There they dwell
upon the hill-top, high raised above man's clamour, and
the trade-wind blows between their palaces about
deserted streets.
But San Francisco is not herself only. She is not only
the most interesting city in the Union, and the hugest
smelting-pot of races and the precious metals. She
keeps, besides, the doors of the Pacific, and is the
port of entry to another world and an earlier epoch in
man's history. Nowhere else shall you observe (in the
ancient phrase) so many tall ships as here convene from
round the Horn, from China, from Sydney, and the
Indies. But, scarce remarked amid that crowd of deep-
sea giants, another class of craft, the Island
schooner, circulates--low in the water, with lofty
spars and dainty lines, rigged and fashioned like a
yacht, manned with brown-skinned, soft-spoken, sweet-
eyed native sailors, and equipped with their great
double-ender boats that tell a tale of boisterous sea-
beaches. These steal out and in again, unnoted by the
world or even the newspaper press, save for the line in
the clearing column, "Schooner So-and-so for Yap and
South Sea Islands"--steal out with nondescript cargoes
of tinned salmon, gin, bolts of gaudy cotton stuff,
women's hats, and Waterbury watches, to return, after a
year, piled as high as to the eaves of the house with
copra, or wallowing deep with the shells of the
tortoise or the pearl oyster.
Pages:
184
185
186
187
188
189
190
191
192
193
194
195
196
197
198
199
200
201
202
203
204
205
206
207
208