ATOP O' TELEGRAPH HILL


Perhaps it is a mile wide, that Golden Gate; and it is more bronze than
golden. A fort was on our right hand; one of those dear old brick
blockhouses that were formidable in their day, but now are as houses of
cards. Drop one shell within its hollow, and there will be nothing and
no one left to tell the tale.

Down the misty coast, beyond the fort, was Point Lobos--a place where
wolves did once inhabit; farther south lie the semi-tropics and the
fragrant orange lands; while on our left, to the north, is Point
Bonita--pretty enough in the sunshine,--and thereabout is Drake's Bay.
Behind us, dimly outlined on the horizon, the Farallones lie faintly
blue, like exquisite cloud-islands. The north shore of the entrance to
the Bay was rather forbidding,--it always is. The whole California shore
line is bare, bleak, and unbeautiful. It is six miles from the Golden
Gate to the sea-wall of San Francisco. There was no sea-wall in those
days.

We were steaming directly east, with the Pacific dead astern. Beyond the
fort were scantily furnished hill-slopes. That quadrangle, with a long
row of low white houses on three sides of it, is the _presidio_--the
barracks; a lorner or lonelier spot it were impossible to picture. There
were no trees there, no shrubs; nothing but grass, that was green enough
in the rainy winter season but as yellow as straw in the drouth of the
long summer. Beyond the _presidio_ were the Lagoon and Washerwoman's
Bay. Black Point was the extremest suburb in the early days; and beyond
it Meigg's Wharf ran far into the North Bay, and was washed by the
swift-flowing tide.