reached for something in the swash and found he had the wheel-box. He grasped it, but it was all smooth-sided-no place for his hands to get a grip, and the terrible tide rips tore him loose. One sea, and another, now high where the heavens touched the crests almost, and again in the depths and rcarings he was cast like the flying spume itself. Enveloped in foam so thick that even when his head was above the surface he could not breathe fairly, he still tried to justify that last catastrophe. "And yet you were a good vessel to me."

There is always a last sea, and that last sea caught him fair and overbore him. He knew it when it came. The physical agony was by then and the soul surmounting all. Not till then did he indulge himself so far as to let his heart dwell on the memory of her as he last saw her, standing in the doorway when he turned the corner. For the last time he had turned that corner.

Ah,

but she was beautiful—and was it to lose her he came to sea?

The roar of Georges Shoals was in his soul. He began to hear the voices then, voices of his own men-he knew themand voices he had never heard before— voices, no doubt, of men lost in these long years of toil in waters where the sands below are white with lost men's bones. Her voice he heard, too-heard it above all. "Dannie, Dannie," it whispered, plain as could be. By that he knew that she needed no newspaper to tell her—even at that moment she knew-knew, and was suffering. And all her life she would have to suffer. And so it was "God help you, Katie Morrison," that parted his foamdrenched lips at the last.

The Katie Morrison was launched and rigged, but 'twas another young and hopeful skipper that sailed her out to Georges.

F you should look at a detailed coast survey chart of San Francisco harbor, you would observe that the broad peninsula extending southward like a sheltering arm between the ocean and the inner bay is creased and dimpled in a great confusion of mountains; that it has many indentations of coast, many streams, and here and there a wee lake. But no scrutiny of the chart would lead you to guess it is a veritable Adirondacks alone by itself on the western edge of the world. From the time of my earliest recollection I used to stand upon the hills of my native town and look longingly across the five miles of white-capped water in the harbor to the alluring heights of this, to me, inaccessible region. It was always new to look at, never the same for two consecutive days. In the spring, when the clouds rolled from its heights, its steep, lean hills were green with fresh grass, and I could see those

smears and streaks of yellow wild flowers which some folks say suggested the name of the Golden Gate. In summer came mile-long streaks of white fog, half obscuring it at times; the rain ceased, and, almost in a day, the hills changed to deep rich brown. In the autumn came the clear dry north winds, making it seem so near and sharp against the sky, and the gaunt cliffs stood forth in all their reddish-brown and yellows, sheer to the white surf line. In winter came the rains again, and, as suddenly as before, it changed from brown to green and gold.

Later on I used to sail the waters which bounded it. There were smooth reaches extending far inland, and tortuous tributaries straggling through marsh lands almost to the very buttresses of its Vesuvius; and angry sheets of water, so broad that one might sail away till the hills dropped below the horizon. And, skirting along under the red-brown cliffs-300 feet high

they rose- -one could sail out through the Golden Gate, past the iron-bound headland on the north, with its wailing siren, and sail for days up the coast (if he dared get so far from home on the Pacific) with a line of growling breakers and towering cliffs on the one hand, and the limitless ocean on the other. And there were harbors to make, if one could navigate through the breakers on the bars, and tiny coves with inviting crescents of shining sand. Thus a long

steep shore, while long shadows still hung softly in the hazy valleys. A tortuous railway-a pioneer lumber road made over for passengers-wound us along the shore for a way, dodged into the close-locked hills, which even the streams had difficulty in finding their way through, dove into a tunnel now and then; and, when we alighted, the jumble of mountains was all about us, and Tamalpais, that I had watched so long from a distance, towered over us near at

while went by and, save for watching from its surrounding waters, this hill country remained as unexplored to me as ever; but, in course of time, I grew from a weakkneed boy to be a fair walker, able to go twenty mountain miles a day, and for days together.

It was a beautiful winter's morning when, having in this manner won my membership with the fraternity of mountain lovers who already knew and loved the region well, I set out to penetrate its wilderness. The little ferry that carried us over the bay, starting at sunrise, brought us under the

hand. An unused road strayed out through a cluster of dairy houses in the lap of the valley, passed the circle of tall redwoods that served as chapel for the devout members of the hamlet, faded away into the forest, and became one of those narrow, stony trails that the deer and the old Mexican vaqueros made when the land belonged to Indians and to Spain.

