332 Beyoiiil Ihf Su mis. 



out into the desert it rushes and roars along, then skims the surface a few 

 inches in depth, and then dives into the sand-beds. If the sand could be 

 scooped out of this so-called desert there would remain a salt lake, intoler- 

 able to all forms of life. If the water could be pumi)ed up from the basin 

 and distributed on the surface, there would spread over this plain a veritable 

 gurden of God. But the sand is here, and the water is down there, and so 

 the Mojave hangs suspended midway between the Dead Sea and Paradise. 



During my stay beyond the mountains I had it ever in my mind to 

 pause for a considerable season in San Francisco. I wished to study this ex- 

 treme aspect of American life, and to test, by personal experiences, its 

 rhythm and timbre. I can but regard this far verge of the United States 

 with the deepest interest. I can easily perceive thai on this edge of the 

 Pacific there is an accumulation and massing of forces the like of which has 

 never been seen otherwhere on our planet. The radicalism of mankind has 

 for many centuries taken a westward fl )w. That aggressive part of our race 

 which always feels the draught has followed the sun in his course, until at last 

 it has heaped up on the precipitous edge of this infinite water. The cumu- 

 lative tendency of these powerful human elements is, I believe, jw str(ing as 

 ever. The influence which has carried the most active and adventurous of 

 mankind to the west is a cosmic force, and can no more be stayed than the 

 mighty tides that throb along the surface of the sea. 



Great, therefore, is the intensity of human life in San Francisco. But 1 

 was about to say that my expectations of an extended acquaintance with the 

 civic manners and the social and moral geography of the Pacific metropolis 

 were disappointed. Many circumstances had supervened to cut short my in- 

 tended expeditions, incognito, around the ways and by-ways of Verba Buena. 

 But I saw something of the city, and remember something of what I saw. 



San Francisco is pleasing to the vision. It is built on ridges and high 

 grounds at the northeastern extremity of the peninsula. It is a picturesque 

 city, especially as viewed from the bay or the opposite mainland. These 

 elevations, on which the principal parts of the metropolis are aggregated, 

 are, or were, the celebrated sand-hills, and these you may still see in their 

 unmodified condition between Golden Gite Park and the sea. They are 

 mere ridges of loose sand, of a yellowish color, drifting and whirling under 

 the pressure of the wind. In the absence of experience one might take his 

 affidavit that no living thing could exist in these beds of loose, capricious 

 and juiceless sand. You would sooner expect to see violets growing in an 

 ash-heap. Yet there is one form of life which is a match for the sand-hills, 

 and that is the dune grass. Only by courtesy can it be called grass. It is 

 so hard and sharp and bony that a prudent rhinoceros would reflect long be- 

 fore he would attempt to eat it. The roots are as much like whalebone as 

 the blades. Where they go to I do not pretend to say, but I will venture the 

 opinion that each root is fastened on the under side of the peninsula with a 

 screw-tap. 



Your dune grass grows in small tufts or bunches. That is its method. 



