The
Presidio looks like a settlement in itself, and is very picturesque.
I will not soon forget the beautiful, balmy afternoon, when I walked
through the grounds on my way to the hills above the ocean. Here
everything was suggestive of forethought, of care, of order, of
dignity. The Reservation stretched out on every hand and over to the
shore of the Bay northward where it has a water frontage of at least a
mile and a half. In all its area it embraces a landscape, varied and
undulating, of one thousand, five hundred and forty-two acres. It is
a noble park in itself and well may the nation be proud of it. The
Presidio was first occupied by United States troops in 1847, on March
4th, when the sword was trembling in the weak hands of Spain. On
November 6th, 1850, President Millard Fillmore set these grounds apart
forever as a Military Reservation. As I walked on, before me to the
west, rose hundreds of tents in which were soldiers, some of whom had
returned from the Philippine Islands, and others of them were soon
to embark for the Orient. Yonder too is the cemetery, where, as on
Arlington Heights above the Potomac, sleep the Nation's dead; and
"There Honour comes, a pilgrim gray,
To bless the turf that wraps their clay.
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