As we drew in through the Golden Gate, another light-house
met our eyes, and in the clear moonlight of the unbroken California
summer we saw, on the right, a large fortification protecting the
narrow entrance, and just before us the little island of Alcatraz
confronted us,- one entire fortress. We bore round the point toward
the old anchoring-ground of the hide ships, and there, covering the
sand-hills and the valleys, stretching from the water's edge to the
base of the great hills, and from the old Presidio to the Mission,
flickering all over with the lamps of its streets and houses, lay a
city of one hundred thousand inhabitants. Clocks tolled the hour of
midnight from its steeples, but the city was alive from the salute
of our guns, spreading the news that the fortnightly steamer had come,
bringing mails and passengers from the Atlantic world. Clipper ships
of the largest size lay at anchor in the stream, or were girt to the
wharves; and capacious high-pressure steamers, as large and showy as
those of the Hudson or Mississippi, bodies of dazzling light,
awaited the delivery of our mails to take their courses up the Bay,
stopping at Benicia and the United States Naval Station, and then up
the great tributaries- the Sacramento, San Joaquin, and Feather
Rivers- to the far inland cities of Sacramento, Stockton, and
Marysville.
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