154 RESOURCES OF CALIFORNIA. 



landscape. The steep sides of the last, and its position, just 

 inside the entrance, and near the middle of the channel, fit it 

 admirably for the impregnable fortress of a great harbor. Its 

 casements and barbette batteries suggest defiance, even to those 

 who have no technical knowledge to assist them in under- 

 standing the full military value of the place. The Golden 

 Gate is the impressive name of the strait, a mile wide, guard- 

 ed on each side by high rocky bluffs, leading into the chain of 

 bays, with an area of 350 square miles. It is appropriate, too, 

 for through it have passed $1,000,000,000 to stimulate com- 

 merce and industry and to enrich the world. . 



But six miles from our anchorage lies the Pacific, the vast 

 ocean which covers more than a third of the surface of the 

 globe, and is the open road of our commerce with four conti- 

 nents. Its name, too, is appropriate here, for it is never vexed 

 by hurricanes or cyclones on this Coast. Yet its surf is 

 always grand, and the beach extending southward five miles 

 from Point Lobos is unsurpassed in beauty, and the road to it 

 past (after going through) Lone Mountain Cemetery and back 

 by the Ocean House over the mountain, with a chance to look 

 down on the city and bay, completes a round of scenery which 

 no other city can surpass. The new park has a fine drive, and 

 Woodward's Garden offers to visitors attractions not to be 

 equaled in some important respects by the costly and exten- 

 sive park of the Eastern metropolis. 



Oakland, a suburb of San Francisco, a city of homes for 

 our business men, is embowered in a grove of indigenous ever- 

 green oaks, and abounds with spacious gardens filled with the 

 most luxuriant, varied, and handsome vegetation that our cli- 

 mate will tolerate. We have seen many towns, renowned for 

 beauty, but we have yet to see one that deserves to be placed 

 alongside of Oakland. At Berkley, a few miles distant, we 

 find ourselves in the midst of a landscape attractive without 

 help from art, and promising to be enchanting, after the land- 

 scape gardener and the architect shall have placed a few years > 



