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A binocular, small but extremely efficient in its magnifying power he withdrew, dusting the lenses with the sleeve of his shirt. He had bought the glasses because some one had advised him to take a pair along when he went with a party of friends to the top of Mount Tamalpais one Sunday.
The mass of mountains in Marin County looked black and formless, but above them rose the granite crest of Tamalpais, like an angular lifted shoulder. "That mountain has marched north five feet in the last forty years," said Isabel, as she carefully steered through the mist. "Either that, or the earthquake of 1868 moved her off her base."
When at last the long voyage up the Western coast came to an end and the ship sailed into the broad bay of San Francisco, which lay serene and beautiful under the shadow of its towering guardian, Mount Tamalpais, Fanny Osbourne hung over the rail and surveyed the scene with eager interest.
From its summit you must have an excellent lesson of geography: seeing, to the south, San Francisco Bay, with Tamalpais on the one hand and Monte Diablo on the other; to the west and thirty miles away, the open ocean; eastward, across the cornlands and thick tule swamps of Sacramento Valley, to where the Central Pacific Railroad begins to climb the sides of the Sierras; and northward, for what I know, the white head of Shasta looking down on Oregon.
Tamalpais, could be seen the "sleeping maiden" who for centuries had awaited the awakening kiss of her Indian lover. "What a glorious play-ground for San Francisco." His voice rang with enthusiasm. "Look at the ferryboats plowing up the bay in every direction. A man could escape from the factory grime on the water front and in an hour be asleep under a tree on a grassy hillside."
This is nature at San Quentin, and this is Tamalpais as I have looked upon it many a morning and many an evening from my window above the sea at North Beach. The gate is opened for us, and we enter the prison-walls. It is a holiday, and the day is fair and balmy; but the chill and sadness cannot be shaken off, as we look around us.
The location set aside for the concrete development of these requirements was most stimulating. An edifice to terminate the vista looking north over a laguna of silent water flanked by the wonderful Palace of Fine Arts, and just beyond, the beautiful Bay of San Francisco with a background formed by distant Tamalpais.
An incoming ship, a gleam on the water, a cloud lingering about Tamalpais, were enough to distract the attention. Reading or writing, the bay-window was always showing something to be looked at. Unfortunately, these views were not always pleasant, but the window gave equal prominence and importance to all, without respect to quality. The landscape in the vicinity was unimproved, but not rural.
Beginning a few hundreds of yards from the water's edge, the hills slope up, and up, and up, until they touch the base of Tamalpais, on whose dark and rugged summit, four thousand feet above the sea that laves his feet on the west, the rays of the morning sun fall with transfiguring, glory while yet the valley below lies in shadow.
The coast is rough and barren. Tamalpais, a mountain of a memorable figure, springing direct from the sea-level, over-plumbs the narrow entrance from the north. On the south, the loud music of the Pacific sounds along beaches and cliffs, and among broken reefs, the sporting-place of the sea-lion. Dismal, shifting sandhills, wrinkled by the wind, appear behind.
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