I Am Taken Down To
The Wharves, By Antiquaries Of A Ten Or Twelve Years' Range,
To Identify The Two Points, Now Known As Clark's And Rincon,
Which Formed The Little Cove Of Yerba Buena, Where We Used To
Beach Our Boats, - Now Filled Up And Built Upon.
The island we
called "Wood Island," where we spent the cold days and nights
of December, in our launch, getting wood for our year's supply,
is clean shorn of trees; and the bare rocks of Alcatraz Island,
an entire fortress.
I have looked at the city from the water
and islands from the city, but I can see nothing that recalls the
times gone by, except the venerable Mission, the ruinous Presidio,
the high hills in the rear of the town, and the great stretches of
the bay in all directions.
To-day I took a California horse of the old style, - the run, the
loping gait, - and visited the Presidio. The walls stand as they
did, with some changes made to accommodate a small garrison of
United States troops. It has a noble situation, and I saw from
it a clipper ship of the very largest class, coming through the
Gate, under her fore-and-aft sails. Thence I rode to the Fort,
now nearly finished, on the southern shore of the Gate, and made an
inspection of it. It is very expensive and of the latest style.
One of the engineers here is Custis Lee, who has just left West
Point at the head of his class, - a son of Colonel Robert E. Lee,
who distinguished himself in the Mexican War.
Another morning I ride to the Mission Dolores. It has a strangely
solitary aspect, enhanced by its surroundings of the most uncongenial,
rapidly growing modernisms; the hoar of ages surrounded by the
brightest, slightest, and rapidest of modern growths. Its old
belfries still clanged with the discordant bells, and Mass was
saying within, for it is used as a place of worship for the
extreme south part of the city.
In one of my walks about the wharves, I found a pile of dry hides
lying by the side of a vessel. Here was something to feelingly
persuade me what I had been, to recall a past scarce credible to
myself. I stood lost in reflection. What were these hides - what
were they not? - to us, to me, a boy, twenty-four years ago?
These were our constant labor, our chief object, our almost
habitual thought. They brought us out here, they kept us here,
and it was only by getting them that we could escape from the
coast and return to home and civilized life. If it had not been
that I might be seen, I should have seized one, slung it over my
head, walked off with it, and thrown it by the old toss - I do not
believe yet a lost art - to the ground. How they called up to my
mind the months of curing at San Diego, the year and more of beach
and surf work, and the steering of the ship for home!
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