human
I remembered when a school-boy reading Dana's
gpt
Two Years before the Mast, in which he speaks so contemptuously of Yerba Buena, and its Mexican Rip Van Winkles. What a change here since then! Off to the west rolled the blue Pacific, sea and sky meeting everywhere. Then came Fort Point, with its formidable batteries, commanding the Golden Gate; and then the old Presidio, with the stars and stripes waving over it. Farther inland were the stunted live-oaks and gleaming marbles of Lone Mountain Cemetery, with the Broderick Monument rising over all. Then came the live, busy, bustling, pushing city, with its quarter of a million of inhabitants nearly, soon to be a million, its wharves thronged with the ships of all nations, but with harbor-room to spare sufficient to float the navies of the world. Beyond, lay Oakland, loveliest of suburbs, smiling in verdure and beauty, with Mount Diabolo towering in the distance--his snow-crowned summit flashing in the sunlight. The Sacramento and Stockton boats, from the heart of California were already in. Past the Golden Gate, and up the noble bay, with boom of welcoming cannon, came the Hong Kong steamer fresh from Japan. The Panama steamer, with her fires banked and flag flying, was just ready to cast off. While off to the south, a long train of cars, from down the bay and San Josè, came thundering in. A hundred church spires pierced the sky; the smoke from numberless mills and factories, machine-shops and foundries, drifted over the harbor; the horse-car bells tinkled on every side--the last proofs of American progress--and all around us were the din and boom of Yankee energy, and thrift, and go-ahead-ative-ness, in place of the old Rip Van Winkleism. I don't wonder, that all good Pacific Coasters believe in San Francisco, and expect to go there when they die! Her hotels, her school-houses, her churches, her Bank of California, her Wells-Fargo Express, her Mission Woollen Mills, her lines of ocean steam-ships, and a hundred other things, all suggest great wealth and brains; and yet they are only the first fruits of nobler fortune yet to come. She is what Carlyle might call an undeniable fact, a substantial verity; and, in spite of her
human
moves onward to empire with giant strides. She contained already fully a third of the population of the whole state of California, and was