TRAVELS IN THE CALIFORNIA S. 
355 
of an independent national existence, and almost the entire 
habitable parts of this great continent are feeling and enjoy- 
ing the impulses to human Freedom 'which the American 
Saxons sent out to the race on the Fourth of July, 1776. 
These Yankees at Yerba Bueno employ themselves in their 
characteristic business of doing everything. 
The surpassing beauty and magnificence of this harbor of 
San Francisco can never be properly estimated by being 
viewed from the land. One must approach it from the sea ; 
have a full view of the lofty shores north and south, rising 
at intervals into lofty peaks girded at their bases with prime¬ 
val forests of evergreen cedars and pines mottled with the 
boughs of the oak, the ash, and the plane. The bar which 
springs from the northern headlands of its entrance, and, run¬ 
ning beneath the blue waters of the Pacific from five to nine 
fathoms, causes a belt of surf to roll across the mouth, must 
be passed. A breeze must bear your bark over and along 
the dangerous rocks three quarters of a mile inside on the 
right, quarrelling with the surges; and onward four miles 
between the projecting cliffs, overhanging peaks and verdant 
woodlands filled with starting deer and other game, to the 
harbor at the narrows beneath the fort; and thence onward 
still past the fort and the islands lying across the entrance; 
and the Bay is seen ! a broad sheet of water stretching off, 
north and south, the largest and best harbor of the earth, sur¬ 
rounded by a country, partly wooded, and partly disposed 
in open glades and prairies of the richest kind, covered 
with the flocks and herds of the Missions, and deer, and elk, 
and bears. And amid the beautiful hills of the south and east 
are Santa Clara, El Pueblo San Jose, and Mission San Jose; 
and on the southern peninsula, five miles wide, is San Fran¬ 
cisco, Yerba Bueno, the trading-house of the Hudson Bay 
Fur Company, the Presidio and the Castillo; on the north¬ 
ern peninsula is San Rafael, and in the north San Francisco 
Solano; a group of beauty and grandeur, that knows no 
superior in any clime. 