Now this was winter; yet the sun was bright, and not a bare twig could be seen. Indeed, a dense cloak of brushwood covered the shoulders and dimples of the hills, making them a dozen shades of dark green;

and through this, by an invisible trail, we wound and wound up the defiles in a single file, like an Indian war party, with the crisp twigs rasping our khaki jackets and drenching our outer clothing with dew. Farther and farther on we went, and closer and closer the hills huddled together for company in the wilderness. But we were not alone, for as we rested at a spring, watching the hawks wheeling over our heads in the dead silent air, three white-tailed deer leaped out of the brush and fled in easy, graceful bounds over the thicket and away. Again we emerged upon a long chain of meadows, still radiant with the morning, where shaggy cattle browsed and a stream ran swiftly. We followed this a few miles, waded it at a point where a rude cabin nestled under some moss-hung oaks, entered a steep canyon whence issued a foaming, tumbling tributary down from the higher altitudes, and began our climb in earnest. There was no more trail now. A heavy cloak of green moss covered the fallen trunks, over which we climbed, and the boulders stood among rank ferns. The very light seemed green from sifting through so many leaves; and always there was the sound of water in our ears and the spray of the falls in our faces. Every half mile or so brought us to a roaring leap that might long ago have been famous had any railroad discovered it and put it in a guide-book.

I had lost all sense of direction in this new geography, and knew only that we were going up and the water was coming down; but in course of time the hills opened a bit. We passed through a zone of those stalwart redwoods with their shaggy bark. Then came meadows-rolling mountain meadows and our tumbling stream hid in their grasses and ceased.

Presently I made out a most unaccountable thin level line running straight across the sky in front of me. I ran to the nearest hill-top to see what it might be and, to my intense surprise, looked down upon several hundred square miles of the blue Pacific. Never had I seen so much ocean at one time before, nor imagined its extent. I looked and looked till, finally, I came to believe my eyes, and then threw my hat high in the air with delight. The great height, the tremendous distances, the cubic miles of air under me, gradually sunk in upon me with their full significance as I looked from

headland to headland and added up mentally the well-known distances from one to the other, and the days of sailing it used to take me to cover it. But it was a sight impossible to get used to, for all this blue surface was standing straight on edge, as if it had been painted on the curtain of a theatre, and miniature steamships, with miniature trails of smoke behind them, crept slowly-so very slowly-up to this horizon line, which formed its top edge, and disappeared over it; and still tinier ships, with thistle-down sails, slid as slowly down into the foreground. So creeps commerce by inches round the world, and the faint gray pigment strewn over the seven hills by the harbor is a thriving seaport town.

When at last I stood on the culminating point of all this mountain stronghold, I looked around upon so varied and beautiful a panorama that I wondered then, and have ever since how it should remain almost unknown to the world at large, with never an Ellen nor a Roderick Dhu to inhabit it in fiction, and never a bard to sing about it. In the foreground lay the lesser hills, their smooth round shoulders like the shoulders of fair women, rolling down and away till they became peninsulas in the sea; and they were all beautiful colors of dark green and purple. The steep ravines between them concealed armies of the redwood, thrusting their tall tree-tops up like lances, and marching to the coast. Beyond, where the hills sank, stretched miles of flat brown marshes, with crooked tributaries running through them like veins in a leaf. Then came the bay, quiet and still, spread within its crooked boundaries like a map in the geography; then a fringe of blue mountains; and farthest to the coast, a crooked line of glistening white under the sky-the snow-capped Sierra Nevada. To the west stood the coast-the rugged edge of America—fringed with its line of white, silent foam, for the wind blew steady and strong from over the edge of the sea.

Upon the last hills to the south once stood the Franciscan fathers, pausing astonished, while hunting deer, and found themselves in the famous year 1776, the first discoverers of the great harbor that had been sought so long. Under the jutting headland to the north, within the circle of white cliffs, anchored Sir Francis Drake in his Golden Hind precisely 203 years be