354 
SCENES IN THE PACIFIC. 
every part of this large tract of water is good holding ground, 
and on all its shores are coves in which vessels of any tonnage 
may lie snug and secure from storms, within a cable’s length 
of the land. In the NW. corner of the Bay is the inlet of 
the Rio Sacramento. It is about one and three-fourth miles 
wide for the distance of seven miles, and then spreads out 
into a bay seven miles wide, and twelve in length, when it 
narrows down to four miles for the distance of two miles 
and a half, then widens to seven or eight miles the distance 
of eleven miles, with islands in the centre, then narrows to 
four miles for the distance of three miles, and then it widens 
into a bay about twenty miles north and south, and about the 
same distance east and west, studded with nine islands. 
On the east of it, between the mouth of the Sacramento 
and the Bay, lies one about fifteen miles in length, NE. and 
SW.; and of a breadth varying from three miles to ten. 
All these islands are low and marshy. On the southern point 
of this large island comes in the Rio San Joaquim, and on 
the northern point of it is the northern mouth of the Sacra¬ 
mento. 
On the south side of the promontory on which stands the 
fort, Castillo de San Francisco, is a little village called Yerba 
Bueno. As the harbor in which foreign vessels refit and pur¬ 
chase supplies lies in front of Yerba Bueno, it will scarcely 
be imparting any fact not legitimately inferable from their 
known character, to say that the Yankees have built and 
inhabit this town. These descendants of the kings and nobles 
of the old Saxon Heptarchy, knighted and ennobled anew by 
the physical and mental conquests over the wilderness of 
America and over the oppressions of their Norman conquerors, 
the reigning families and nobles of Great Britain, have built 
up an empire of mind on which the sun never sets. In the 
Bay of San Francisco is Yerba Bueno. In the Sandwich 
Islands a nation is spoken into being. The Chinese seas are 
burdened with its ships. On the coast of Africa the emanci¬ 
pated slave unfurls the banner of Freedom over the fortunes 
