Taking a line of cars running out to the
Presidio, Ashton and I walked the rest of the way. A young man named
Logan, a cousin of the famous General Logan, who was in the service
of the government as a mail carrier, but off duty that afternoon,
volunteered most courteously to be our guide. He accompanied us for
more than a mile and a half of the distance beyond the Presidio, but
then had to return to meet an engagement. We went forward climbing the
steep hills and finally found that we were standing on the heights
above the immense ocean, in the grounds of the Government Reservation.
It was a solemn moment when we for the first time beheld the Pacific,
and we were greatly impressed. There the mighty waters, across which
the ships sail to China and Japan and the Sandwich Islands and the
Philippine Archipelago and the South Seas, lay before our eyes. The
darkness of the night was coming on, but the sky far off across the
waters, away beyond the Farallone Islands, was tinged with red and
gold, the fading glories of the dying day. We could see in the glow
of evening the heaving of the sea and the motion of its comparatively
calm surface, in that twilight hour.
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