s as mountains and water. I have not seen a living
thing but gulls and seal, and God knows we had enough of both at Sitka."

"Ah, your excellency, in a land as fertile as this, and caressed by a
climate that would coax life from a stone, there must be an infinite
number of aquatic and aerial treasures that will add materially to the
scientific lore of Europe."

"Humph!" said Rezanov, and moved his shoulder in an uncontrollable
gesture of dismissal. But the spell of the April morning was broken,
although the learned doctor was not to be the only offender.

The Golden Gate is but a mile in width and the swift current carried
the Juno toward a low promontory from the base of which a shrill cry
suddenly ascended. Rezanov, raising his glass, saw that what he had
taken to be a pile of fallen rocks was a fort, and that a group of
excited men stood at its gates. Once more the plenipotentiary on a
delicate mission, he ordered the two naval officers sailing the ship to
come forward, and retired to the dignified isolation of the cabin.

The high-spirited young officers, who would have raised a gay hurrah at
the sight of civilized man had it not been for the awe in which they
held their chief, saluted the Spaniards formally, then stood in an
attitude of extreme respect; the Juno was directly under the guns of
the fort.

One of the Spaniards raised a speaking trumpet and shouted:

"Who are you?"

No one on the Juno, save Rezanov, could speak a word of Spanish, but
the tone of the query was its own interpreter. The oldest of the
lieutenants, through the ship's trumpet, shouted back:

"The Juno--Sitka--Russian."

The Spanish officer made a peremptory gesture that the ship come to
anchor in the shelter given by an immense angle of the mainland, of
which the fort's point was the western extreme. The Russians, as
befitted the peaceful nature of their mission, obeyed without delay.
Before their resting place, and among the sand hills a mile from the
beach, was a quadrangle of buildings some two hundred feet square and
surrounded by a wall about fourteen feet high and seven feet thick.
This they knew to be the Presidio. They saw the officers that had
hailed them gallop over the hill behind the fort to the more ambitious
enclosure, and, in the square, confer with another group that seemed to
be in a corresponding state of excitement. A few moments later a
deputation of officers, accompanied by a priest in the brown habit of