tier slopes, and radiating valleys and ridges, and minia-
ture plains, through which thread numerous stream-
lets, were not long since the home of the prowling
panther and marauding coyote, of wild-cat, bear, and
deer. Myriads of wild-fowl and sea-birds fished in
these waters, and quarreled, filling the air with their
shrill cries; while within the bay and without the por-
tal, and for 3000 miles along the shore, were seal-rocks,
with crawling monsters barking, enjoying their siesta,
or holding conference like sinful souls in purgatory.
Northward there is a maze of undulating elevations, domes ridges and peaks, their outline toward the ocean delicately penciled against the sky, and further inland in the distance is a background of nebulous mountains, the landscape lighted in places by unseen waterSj and all painted in soft aerial colors of varied depth and tone. Toward the south the ridges on either side recede; the water broadens at first, then narrowing, melts away in hazy perspective. Beyond is the great sea, smiling in azure or fretting in impa- tient green and white, with its silence-breathing surf singing ocean lullabies to the sleepy hills, or rolling in from the horizon huge waves, which, dashing them- selves aofainst their shore-limits, fall back foamino; at their own impotency.
Thus sculptured in the heart of the Coast Range, some parts of the bay are narrow and deep like a highland loch, with bluffs and promontories ; in otlier parts the water spreads out, and encircles large islands, ■ — Angel, Alcatraz, and Yerba Buena, — or washes a diminutive beach. Its seaward shore is splintered into points and estuaries; on the opposite side are coves and graceful crescents ; while round the northern end, where empties the Sacramento, are bays carved within bays, straits and deep- flowing channels, and sentinel islands and embankments.
The northern side of the Golden Gate is a steep, dark, reddish wall, six or eiq-ht hundred feet in heiglit. From the top of this wall the hills mount and roll off
