e world.
Here, less than two decades after Drake, Sebastien Carmenon piled up on
the rocks with a silk-laden galleon from the Philippines. And in this
same bay of Drake, long afterward, the Russian fur-poachers rendezvous'd
their _bidarkas_ and stole in through the Golden Gate to the forbidden
waters of San Francisco Bay.

Farther up the coast, in Sonoma County, we pilgrimaged to the sites of
the Russian settlements. At Bodega Bay, south of what to-day is called
Russian River, was their anchorage, while north of the river they built
their fort. And much of Fort Ross still stands. Log-bastions, church,
and stables hold their own, and so well, with rusty hinges creaking, that
we warmed ourselves at the hundred-years-old double fireplace and slept
under the hand-hewn roof beams still held together by spikes of
hand-wrought iron.

We went to see where history had been made, and we saw scenery as well.
One of our stretches in a day's drive was from beautiful Inverness on
Tomales Bay, down the Olema Valley to Bolinas Bay, along the eastern
shore of that body of water to Willow Camp, and up over the sea-bluffs,
around the bastions of Tamalpais, and down to Sausalito. From the head
of Bolinas Bay to Willow Camp the drive on the edge of the beach, and
actually, for half-mile stretches, in the waters of the bay itself, was a
delightful experience. The wonderful part was to come. Very few San
Franciscans, much less Californians, know of that drive from Willow Camp,
to the south and east, along the poppy-blown cliffs, with the sea
thundering in the sheer depths hundreds of feet below and the Golden Gate
opening up ahead, disclosing smoky San Francisco on her many hills. Far
off, blurred on the breast of the sea, can be seen the Farallones, which
Sir Francis Drake passed on a S. W. course in the thick of what he
describes as a "stynking fog." Well might he call it that, and a few
other names, for it was the fog that robbed him of the glory of
discovering San Francisco Bay.

It was on this part of the drive that I decided at last I was learning
real mountain-driving. To confess the truth, for delicious titillation
of one's nerve, I have since driven over no mountain road that was worse,
or better, rather, than that piece.

And then the contrast! From Sausalito, over excellent, park-like
boulevards, through the splendid redwoods and homes of Mill Valley,
across the blossomed hills of Marin County, along the knoll-studde