You do not have to travel far up the Pacific coast to encounter the very antithesis of this motor society. San Francisco is famous as the most glittering, glistening and cosmopolitan of American cities; but I found there an integrity and earnestness of thought that reminded me of the life my grandfather led at the turn of the century, on the intellectual fringes of country society near the Welsh border. I was once flying over San Francisco Bay with my host in northern California, an eminent businessman with all kinds of knowledgeable interests, from mountaineering to typography.
Below us stretched the fine wide expanse of water that divides San Francisco from the Bay cities of Oakland and Berkeley. And around it the hills were brown, and speckled with white houses; on an eminence to our right there was a series of tall radio masts. To the west, where the Bay joins the Pacific, the ineffably beautiful Golden Gate Bridge was softened by the sea mist; and perched on the hills beside it was San Francisco, crowned by a few skyscrapers, a mass of white buildings tumbling down the hillside, and stretching away to the ocean as far as the eye could see.
Until 1936 the historians, antiquarians and loyal Californians argued the point of the basis of this inadequate knowledge. It is perfectly possible that Drake sailed right past the Golden Gate without detecting the magnificent harbor inside it. San Francisco is often shrouded in a thick sea mist; the entrance is narrow; the Bay itself curves southward, so that you cannot appreciate its magnitude from the sea.
On the other hand, if he did penetrate the Bay the fact is not likely to have been publicized. Drake’s voyage was of crucial strategic importance, and to give away to the Spaniards the existence of so fine a haven would have been so careless as to be criminal; about like publishing, let us say, technical details of one of the smaller hydrogen bombs. The admiral’s own journal and his charts were handed over to the Queen, and a full account of his voyage was never published. The only contemporary descriptions are generally thought to be unreliable.
So for half a century the San Franciscans contented themselves with hypothesis. Could he have brought the Golden Hind into the Bay, supposing that he had indeed found its entrance? Where could he have beached her, safe from winds and seas? What course would he have followed inside the Gate? Many are the citizens who have tried, over the years, to re-enact the Captain-General’s arrival, struggling through the vicious currents of the Golden Gate in heavy rowing boats or sailing skiffs, laboriously progressing, in the interests of history, toward some sheltered inlet or likely creek. Many are those who, flying back from a conference in Portland or a half-term celebration at Andover, have leaned over their neighbor to peer through the window and murmur: “Perfectly possible! Almost an ideal spot, don’t you think?”
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