western shore, is a climate of comfort, of chances for outof-door exercise and out-of-door daily pleasures all the year around-no cyclones, no blizzards, no thunderstorms, nothing but soft-falling rains and sunshine. Opinion of In the half-century just passed, history has been Bryce's making rapidly here in the far West, but it is history that the City. means something, and history that stands: Here is a picture of the city sketched by that noted Englishman, James Bryce, in his "American Commonwealth." He says: "Few cities in the world can vie with San Francisco either in the beauty or in the natural advantages of her situation; indeed, there are only two places in EuropeConstantinople and Gibraltar-that combine an equally perfect landscape with what may be called an equally imperial position. Before you there is the magnificent bay, with its far-stretching arms and rocky isles, and beyond it the faint line of the Sierra Nevada, cutting the clear air like mother of pearl; between mountains through which ships bear in commerce from the farthest shores of the Pacific; to the right, valleys rich with corn and wine, sweeping away to the southern horizon. The city itself is full of bold hills, rising steeply from the deep water. The air is keen, dry and bright, like the air of Greece, and the waters not less blue. Perhaps it is the air and light, recalling the cities of the Mediterranean, that makes one involuntarily look up to the top of these hills for the feudal castle or the ruins of the Acropolis, which, one thinks, must crown them." All the world of letters and all the world of men who knew him loved "the Tusitala," Robert Louis Stevenson, romancer and wizard of the South Seas and essayist of rarest worth. Said he of San Francisco: Louis Words. "But San Francisco is not herself only. She is not Robert only the most interesting city in the Union and the Stevenson's hugest smelting pot of races and of precious metals; she keeps, besides, the doors of the Pacific, and is the port of entry to another world and an earlier epoch to man's history. Nowhere else will you observe (in the ancient phrase) so many tall ships as here convene from round the South Seas. Craft from the Horn, from China, from Sydney, and the Indies; but scarce remarked amid that crowd of deep-sea giants another class of craft, the island schooner, circulates—low in the water, with lofty spars, and dainty lines, rigged and fashioned like a yacht, manned with brown-skinned, soft-spoken, sweet-eyed, native sailors, and equipped with their great double-ender boats, that tell a tale of boisterous sea-beaches. Discovery of San Francisco "I stood there on the extreme shore of the West and of to-day. Seventeen hundred years ago, and seven thousand miles to the east, the legionaries stood, perhaps, upon the walls of Antonius and looked northward toward the mountains of the Picts. For all the interval of time and space, I, when I looked from the Cliff House, on the broad Pacific, was that man's heir and analogue-each of us standing on the verge of the Roman Empire (or, as we now call it, Western Civilization), each of us gazing onward into zones unromanized." This city, that Mr. Bryce compares to Constantinople Bay and Gibraltar, is in latitude 37° 47′ north; longitude 122° 25' west. It is upon the west shore of San Francisco bay, a land-locked harbor that has been the pride of navigators ever since Lieutenant Juan de Ayala, in August, 1775, sailed into the harbor through the Golden Gate, and told the world of its wonders. It is twenty-six miles long and six miles wide. The accredited discoverer of the bay of San Francisco is Gaspar de Portolá, and the date November 7, 1769. With his little party he was traveling northerly, searching for the Mission of El Carmelo, near Monterey, but had lost his bearings and traveled many miles out of his way. way. A year later came the founding of the Mission of San Francisco-the Mission Dolores-in memory of San Francisco's patron saint, St. Francis of Assisi. The founding of Mission Dolores, October, 1776—a campaign of peace while our revolutionary forefathers were battling on the Atlantic Coast-was the beginning of San Francisco. Then it was known as Yerba Buena, and a picture of it is well drawn in Richard Henry Dana's Cry Heard Round the World. "Two Years Before the Mast." It was just a little village of hide and tallow traders, until the discovery of gold roused the world to send this way the best of men from all nations. Here, for three-quarters of a century, the sacrificing priests toiled and taught their Indian pupils. Here, later, came troops from Spain by way of Mexico. Then came the building of a fort, and the laying out of the Presidio, and after that, ships from many quarters of the world for horns, hides and tallow and water supply. January 19, 1848, is the date of the gold discovery, when James W. Marshall, an employee of General John A. Sutter, found, in the millrace of Coloma, El Dorado county, bits of sparkling metal that he knew were gold. Like the shots at Lexington and Concord, Marshall's cry Marshall's of "Gold!" was heard round the world. Hither in two years, from over sea and over land, came more than one hundred thousand adventurous men. San Francisco was the rendezvous, and thence up the river, thence over the hills by mule-back and horse-back, they went to the mines of the Sierra Nevada. Stern tales are told of these days, and the seeker for the picturesque may find many stories and many narratives of adventure and romance, pathetic and tragic, all relating to these days of treasure seeking. Mining in the Sierra and in the streams flowing from it, developed trade and brought about a certain amount of stock-raising and agriculture. Then the adventurous men fell back upon the towns and cities, back to Marysville and Sacramento, to San Jose and San Francisco. This city, by reason of its location upon the bay, of its vast fish food supply, of its small social center, soon became the headquarters and chief city of Alta California, a position which it has ever maintained, until to-day it holds its rank as the chief city of the United States west of Chicago. of the Pilgrimage This early rapid growth of the city, as well as the Argonauts. growth of California due to the gold discovery, meant the coming here of men of strength of mind, as well as of body. Their impress has been left upon the city and upon the State. Between April and December, 1849,-to indi |