rock fortress of Alcatraz presenting its tier above tier of black cannon, standing like the sentinel at the gateway, keeping grim watch and ward at the western portal of a mighty land. A huge, black- hulled steamer was heading out through the Golden Gate into the blue Pacific, bound for the Columbia, Victoria, Mexico, Panama, or possibly to far-off lands on the other edge of the world, beyond our western horizon. White sails gleamed here and there over the whole Bay of San Francisco, and over its broad surface white-hulled ferry and river steamers could be seen plowing their way. The Bay of San Pablo was a duck-pond at our feet—the Straits of Carquinez dwindling away to a mere silver thread in the distance—and the Bay of Suisun only a whitey-brown patch in the landscape farther north. Oakland, and all her sister towns along the eastern shore of the Bay of San Francisco, looked out here and there from the midst of embowering trees. Mount Diablo, clad in garments of dun and straw color, rose high into the blue sky on the eastward, seeming to ascend as we ascended, and grow taller and more gigantic at every step; following us up, as it were, and bullying us as we went, as if determined that we should not be permitted to look down upon him nor receive a diminished idea of his importance. Northward and northeastward, stretching out leagues on leagues from his base, were the wide, dark tule swamps, and half-submerged islands of the Sacramento and San Joaquin, bordered by bright, straw-colored valleys, stretching away to the point where the dark green line of the summits of the Sierra Nevada melted into
