Collected works > Edinburgh edition, 1894-98 - Works of Robert Louis Stevenson > Volume 3, 1895 - Travels and Excursions, Volume II

SAN FRANCISCO
level, over-plumbs the narrow entrance from the north.
On the south, the loud music of the Pacific sounds
along beaches and cUffs, and among broken reefs,
the sporting-place of the sea-Hon. Dismal, shifting
sandhills, wrinkled by the wind, appear behind.
Perhaps, too, in the days of Drake, Tamalpais would
be clothed to its peak with the majestic redwoods.
Within the memory of persons not yet old, a
mariner might have steered into these narrows — not
yet the Golden Gates — opened out the surface of
the bay — here girt with hills, there lying broad to
the horizon — and beheld a scene as empty of the
presence, as pure from the handiwork, of man, as in
the days of our old sea-commander. A Spanish
mission, fort, and church took the place of those
* houses of the people of the country' which were
seen by Pretty, 'close to the water-side.' All else
would be unchanged. Now, a generation later, a
great city covers the sandhUls on the west, a grow-
ing town hes along the muddy shallows of the east ;
steamboats pant continually between them from
before sunrise till the small hours of the morning;
lines of great sea-going ships lie ranged at anchor ;
colours fly upon the islands ; and from all around
the hum of corporate life, of beaten bells, and steam,
and running carriages, goes cheerily abroad in the
sunshine. Choose a place on one of the huge throb-
bing ferry-boats, and, when you are midway between
the city and the suburb, look around. The air is
fresh and salt as if you were at sea. On the one
hand is Oakland, gleaming white among its gardens.
3— N 193