to the Greek sailor nearing home.

Near Stone Lake we met the head commissioner of the Park who saluted
us with all the easy grace of the Californian; and on the way we had
the opportunity of receiving a Scotch gentleman and his wife into our
carriage; and, later, a clergyman who had been wandering about in the
midst of sylvan scenes, rode with us to the entrance of the Park,
where we bade our new found friends good-bye, each to go his own way,
at eventide.

The third day after our arrival in San Francisco I had a longing
to gaze on the Pacific ocean which I had never seen. There were
no laurels for us to win, such as Balboa justly deserved when he
discovered the Pacific and first beheld its wide waters in the year
1513; but it was a natural desire to look on its broad expanse and to
stand on its shores, along which bold navigators had sailed since the
days of Cabrillo and Drake. Taking a line of cars running out to the
Presidio, Ashton and I walked the rest of the way. A young man named
Logan, a cousin of the famous General Logan, who was in the service
of the government as a mail carrier, but off duty that afternoon,
volunteered most courteously to be our guide. He accompanied us for
more than a mile and a half of the distance beyond the Presidio, but
then had to return to meet an engagement. We went forward climbing the
steep hills and finally found that we were standing on the heights
above the immense ocean, in the grounds of the Government Reservation.
It was a solemn moment when we for the first time beheld the Pacific,
and we were greatly impressed. There the mighty waters, across which
the ships sail to China and Japan and the Sandwich Islands and the
Philippine Archipelago and the South Seas, lay before our eyes. The
darkness of the night was coming on, but the sky far off across the