SAN FRANCISCO BAY. 21 made all the more luxuriant and charming by the warmth of these infernal fires; and to complete the picture, at sunrise a weird rainbow, refracted from sulphuric vapor, hovers in clear prismatic hues over the cañon, and loses itself in the glistening emerald at either end. Turn then away, happy in the thought that nature inflicts on man few such insights into her sorceries, but rather veils in beauty the mysterious chemical processes of her laboratory. The great sink in the Coast Range, which lies before us near the border of the ocean, and into which the waters of the entire valley are drained, is another marvel of nature, though utilized and made common by man. But for the Golden Gate fissure or cleft, which abruptly cuts in two the continuous coast line, large areas in the interior would be perpetually under water. Were the channel through this bluff-bound gateway less deep, so that the ocean's ebb and flow should not be felt within, San Francisco bay would be a lake. But better far as it is, a lake-like and wellnigh land-locked harbor, larger than Rio de Janeiro, and fairer than Naples; with all the glowing haze and delicious sweetness of the famous Neapolitan air, but without its subtle softness and enervating languor. Mount some warm misty morning to the top of Yerba Buena island, which stands midway between the cove to which it gave its name and Oakland point, and the prospect thence will scarcely fail to kindle the eye, to swell the heart, and awaken longings for other scenes. From this island's base spreads out a mimic ocean, shaped like an arrow-point, sixty miles in length by four or five in width, whose radiant waters fling back the rays of the morning sun, or ripple under the influence of wind and tide, and from whose borders, wavy hills roll up, smooth and round as the bust of Canova's Venus, or dimpled like a merry school-girl's face. These, interspersed with gen tler slopes, and radiating valleys and ridges, and miniature plains, through which thread numerous streamlets, were not long since the home of the prowling panther and marauding coyote, of wild-cat, bear, and deer. Myriads of wild-fowl and sea-birds fished in these waters, and quarreled, filling the air with their shrill cries; while within the bay and without the portal, and for 3000 miles along the shore, were seal-rocks, with crawling monsters barking, enjoying their siesta, or holding conference like sinful souls in purgatory. Northward there is a maze of undulating elevations, domes ridges and peaks, their outline toward the occan delicately penciled against the sky, and further inland in the distance is a background of nebulous mountains, the landscape lighted in places by unseen waters, and all painted in soft aerial colors of varied depth and tone. Toward the south the ridges on either side recede; the water broadens at first, then narrowing, melts away in hazy perspective. Beyond is the great sea, smiling in azure or fretting in impatient green and white, with its silence-breathing surf singing ocean lullabies to the sleepy hills, or rolling in from the horizon huge waves, which, dashing themselves against their shore-limits, fall back foaming at their own impotency. Thus sculptured in the heart of the Coast Range, some parts of the bay are narrow and deep like a highland loch, with bluffs and promontories; in other parts the water spreads out, and encircles large islands, -Angel, Alcatraz, and Yerba Buena, or washes a diminutive beach. Its seaward shore is splintered into points and estuaries; on the opposite side are coves and graceful crescents; while round the northern end, where empties the Sacramento, are bays carved within bays, straits and deep-flowing channels, and sentinel islands and embankments. The northern side of the Golden Gate is a steep, dark, reddish wall, six or eight hundred feet in height. From the top of this wall the hills mount and roll off in warm yellowish-green surges round Tamalpais, deepening into purple as they rise in graceful alpine outline and mingle with the clouds. Opposite this bank the waters of the bay and ocean are separated by a ridge of argillaceous sandstone, severed at the Golden Gate so as to form a peninsula some six miles at the northern end, and broadening into open highlands toward the south. Upon these so lately sandblown hills, freckled with tough, wind-defying shrubbery, beneath whose branches quail and rabbits loved to hide, and birds and rivulets sang together, is now being planted the commercial metropolis of the Farthest West; while all around this favored bay, blustering in its strength and radiant in its beauty, and already white with the sails of every ocean, industries are springing up, towns and cities are being built, and a race of men and women developing which some day will make the nations marvel. The bay of Kieselarke has been called golden because of its shining sands; but far more proper may our beautiful sheet which from the first so gladdened the hearts of the followers of St Francis rejoice in that name, for not only are its shores golden, but its hills and skies, its commerce and its industries, its towns and people are golden. Fair California clad in verdant spring vesture or resting in arid robes under a metallic sky; voluptuous in thy half-tropic bed, in thy sunlit valley warmed with the glow of bronze and rosy lustre, redolent with wild flowers, and billowy with undulating parks and smooth corrugated mounds and swelling heights, with waving grass and fragrance-breathing forests, captivating the mind, and ravishing the senses with thy bewitching charms, and smiling plenty in alternate seasons of refreshing rains and restful dryness; with thy lofty snow-capped peaks, and metal-veined Sierra, and amethystine smooth-browed hills bathed in purple mists and musical with leaping streamlets and songs of birds; with thy corridors of sundered stone, and glacier valleys silvered with moonlit lakes, and cool refreshing basins filled with transparent blue; with thy boisterous alpine streams, and quiet lowland rivers, and sluggish waters wandering through charreterless sloughs; with thy scraggy scattering oaks, and tangled undergrowth, mirrored in crystalline pools, and flowering shrubs, and mighty sable forests; with thy sunlight soft and hazy, and air sea-scented and sparkling yet mellow, stimulating yet restful, and pure and sweet as that which blows from Araby the Blest, yet strong withal, wooing the sick and care-laden, cooling the vein-swollen brow, thrilling the blood with ocean's stimulants and giving new life, not stifling it; with thy native men and beasts, and birds and fishes, and fields of native grain, all hitherto unmarred by man, all fresh as from the hand of the creator revelling in primeval joy and fragrance, while the valley murmurs its contentment, and the forest cypress nods its sable plume; crimson purple and violet in thy blushing beauty veiled in misty gauze that rises fresh and glistening from the sun-beaten ocean, and fills the heavens thick with spray or whirls off in eddying clouds round the mountain tops, breaking from minaret and spire into long streamlets edged by burnished sunlight; voluptuous thus, or fierce in thy wild unrest, in thy lashed energies fiery as Achilles, whatever be thy mood or circumstance, thou art a song of nature ringing an ever changing melody, thou art the smile that lit Jehovah's face when he saw that it was good! CHAPTER II. THREE CENTURIES OF WILD TALK ABOUT GOLD IN CALIFORNIA.-1537-1837. Thrusting, toiling, wailing, moiling, -Shelley. IN those days of unbridled adventure, when man was permitted to prey upon his fellow-man, and when the many-sided world was as yet but partially known to civilization, gold was the chiefest good that strange lands could yield, and hence every strange land, in the imagination or desire of its discoverer, abounded in gold. So it was that California, even before it was seen by any Spaniard, was reputed, without reason, rich in gold. What stories Cabeza de Vaca had to tell, when he arrived from the Mexican gulf at Culiacan, in 1537, of the vast wealth of this whole northern region! As to the truth of the report, it must be true, for it was the people of the country who had informed him, though in language that he did not understand, and of realms of which they knew nothing. From the very first a strong conviction possessed the minds of the conquerors of Mexico that the western coast, particularly toward the north, was rich in gold and pearls; and so all through the century successive expeditions were sent to the gulf of California, and to the peninsula. That most reverend and truthful man, Francis Fletcher, preacher to the pirate Drake, who, because God commanded Adam to subdue the earth, felt it |