TRAVELS IN THE CALIFORNIA S. 
353 
dozen old rusty guns in the care of thirty or forty half-clad 
half-breed soldiers, usually foraging in squads of five or ten 
among the neighboring Missions; one side of its walls tum¬ 
bled down, and another strongly disposed to plunge into the 
sea, and not the tenth of a true soldier’s heart beating for a 
hundred miles around, is a true summing up of its present 
strength. 
The house of the commandant, situated in one corner, is 
a respectable whitewashed pile of mud and bricks. On the 
other corner of the same side is the chapel, also built of mud: 
a filthy place for worship. On another side are artificers’ 
shops and a prison. The two other sides are broken down, 
not by the flying metal of brave conflict, but by the gentle 
pattering of the rains; the ruins covered with bones ! not the 
bones of fearless men, who have fallen in the breach, throw¬ 
ing their gushing blood in the face of a conquering foe; but 
the bones of beeves that have been gnawed by the garrison 
during years of valorous eating. Densely manned, also, are 
these piles of adobie and osseous ruins, not with rank and file 
of mailed warriors, but with dogs, vultures, and jackals. 
This is Fort San Francisco, one of the strongest posts in the 
Californias. Heaven help its dogs, vultures, and jackals, in 
case of a siege ! 
Six miles from the capes at the mouth, and at the point 
where it begins to open into the Bay, are two small islands 
on which forts might be conveniently built, that would com¬ 
mand the narrows, and also the entrance into both the north 
and south parts of the bay. Indeed, the whole bay is so 
studded with islands easily fortified, and so overhung by 
headlands, which of themselves are fortresses, that a party in 
possession of them could hold the Bay against vast odds, and 
in comparative security. From the narrows to the northern 
point of the Bay is twenty-four miles, and to the south-east¬ 
ern point thirty-five miles. 
The southern half of the Bay varies from fourteen to fifteen, 
the northern half from four to twenty miles, in width. In 
