At intervals when duty would permit we made a study of San Francisco and its life, rich in scene and incident, and most instructive as well as attractive. Some of the noticeable features of the city are its parks and squares. In the northern part or section, Washington and Lobos Squares greet you, while Pioneer Park adorns Telegraph Hill, and Portsmouth Square or the Plaza is just east of the famous Chinese restaurant and close by police headquarters. This last was famous in the early days as the centre of Yerba Buena, and here the American flag was raised for the first time when our marines under Commodore Montgomery took possession of the town. Indeed some of the most exciting scenes in the early history of San Francisco were witnessed in this locality. Volumes might be written about its Spanish and Mexican families, its adobe buildings, its gambling places, its haunts of vice, its public assemblies, its crowds of men from all lands, its social and civic histories.
But all this is of the past, and it seems like a dream of by-gone days. When I visited it on two occasions, in company with friends, it was a quiet place enough; and the casual observer could never have thought or realised that around this romantic spot fortunes made by hard toil of weary months and years had been lost in a few short hours in the saloon and gambling places for which the vicinity was noted, that the worst passions of the human heart had been exhibited here, and that betimes amid the laughter of the merry throng in midnight revelry and above the strains of the "harp and viol" one could have heard the voices of blasphemy and the sharp, loud reports of pistols in the hands of careless characters, whose deadly bullets had sent many a poor unfortunate wayfarer or unwary miner from the gold fields to his long home.
If, in your saunterings, you go through the central part of the city you will find Lafayette Square, Alta Plaza, Hamilton Square, Columbia Square, and Franklin and Jackson Parks, at varying distances from each other and affording variety to the tourist. In the south section you will see Buena Vista Park and Garfield Square, while to the west you have Hill Park and Golden Gate Park. The Golden Gate Park is now famous the world over and vies in beauty and splendour with Central Park in New York, nay, in some respects surpasses this, in that it has a magnificent frontage on the Pacific ocean, a long coast view and a wide range of sea with the Farallone Islands, about twenty miles off in the foreground of the picture, and visible on a clear day always, and most enchanting in the sunset hour as we gazed on them. The Golden Gate Park dates back only to the year 1870, when the California Legislature passed an act providing for the improvement of public parks in San Francisco. At that time this lonely spot, now so like a dream of fairy land, was but a waste, a wide stretch of sand dunes among which the winds of the ocean played hide and seek. Its entrances, with a wide avenue in the foreground running north and south, are some five miles from the Market Street Ferry. The afternoon that my friend Ashton and I visited it was clear and balmy. Just as we were entering the park carriage I was greeted by a young friend from the East, whom I had not seen for years; and then, more than three thousand miles away from home, I realised how small our planet is after all. As we rode along the flowery avenues with green lawns stretching out on either hand and losing themselves in groups of stately trees and hedges of shrubs and Monterey Cypress we were filled with delight. We could see the birds, native and foreign, flying from branch to branch of trees which grew within their gigantic cages, and occasionally we heard the notes of some songster. Yonder, too, we saw deer browsing, and elk and antelope. There also were the buffalo and the grizzly bear; and apparently all forgot that, shut in as they were in wide enclosures, they were in captivity. We could not fail to observe the bright flower-beds on every hand, the pleasant groves, the shady walks, the grottoes of wild design, the woodland retreats, the sylvan bowers. The park, we were told by our communicative driver, John Carter, comprises ten hundred and forty acres of ground. He also pointed out various places and objects of interest. The Museum, by the wayside, in its Egyptian architecture, is like one of the old temples of the Pharaohs on the banks of the Nile.
You are carried into the realm of immortal song when you gaze on the busts of Goethe and Schiller, and your patriotism is stirred afresh as you behold the monument of Francis Scott Key, author of the Star-Spangled Banner. The Muses also have their abode here on the colonnaded Music Stand or Pavilion erected by Claus Spreckles at a cost of $80,000. Another interesting feature is the Japanese Tea Garden. Then there is the well equipped Observatory on Strawberry Hill from which you can look far out to sea, and where star-gazers can study celestial scenery as the Heavens declare God's glory. Seven lakelets give charm to the landscape, but the eye is never weary in looking on Stone Lake, a mile and a quarter in circuit, beautiful with its clear waters, its shelving shores, its bays and miniature headlands, while on its calm bosom, ducks of rich plumage and Australian swans are disporting themselves.
