USA > California > San Francisco County > San Francisco > Men and memories of San Francisco in the "spring of '50" > Part 14
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Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14
To those who say, "Oh, Drake passed it in the fog-navigators do it now, every month in the year in which fogs prevail," we will reply that Captain Drake's log says: "We followed the shore on foot, southward, one hundred miles, etc.," describing the climate, soil, general ap- pearance, until they "came to a river flowing into the sea.'' Now, that river's outlet must have been some sixty miles south of San Fran- cisco's present location-that river poured the waters of the Sacramento and the San Joaquin into the Pacific. There might have been an inland lake, lying all the way where the Bay now stretches, from San Francisco's northern extremity to San José. It is more reasonable to believe that a great convulsion of Nature
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formed the Golden Gate since Drake was here, than that there was a harbor here then, and he did not discover it. Long after Drake's day came the great French navigator, La Perouse. He never found a harbor where we now see the heaving tide bearing the "richly freighted argosies.'' Nor did any one ever know or sus- pect its existence until about a century ago, when the Franciscan friars, traveling up from Mexico to found their missions still farther north, came upon the headlands at what is now known as Point Lobos, and looking down upon the leaping breakers on the Bar, saw that which no civilized man had ever before seen-the grandest harbor between Puget Sound and Cape Horn. We have always believed that the Franciscan friars were the discoverers of the Golden Gate; that they were the first of civ- ilized men who looked upon the result of that awful convulsion which rent the mountains and sank them in the exulting ocean's mouth, whose foaming, trembling lip ceaselessly frets along the rocky shore, as if in hungry anticipa- tion of another greedy swallow out of the op- posing body of its natural enemy. As we look upon the huge fracture on the northern sea wall, built by Earth's architect, we can imagine the fearful throes of Mother Nature-the aw-
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ful subterranean thunders, the grinding of sunken rocks and roar of engulfing waters, the clouds of blinding dust, the wild flight of ter- rified birds, and dreadful consternation of every living thing within the scope of its paralyzing action.
Always, as we look upon the swelling tide at the harbor's mouth, the ocean seems like some huge, breathing, conscious animal, panting yet with the pride of its achievement, but too un- wieldy and gigantic ever again to be composed and calm until the lapse of centuries.
Often, in years gone by, we used to hear from the early settlers of the country adjacent to San Francisco (then "Yerba Buena"*) of a tra- dition among Indians that, many, many years ago, their forefathers went down from their homes above where we now live, to attend a great festival somewhere near the present site of Monterey-and that, while there, a terrible earthquake occurred. When they were return- ing to their homes, they found the old pathway abruptly ended at a jagged cliff, from whose pre- cipitous edge they gazed with wonder at a flow- ing sea beneath their feet; then turned and wound their toilsome way far round the Contra
*Good Herb. "Yerba Buena," an aromatic herb growing at that time on the hills of the present city's site.
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Costa side. "Never, since that day," says the legend, "has the Devil's Mountain (Monte Diablo) spit forth fire and smoke."
THE FARALLONES. - A little surf-washed and storm-beaten group of rocky islets; not large enough to be dignified by the term islands, yet standing so firm against the great Pacific Ocean's long swell, that, rising off the shores of Japan, never ceases until it leaps in snowy foam and thunders in angry rage against this sturdy little outpost of the great continent that bars its fur- ther progress. How few among the one hun- dred and seventy thousand-mas o menos-in- habitants, who every morning enjoy their regular coffee and Alta, have any idea of the Farrallones, within thirty miles of where they spin out their thread of life ? How many dwellers in the Chrysopolis can tell you how many millions of dozen of murr's eggs have been taken from these rocky rookeries since the year 1849? How many are there who know the meaning of the word Farall ? Velesquez's Spanish dictionary says: Farallon-a cliff, a cape, a headland, a pointed island in the sea. Some have thought it meant the island of the Lion (Leone), Farall Leone. Some Spaniards say Farall is lantern, beacon, lighthouse. There is a gigantic mono-
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lith upon these rocks, with an immense, clean- cut, round hole, like the window, or light in a lantern, through which the setting sun glows with peculiar effect. Some say that from this the name is derived. The lighthouse beams its welcome beacon to the fog-bewildered mariner from the topmost point of these rocks now; but it is not likely that any lanterns were ever hung there before, since the place was known to man, by land or sea. But it is not with the name that we have now to do-'tis with the dwellers upon this lonely little out- post-the countless myriads of sea-birds-the Murre, or Muir, as it is vulgarly called-the " Uria Californica," as classed by ornithologists. No description can give the reader any concep- tion of the numbers of these birds thronging this spot, perching upon every possible foothold, every projection where a lodgment can be obtained; crowding the pinnacles and ridges; squeezing into every hollow and aperture; in- numerable as blades of grass. In one place known as the Great Rookery-a hollow, or little valley-the birds are so densely packed that, save at the outskirts of the crowd, nothing but the heads of the birds can be seen. So closely do they crowd together, that their heads, in uniformity of size and color, seem like a vast
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bed of pebbles agitated by some subterranean commotion; and it is almost an impossibility for one of them to rise upon his wings or extri- cate himself from the entanglement, unless he be one of the outer ones.
