of coast. South of the joint firth of the
Columbia and Williamette, there flows in no considerable river; south of
Puget Sound there is no protected inlet of the ocean. Along the whole
seaboard of California there are but two unexceptionable
anchorages,--the bight of the Bay of Monterey, and the inland sea that
takes its name from San Francisco.

Whether or not it was here that Drake put in in 1597, we cannot tell.
There is no other place so suitable; and yet the narrative of Francis
Pretty scarcely seems to suit the features of the scene. Viewed from
seaward, the Golden Gates should give no very English impression to
justify the name of a new Albion. On the west, the deep lies open;
nothing near but the still vexed Farallones. The coast is rough and
barren. Tamalpais, a mountain of a memorable figure, springing direct
from the sea-level, over-plumbs the narrow entrance from the north. On
the south, the loud music of the Pacific sounds along beaches and
cliffs, and among broken reefs, the sporting-place of the sea-lion.
Dismal, shifting sandhills, wrinkled by the wind, appear behind.
Perhaps, too, in the days of Drake, Tamalpais would be clothed to its
peak with the majestic redwoods.

Within the memory of persons not yet old, a mariner might have steered
into these narrows--not yet the Golden Gates--opened out the surface of
the bay--here girt with hills, there lying broad to the horizon--and
beheld a scene as empty of the presence, as pure from the handiwork, of
man, as in the days of our old sea-commander. A Spanish mission, fort,
and church took the place of those "houses of the people of the country"
which were seen by Pretty, "close to the water-side." All else would be
unchanged. Now, a generation later, a great city covers the sandhills on
the west, a growing town lies along the muddy shallows of the east;
steamboats pant continually between them from before sunrise till the
small hours of the morning; lines of great sea-going ships lie ranged at
anchor; colours fly upon the islands; and from all around the hum of
corporate life, of beaten bells, and steam, and running carriages, goes
cheerily abroad in the sunshine. Choose a place on one of the huge
throbbing ferry-boats, and, when you are midway between the city and the
suburb, look around. The air is fresh and salt as if you were at sea. On
the one hand is Oakland, gleaming white among its gardens. On the other,
to seaward, hill after hill is crowded and cr