Then came the bay. To the east they could
see Goat Island, and the fleet of sailing-ships anchored off the
water-front; while directly in their line of vision the island of
Alcatraz, with its triple crown of forts, started from the surface
of the water. Beyond was the Contra Costa shore, a vast streak of
purple against the sky. The eye followed its sky-line westward
till it climbed, climbed, climbed up a long slope that suddenly
leaped heavenward with the crest of Tamalpais, purple and still,
looking always to the sunset like a great watching sphinx. Then,
further on, the slope seemed to break like the breaking of an
advancing billow, and go tumbling, crumbling downward to meet the
Golden Gate--the narrow inlet of green tide-water with its
flanking Presidio. But, further than this, the eye was stayed.
Further than this there was nothing, nothing but a vast,
illimitable plain of green--the open Pacific. But at this hour
the color of the scene was its greatest charm. It glowed with all
the sombre radiance of a cathedral. Everything was seen through a
haze of purple--from the low green hills in the Presidio
Reservation to the faint red mass of Mount Diablo shrugging its
rugged shoulder over the Contra Costa foot-hills. As the evening
faded, the west burned down to a dull red glow that overlaid the
blue of the bay with a sheen of ruddy gold. The foot-hills of the
opposite shore, Diablo, and at last even Tamalpais, resolved
themselves in the velvet gray of the sky.
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