That, however, which attracted our attention most of all was the great grey stone cross on the crest of the highest point of the Golden Gate Park. This, chiseled after the fashion of the old crosses of lona and linked with the name of St. Columba, is the monument erected by the late George W. Childs, of Philadelphia, Pa., to commemorate the first use of the Book of Common Prayer on the Pacific coast, when, in 1579, under Admiral Drake, Chaplain Fletcher read Prayers in this vicinity, either in San Francisco Bay, or a little further north in what is called Drake's Bay. But more of this anon. As we walked from the carriage road, beneath some spreading trees, to get a nearer view of the Prayer Book Cross, numerous partridges were moving about, without fear, in our pathway; and had we been minded to frighten them or do them harm we would have been restrained by yonder symbol of our redemption, which teaches us ever to be tender and humane towards bird and beast and all others of God's helpless creatures. The Prayer Book Cross is seen from afar. It looks down on the city with its innumerable homes, on the cemeteries within its shadow, on the Presidio with its tents and munitions of war, on the Golden Gate and on the waters of the Pacific, and it brings a blessing to all with its message of love and peace. It is a guide too, to the sailor coming over the seas from distant lands. As he strains his eyes to catch a glimpse of the coast the Cross stands out in bold relief against the eastern sky, and it tells him that he will find a hospitable welcome and safe harbourage within the Golden Gate. So it is dear to him after his voyage over stormy seas as was of old
"Sunium's marbled steep"
to the Greek sailor nearing home.
Near Stone Lake we met the head commissioner of the Park who saluted us with all the easy grace of the Californian; and on the way we had the opportunity of receiving a Scotch gentleman and his wife into our carriage; and, later, a clergyman who had been wandering about in the midst of sylvan scenes, rode with us to the entrance of the Park, where we bade our new found friends good-bye, each to go his own way, at eventide.
The third day after our arrival in San Francisco I had a longing to gaze on the Pacific ocean which I had never seen. There were no laurels for us to win, such as Balboa justly deserved when he discovered the Pacific and first beheld its wide waters in the year 1513; but it was a natural desire to look on its broad expanse and to stand on its shores, along which bold navigators had sailed since the days of Cabrillo and Drake. Taking a line of cars running out to the Presidio, Ashton and I walked the rest of the way. A young man named Logan, a cousin of the famous General Logan, who was in the service of the government as a mail carrier, but off duty that afternoon, volunteered most courteously to be our guide. He accompanied us for more than a mile and a half of the distance beyond the Presidio, but then had to return to meet an engagement. We went forward climbing the steep hills and finally found that we were standing on the heights above the immense ocean, in the grounds of the Government Reservation. It was a solemn moment when we for the first time beheld the Pacific, and we were greatly impressed. There the mighty waters, across which the ships sail to China and Japan and the Sandwich Islands and the Philippine Archipelago and the South Seas, lay before our eyes. The darkness of the night was coming on, but the sky far off across the waters, away beyond the Farallone Islands, was tinged with red and gold, the fading glories of the dying day. We could see in the glow of evening the heaving of the sea and the motion of its comparatively calm surface, in that twilight hour.
Gathering clouds hung over the horizon and formed the shadows in the picture. Every picture has light and shade. It is a portrait of life. We stood silently for a time drinking in all the beauty of the scene, well nigh entranced, awed, thrilled betimes; and at last in order to give fitting expression to the thoughts within our hearts, I suggested that we should hold a brief service in recognition of His power who holds the seas in the hollow of His hands, Who had guided our feet in safe paths and byways of the world, often over its troublesome waves. Ashton said an appropriate Collect from the dear old Prayer Book of so many tender and far off memories, while I expressed my feelings in the grand words of the Psalm—"Thy way is in the sea, and Thy paths in the great waters, and Thy footsteps are not known." We felt God's presence in that hushed hour, we saw in vision the divine Christ walking over the waters to us!