Byways Around San Francisco Bay by William E. Hutchinson
page 16 of 65 (24%)
page 16 of 65 (24%)
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certainly train that upon him if he but gave us a chance. High
overhead we hear the clarion honk, honk of wild geese, cleaving the air in drag-shaped column, while the dew on the grass dances and sparkles in the sunshine like glittering diamonds. After a hard climb we reach the top of the hill, and look down at the town just awakening into life, and out across the waters of the bay partly hidden by the blanket of fog rolling in from the ocean. Did you ever stand on the top of a high hill in the early morning, when the eastern sky is beginning to put on its morning robe of variegated colors, with all the blended shades of an artist's palette, and watch the town, nestling in the valley at your feet, wake up after its night of slumber? Here a chimney sends its spiral of blue smoke straight in air; then another, and another, like the smoke of Indian scouts signaling to their tribes. The lights in the windows go out, one by one; the sharp blast of a whistle cuts the air, the clang of a bell peals out, the rumble of a wagon is heard, and the street cars begin their clatter and clang. All this comes floating up to you on the still morning air, until an ever-increasing crescendo of sounds is borne in upon you, telling that the town has awakened from its nap, stretched itself like a drowsy giant, and is ready once more to grapple with its various problems. We pass a grove of tall eucalyptus trees on our left, their rugged trunks like an army of tattered, unkempt giants. From the brink of the old stone quarry, we gaze down into its prisonlike depths, the perpendicular walls looking as if they had been carved out of solid rock to hold some primeval malefactor; then we descend the hill on the other side to the caƱon. |
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