing ships discharging or loading cargo, or lying in the stream or in
Richardson's Bay awaiting charters, as in the days when wheat was king
of California's great central valley. The virility of the waterfront of
San Francisco, however, is as persistent as in the age that provided
Frank Norris with his epic themes.

The masts and yards of older outline have given place to stubby cargo
booms of liners, freighters and tramps of multiple flags and
nationalities. Along the Embarcadero they disgorge upon massive concrete
piers silk, rice and tea from the Orient, coffee from Central America,
hemp and tobacco from the Philippines, and all manner of odds and ends
from everywhere. On the piers commodities are piled in apparent
confusion, yet each lot moves with precision in or out of yawning holds
at the shrill blast of the foreman's hoist whistle.

Along the Embarcadero you may see craft of every rig under the sun from
a Chinese junk to a Transpacific passenger liner. Human types are even
more contrasting, knots of Chinese and Singalese strolling behind South
Sea Islanders, Portuguese or Cornishmen, whose speech recalls snatches
you may have heard on the East India Dock Road in London.

Jack London heard and answered the call of the sea from the Embarcadero
of San Francisco, and Stevenson found the atmosphere of his Wreckers
there.

Sailors--trade winds--ships--what lurking thoughts of adventure,
realized or denied, do they not summon in all of us?