me, now roofed over, quite out of sight.

So we came to Fort Point and the Golden Gate; and beyond the Fort there
was more flume and such a stretch of sea and shore and sunshine as
caused us to leap with gladness. We could follow the beach for miles; it
was like a pavement of varnished sand, cool to the foot and burnished to
the eye. And what sea-treasure lay strewn there! Mollusks, not so
delicate or so decorative as the shells we had brought with us from the
Southern Seas, but still delightful. Such starfish and cloudy,
starch-like jelly-fish, and all the livelier creeping and crawling
creatures that populate the shore! Brown sea-kelp and sea-green
sea-grass and the sea-anemone that are the floating gardens of the
sea-gods and sea-goddesses; sea-birds, soft-bosomed as doves and crying
with their ceaseless and sorrowful cry; and all they that are sea-borne
along the sea-board,--these were there in their glory.

We hid in caverns and there dreamed our sea-dreams. We ate our lunches
and played at being smugglers; then we built fires of drift-wood to warn
the passing ships that we were castaways on a desert island; but when
they took no heed of our signals of distress we were not too sorry nor
in the least distressful.

At the seal rocks we tarried long; for there are few spots within the
reach of the usual sight-seer where an enormous family of sea-lions can
be seen at home, sporting in their native element, and at liberty to
come and go in the wide Pacific at their own sweet wills. There they had
lived for numberless generations unmolested; there they still live, for
they are under the protection of the law.

The famous Cliff House is built upon the cliff above them, and above it
is a garden bristling with statues. Thousands upon thousands of curious
idlers stare the sea-folks out of countenance--or try to; but they, the
sons of the salt sea and the daughters of the deep, climb into the
crevices of the rocks to sun themselves, unheeding; or leap into the
waves that girdle them and sport like the fabled monsters of marine
mythology. Seal, sea-leopard, or sea-lion--whatever they may be--they
cry with one voice night and day; and it is not a pleasant cry either,
though a far one, they mouth so horribly. Long ago it inspired a wit to
madness and he made a joke; the same old joke has been made by those who
followed after him. It will continue to be made with impertinent
impunity until the sea gives up its seals; for the t