SAN FRANCISCO AND END OF JOUENEY. 531 



There is sent to the Atlantic coast more wine than 

 is imported from France, tlie heretofore wine market 

 of the world. 



In Central California a little peninsula juts out from 

 the main land, a great harbor is on one side, a great 

 ocean on the other. The lofty mountains, lower just 

 here, form, as it were, a natural gateway to the great 

 interior beyond. 



Here, in 1836, an American named John P. Lease 

 settled, and here, in time, a little town called San 

 Francisco grew up around him. Two miles to the 

 south loomed up the antiquated building of the Catho- 

 lic Mission Dolores, with its pretty old gardens. The 

 opposite shores of the bay presented a most beautiful 

 park-like expanse: the native lawn, brilliant with 

 flowers and dotted by eastward bending oaks, watered 

 by the creeks of the Alameda, San Lorenzo, Sau 

 Leando, and their tributaries, and enclosed by the 

 spurs of the Diablo Mountains. 



San Francisco was on the soil of Mexico, under the 

 flag of Anahuac, governed by an Alcalde and a sapient 

 council, yet the spirit of the United States breathed 

 in it, built its stout wooden houses, and thronged its 

 busy wharves. Animated by this spirit, it was des- 

 tined to become the metropolis of the Pacific, one of 

 the noted cities of the globe. 



Before the *' Golden Age," while California was a 

 peaceful settlement, of no especial importance, it was 

 said that around San Francisco Bay there was raw 

 material enough, of different types, to develop a new 

 race. 



San Francisco was not in the gold region, but it 

 was the gate to that region. 



