discovered it when he wintered his ship close by in 1579. Thus
Yerba Buena sprawled and dreamed in the sunshine, unmindful of the web
of destiny being woven about it.

Followed then the war with Mexico and the occupation by the officers and
men of the United States sloop-of-war Portsmouth under Commodore John
Montgomery, who broke the American flag to the breeze in the Plaza.

In 1848 gold was discovered by James W. Marshall in the tail-race of
General Sutter's mill, El Dorado county, and almost overnight San
Francisco was transformed from a hamlet into a pulsing city, overcome
with the rush of newcomers, the population in two years growing almost
to twenty thousand.

California became a state in 1850 without ever having gone through a
probationary period as a territory. In the late sixties the great
Comstock Lode, in Nevada, poured a flood of wealth into San Francisco,
and in 1869, one hundred years after the first white man looked upon San
Francisco Bay, came the railroad, bringing an increasing influx of
people from the East. The opening of the markets of China and Japan led
to the establishment of a trade that has made San Francisco the focal
port of the West.

These were the beginnings of San Francisco. Burned to the ground three
times in the early years of its existence, the city displayed an
invincible fortitude and each time capitalized disaster to build anew
with larger faith in its destiny. When again, in 1906, earthquake and
fire devastated the city its phoenix spirit came to life. The Argonauts
lived once more, magnificent in their resolution. The renaissance was a
prodigy that made onlookers exclamatory. Jules Jusserand, Ambassador of
France to the United States, phrased the wonder of it in majestic prose:

"The page written by the inhabitants of San Francisco on the moving
ashes of their city is not one that any wind will ever blow away."

Survivals of the Past

Stand at the Ferry Building, looking up Market street, and imagine the
beginning of the city that spreads before you. First of all you must
realize that this point of observation would, in those days, have been
offshore, on the shallow water of Yerba Buena Cove. To the right is the
scarp of Telegraph Hill, from which ships coming through the Golden Gate
were sighted, and to the left is the lesser Rincon Hill, which is being
cut away to provide a light manufacturing district. These marked the
headlands of the cove, and the waterfront cur