MISSION OF SAN FRANCISCO DE ASÍS, COMMONLY CALLED MISSION DOLORES.
“It stood unharmed through the earthquake and fire of 1906 which laid low all its proud modern neighbors.”
The church of San Francisco de Asís, popularly known as Mission Dolores, still stands in a good state of preservation, having almost miraculously withstood the earthquake and fire of 1906, which laid low all its proud modern neighbors. Of its patron, the gentle St. Francis, it may be said that he was the son of a rich merchant, but that he abandoned his riches, adopted vows of poverty, and founded the order of Franciscans. “While in a trance, or vision, after having fasted for fifty days, he received the miraculous imprint of the wounds of the Savior on his hands, feet, and side.” His chief attributes were humility, poverty, and love for animals. In pictures he is always represented as accompanied by a pet lamb.
THE GOLDEN GATE
Although this name, not being of Spanish or Indian origin, is not properly included in these pages, its close relationship to San Francisco, and its position as the gate-way to the entire state, will not permit it to be passed by.
In view of the comparatively recent origin of the name, 1844, and the accessibility of the story, it seems strange indeed that any writer should have advanced the theory that the Golden Gate received its name from Sir Francis Drake, yet this wholly unfounded explanation has found its way into print. In the first place, it has been pretty thoroughly established by historians that Drake never saw the inner harbor, and knew nothing of the narrow strait leading to it. In the report of his voyage, written by one of his companions, we read: “At 38 degrees toward the line, it pleased God to send us into a faire and good harborow, with a good wind to enter the same. Our General called this country Nova Albion, and that for two causes;—the one in respect of the white bankes and cliffes, which ly toward the sea; and the other that it might have some affinity with our country in name, which sometime was so-called.” The white cliffs under Point Reyes answer so well to this description that there can be little doubt that Drake’s anchorage was in the small outer bay under that point, now known as Drake’s Bay; to say nothing of the fact that the account of the voyage has no word concerning the great land-locked harbor, with a narrow strait as its only entrance, a circumstance so novel that, as Bancroft justly observes, Drake could not have failed to mention it had he known aught of it.
All discussion of the name Golden Gate is, moreover, brought to an end by the fact that its real author, John Charles Fremont, gives a circumstantial account of it in his Memoirs. After an elaborate description of the bay, and its surroundings, he says: “Between these points is the strait,—about one mile broad in its narrowest part, and five miles long from the sea to the bay. To this gate I gave the name of Chrysopylae, or Golden Gate; for the same reasons that the harbor of Byzantium (Constantinople afterwards), was called Chrysoceras, or Golden Horn. The form of the harbor and its advantages for commerce, and that before it became an entrepot of eastern commerce, suggested the name to the Greek founders of Byzantium. The form of the entrance into the bay of San Francisco, and its advantages for commerce, Asiatic inclusive, suggested to me the name which I gave to this entrance, and which I put upon the map that accompanied a geographical memoir addressed to the senate of the United States, in June, 1848.”
Here we have, told in the somewhat pedantic language of its author, the true story of the first appearance of the famous name Golden Gate upon the map of the world, and instead of its having been “named by Colonel Fremont because of the brilliant effect of the setting sun on the cliffs and hills,” as one writer has fondly imagined, or from any idea connected with the shining metal, which still lay buried deep from the sight of man beneath the mountains of the land, it was born in a sordid dream of commerce. Yet, for so wonderfully apt a name, whatever may have been Fremont’s motive in selecting it, we owe him a debt of gratitude.