They live upon fish, and may be truly said to earn their living, as well as any of the hardy Italians who sally out in all weathers, and seem as industrious and fearless in capturing their prey, as the feathered dwellers of these little islets. The Murre's egg is rather larger than the ordinary hen's egg; of a dim, turquoise blue, spotted with black. They are rather strongly flavored, like all sea birds' eggs, but are not un- palatable, and are esteemed by some as superior in the making of cakes and pies. When the weather is calm and warm, and the lazy, glassy ocean slowly heaves, like the breathing of some gigantic, sentient being, the Murre basks quietly in the semi-tropical sun, sleepily enjoying the renewed vitality that the sun sends through every living thing; slowly blinking and raising their feathers in the fervid rays, with a half- uttered note of lazy comfort, recuperating for the bristling activity of the coming winds and dashing, foam-crested breakers. Then the Murre is in his element. When the long-sailing, weather-beaten ships look anxiously for the
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brave little pilot; when every craft-even the Italian fisherman-seeks the haven, then the Murre revels in undisturbed possession, and wildly screams his exultation as he dashes into the seething foam of the thundering breakers, wresting his finny prey from where no boat could live; disappearing in the roaring waters, and remaining so long submerged that the spec- tator, who watches his fearless dive, has long given him up for lost, when suddenly he rises above the commotion of water, poises an instant to shake the brine from his oily overcoat, then soars away with his food and the meal for his expectant fledglings, awaiting in some nook, crevice, fissure, niche, or projecting inequality, where a nest can hold two of those callow, auk bipeds.
We gaze, and wonder if Drake and his men stood, in 1579, where we now stand, watching the whilom projectors of this busy colony; if the Farallones were here in the days of Queen Bess' favorite admiral, which we greatly doubt; as Sir Francis' log says: "We hunted along the coast (on land) from our winter quarters (Drake's Bay), and found the coast to be," etc., etc., describing it; and, as Drake's Bay is only thirty miles north of the entrance of San Fran- cisco harbor, and he found no harbor, nor yet
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the Farallones, it is very reasonable to believe that the convulsion of Nature which rent those dry, perpendicular, broken cliffs, on which we look as we ride along the southern head, came subsequent to Drake's visit, or even that of La Perouse; and in that fearful hour the home of our feathered tribe rose, all dark and dripping, from the astonished Neptune's long embrace. Certainly this abrupt, little, solitary island could not have been overlooked by an explor- ing party passing an entire winter, only thirty miles away, where it is visible every clear day. No! on the whole, we think the birds' nests were not here in Sir Francis's time.
How curious are the many natural formations of rock: the little arches, the port-holes, bas- tions, niches, battlements, towers, walled sentry boxes; that natural bridge, with its sharply de- fined crossway and high-sprung arch. See the crowd of birds on its railed edge. They stand so close and regular that, in the distance, they seem like some grass or vegetation growing there. What a singular effect is produced, as the snow-white breakers rush, roaring up the deep chasm, spanned by this firm bit of Nature's masonry; the leaping, seething foam hides the blue ocean, clear away to the horizon, giving to our vision only the sky above the flying, fleecy
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froth, chafing forever at the bridge's immovable foundations-forever falling back, baffled and defeated, and still again returning, as Hope fights Fate, in useless, but in undying courage.
It is good for the intermural dweller, whose life, actions and thoughts have been year after year bounded by the Pueblo limits, to come here, and with long, grateful inhalations of old Ocean's salty breath, expand the thoracic muscles, win fresh vitality and new ammuni- tion for the wasting tissues of his body, and, perchance, a healthful, introspective hour for the mental faculties, too often warped and dis- torted by long lingering "in the busy marts of men."
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CONCLUSION.
MANY of the buildings of '49 and '50 are still standing in their original positions. We find most of them in the northern part of the city. Some of them show little, if any change, outwardly. Their time-worn, old fashion ap- pearance adds to their interest. Some of them are high up above the street-grade of to-day, perched upon cliffs, made by mortal hands-by political chicanery-to reward, by means of street contracts, the firm and faithful. Away up the long-reaching, repeated flights of stairs, where the old dwellings now stand, we used to walk along the natural grade. City surveys have not improved it, nor forced these faithful old homes to leave their premises. We cannot but rejoice in their tenacity-their firm adherence to the old spot, in spite of every scheme to oust and render them worthless. Sometimes we come upon one of the old, familiar dwellings, upon some street whose grade has not been changed- some old homestead, standing so unassumingly
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amid its pretentious, obtrusive neighbors, in their uniform of stucco-work ornamentation, and flashing plate glass, like files of nicely-decked soldiers on dress parade, and so completely changing all the old, once familiar ground, that, when we suddenly recognize our time-honored, old acquaintance, for the moment we are greatly puzzled to decide whether the mountain has come to Mohammed, or vice versa. Occasionally, in our peregrinations, we are startled by con- fronting, upon some newly-opened way in the sands beyond Market street, the well-known features of some once grand edifice, grown ven- erable in years of service on an old, central thoroughfare. A sense of the ludicrous close jostles our surprise, as if, led by impecuniosity to our uncle's office, we came upon Ralston or Hayward, furtively concealing something, and trying to seem calmly indifferent. There is something touching in the sight of an old dwelling-house in San Francisco-old for this city, where the strange vicissitudes of many years of ordinary life are rolled in one. Their time-worn fronts seem like the pleasant faces of old friends. We love to look upon their vine-clad porches, so full of interesting remi- niscences -the sheltering, glazed verandas, along whose sounding floors in by-gone years
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pattered so many little feet-some treading now in the firm step of manhood, and others carried out, so still and white, through the old gate, long years ago, to rest forever. Those little window- panes have many times reflected the conflagra- tion's lurid flames, and revealed the happier picture of the young wife's welcoming face, and smiles of curly-pate children. The green-gray roof, the low-ceiled rooms-each sanctified by its own history of joy or sorrow, of birth and death, and parting words and farewell kiss.
We cling to everything of good belonging to the spring of '50. If we admit that change is progress, and that progress is improvement, 'tis with a sigh that we confess it. With kind- ness in our hearts toward every one, we still remember those old words, "Old books to read, old wine to drink, old wood to burn, and old friends to talk with;"' and we may be forgiven for clinging to the old associations and the men belonging to San Francisco in the Spring of '50.
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