There were no settlements on these bays or rivers,
and the few ranchos and Missions were remote and widely separated. Not
only the neighborhood of our anchorage, but the entire region of the
great bay, was a solitude. On the whole coast of California there
was not a lighthouse, a beacon, or a buoy, and the charts were made up
from old and disconnected surveys by British, Russian, and Mexican
voyagers. Birds of prey and passage swooped and dived about us, wild
beasts ranged through the oak groves, and as we slowly floated out
of the harbor with the tide, herds of deer came to the water's edge,
on the northerly side of the entrance, to gaze at the strange
spectacle.
On the evening of Saturday, the 13th of August, 1859, the superb
steamship Golden Gate, gay with crowds of passengers, and lighting the
sea for miles around with the glare of her signal lights of red,
green, and white, and brilliant with lighted saloons and staterooms,
bound up from the Isthmus of Panama, neared the entrance to San
Francisco, the great centre of a world-wide commerce. Miles out at
sea, on the desolate rocks of the Farallones, gleamed the powerful
rays of one of the most costly and effective light-houses in the
world.
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