"What are those terraced buildings?" he queried.
"It has been the military prison for years. It is Alcatraz Island."
He looked his inquiry.
"Spanish for Pelican," I answered, seating myself on a rock. "Ayala, the
captain of the 'San Carlos,' the first ship to enter the bay, named it
from the large number of the birds he found on it, and the big island to
the right that looks like a portion of the main land is Angel Island,
abbreviated from Ayala's Isla de Nuestra Señora de los Angeles."
"And Goat Island?" he questioned as he threw himself down on the grass.
"Yerba Buena," I corrected. "The other name was colloquially applied
when Nathan Spear, being given some goats and kids by a Yankee skipper,
put them over there. There were several thousand on the island in
forty-nine, but the Americans killed them all off by night in spite of
Spear's protests."
"Not all of them," he denied as he shied a stick at a white head
reaching from below for a grassy clump.
"'And th' goats and chicks and brickbats and sticks
Is joombled all over the face of it,
Av Telegraft Hill, Telegraft Hill,
Crazy owld, daisy owld Telegraft Hill,'"