ved inland as far as what
is now the site of the Donahue monument to mechanics at Market and
Battery streets.

Seeking survivals of the past, you must realize that San Francisco is
one of the most modern of the comparatively old American cities. Most of
the area that saw its beginning and early history has been wiped clean
by fire. The San Francisco of today may be said to date from its
rebuilding following 1906, since which time something like a half
billion dollars' worth of new construction has been done. Yet something
of early San Francisco remains, either beyond the reach of the
devastation of eighteen years ago or in miraculous islands of safety in
that sea of fire.

The Presidio, beside the Golden Gate, is several miles from the area
that burned. It is one of the largest military posts in the United
States, 1,500 acres of forested hills between the inner and the outer
harbor. The adobe building in which Rezanov, envoy of the Czar, wooed
Senorita Arguello, daughter of the commandante of the Presidio, is
preserved in the center of the reservation. You can read about this sad
romance in Bret Harte or in Gertrude Atherton.

Over the hills southward from the Presidio, in a sheltered valley, where
it was spared from the fire, stands Mission Dolores, with its ancient
churchyard and headstones. The old mission, whose adobe walls are four
feet thick, stands beside a new church of Spanish architecture. Near the
entrance to Mission Dolores, set in red tiles on the floor, is a marble
slab marking the tomb of the Noe family, Spanish grandees. Interesting
relics are in evidence. Early mission bells hang in the facade of the
old building. The tomb of Don Luis Arguello, first governor of
California under the Mexican regime, is in the churchyard. Inscriptions
on many of the stones in this burial place are footnotes to San
Francisco's early history.

Within the burned area of 1906, above the original waterfront of the
days when the water came up to Montgomery street, there are several
blocks of buildings which were spared by freaks of fate. These buildings
stand near the original Plaza now called Portsmouth Square. It was here
Commodore John Montgomery landed from the "Portsmouth" and raised the
Stars and Stripes on July 4, 1846, almost the seventieth anniversary of
the establishment of the Spanish Presidio. The site of his landing, at
what is now Clay and Montgomery streets, has been marked by one of the
bronze tablets on wh