V.

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.

San Francisco has as many hills as Rome.  The most conspicuous of these stands at the northeast corner of the town; it is Telegraph Hill, upon whose brawny shoulder stood the first home we knew in the young Metropolis.  After rounding Telegraph Hill, we saw all the city front, and it was not much to see:  a few wooden wharves crowded with shipping and backed by a row of one or two-story frame buildings perched upon piles.  The harbor in front of the city—­more like an open roadstead than a harbor, for it was nearly a dozen miles to the opposite shore—­was dotted with sailing-vessels of almost every description, swinging at anchor, and making it a pretty piece of navigation to pick one’s way amongst them in safety.

As the John L. Stevens approached her dock we saw that an immense crowd had gathered to give us welcome.  The excitement on ship and shore was very great.  After a separation of perhaps years, husbands and wives and families were about to be reunited.  Our joy was boundless; for we soon recognized our father in the waiting, welcoming throng.  But there were many whose disappointment was bitter indeed when they learned that their loved ones were not on board.  Often a ship brought letters instead of the expected wife and family; for at the last moment some unforeseen circumstance may have prevented the departure of the one so looked for and so longed for.  In the confusion of landing we nearly lost our wits, and did not fully recover them until we found ourselves in our own new home in the then youngest State in the Union.