IN CALIFORNIA 3 



Golden Gate, at first believed to have been the Bay 

 of San Francisco, but identified by modern his- 

 torians as the neighboring Drake's Bay. From the 

 diary of Drake's chaplain, a certain fanciful Fran- 

 cis Fletcher, one gleans little that is now recogniza- 

 ble of California natural history. "How unhand- 

 some and deformed," he complains, "appeared the 

 face of the earthe itselfe, shewing trees without 

 leaves and the ground without greennesse. ... In 

 the middest of their summer, the snow hardly de- 

 parteth even from their doores, but is never taken 

 away from their hills at all." Evidently the sum- 

 mer of 1579 was an " unusual" one, as a modern 

 Californian would put it, or, what is more likely, 

 the plain-spoken Drake was right when he described 

 his chaplain as "the lyingest knave that lived." 



The account of the Spaniard Viscaino, who in 

 November, 1602, cast anchor in the harbor of San 

 Diego, contains a few sentences bearing on plant- 

 life, that possess interest. His men explored a 

 tongue of hilly land plainly the noble promontory 

 now called Point Loma, which throws a protecting 

 arm around San Diego Bay. A couple of genera- 

 tions ago there was a tradition among San Diegans 

 that this point, now bare of native tree growth, was 

 once well wooded, and Viscaino 's record confirms 

 this. His explorers, he says, "found on the hill 



