THE STORY OF GOLDEN GATE PARK AND THE CEMETERIES
St. Andrew's Brotherhood--Patras--The Cross at Megara and the
Golden Gate--Portsmouth Square and its Life--Other City Squares
and Parks--Golden Gate Park, its Beauty, Objects and Places of
Interest--Prayer Book Cross--Chance Visitors--Logan the Guide--First
View of the Pacific Ocean--"Thy Way is in the Sea"--The Cemeteries of
San Francisco--World-wide Sentiment--Group Around Lone Mountain--Story
of the Graves--Earth's Ministries--Lesson of the Heavens.
When my companion Ashton and I landed at the Market Street Ferry
House, an imposing structure of two stories, with a wide hall on the
second floor and offices and bureaus of information on either side,
our newfound friend, Mr. Young, bade us a "Good-by" with a hearty
handshake, hoping he might meet us again. Before leaving us, however,
he introduced us to a young man a member of the Brotherhood of St.
Andrew, who took us to the temporary office of the Society in the
Ferry House, and gave us necessary directions about the street cars,
hotels and churches. We were in a strange city on the western shore
of the Continent, yet, we felt at home at once through the cordial
greeting of the Brotherhood. The St. Andrew's Cross, which our young
guide wore on his coat, was indeed a friendly token. It spoke volumes
to the heart; and I was carried back in memory to that early morning,
when, having sailed over Ionian Seas, our good ship cast anchor in the
Bay of Patras, and my feet pressed the soil which had been consecrated
by the blood of the Saint, whose cross was now a token of good will
and welcome at the ends of the earth. I could not but recall besides a
memorable incident in connection with the Saint Andrew's Cross. We had
passed the Isthmus of Corinth, and our train halted for a space at
Megara, a town of six or seven thousand people, where is the bluest
blood in all Greece; and as I alighted from my coach on the Athens and
Peloponnesus Railway, I saw, some twenty rods away, a Greek Papa or
Priest, who made a splendid figure. An impulse came over me to speak
to him, and I knew there was one sign which he would recognise and
understand. It was the Saint Andrew's Cross, which I made by crossing
my arms. He immediately came to me and we conversed briefly as the
time would permit, in the old language of Homer and Plato, which all
patriotic Greeks love. He asked me if I was a Papa, and was pleased
when I said, "Yes." I introduced him to my companions in the coach,
and he greeted them warmly; and as the train began to move on we bade
each other farewell. We may never meet again, but the Cross of Saint
Andrew was a bond between us, and we felt that we were brethren in
one Lord, Saint Andrew's Divine Master and ours. So the sight of that
Cross there by the Pacific, with all its history of faith and love and
martyrdom, caused our hearts to beat in unison with our brethren by
the Golden Gate. I thought then it would be a special advantage to
strangers in strange cities, if in some way the Brotherhood could
serve as a Bureau of Information to travellers, who understand the
meaning of the Cross. It would not be a matter of large expense after
all if Chapters in large centres would extend greeting to men and
women who are journeying hither and thither and who often stand in
need of just such services as the Brotherhood could give. In a few
hours after our arrival we were ready for the opening service of the
General Convention, in Trinity Church, on Gough street at the corner
of Bush street.
At intervals when duty would permit we made a study of San Francisco
and its life, rich in scene and incident, and most instructive as well
as attractive. Some of the noticeable features of the city are its
parks and squares. In the northern part or section, Washington and
Lobos Squares greet you, while Pioneer Park adorns Telegraph Hill,
and Portsmouth Square or the Plaza is just east of the famous Chinese
restaurant and close by police headquarters. This last was famous in
the early days as the centre of Yerba Buena, and here the American
flag was raised for the first time when our marines under Commodore
Montgomery took possession of the town. Indeed some of the most
exciting scenes in the early history of San Francisco were witnessed
in this locality. Volumes might be written about its Spanish and
Mexican families, its adobe buildings, its gambling places, its haunts
of vice, its public assemblies, its crowds of men from all lands, its
social and civic histories.
But all this is of the past, and it seems like a dream of by-gone
days. When I visited it on two occasions, in company with friends, it
was a quiet place enough; and the casual observer could never have
thought or realised that around this romantic spot fortunes made by
hard toil of weary months and years had been lost in a few short hours
in the saloon and gambling places for which the vicinity was noted,
that the worst passions of the human heart had been exhibited here,
and that betimes amid the laughter of the merry throng in midnight
revelry and above the strains of the "harp and viol" one could have
heard the voices of blasphemy and the sharp, loud reports of pistols
in the hands of careless characters, whose deadly bullets had sent
many a poor unfortunate wayfarer or unwary miner from the gold fields
to his long home.
If, in your saunterings, you go through the central part of the city
you will find Lafayette Square, Alta Plaza, Hamilton Square, Columbia
Square, and Franklin and Jackson Parks, at varying distances from each
other and affording variety to the tourist. In the south section you
will see Buena Vista Park and Garfield Square, while to the west you
have Hill Park and Golden Gate Park. The Golden Gate Park is now
famous the world over and vies in beauty and splendour with Central
Park in New York, nay, in some respects surpasses this, in that it has
a magnificent frontage on the Pacific ocean, a long coast view and a
wide range of sea with the Farallone Islands, about twenty miles off
in the foreground of the picture, and visible on a clear day always,
and most enchanting in the sunset hour as we gazed on them. The Golden
Gate Park dates back only to the year 1870, when the California
Legislature passed an act providing for the improvement of public
parks in San Francisco. At that time this lonely spot, now so like a
dream of fairy land, was but a waste, a wide stretch of sand dunes
among which the winds of the ocean played hide and seek. Its
entrances, with a wide avenue in the foreground running north and
south, are some five miles from the Market Street Ferry. The afternoon
that my friend Ashton and I visited it was clear and balmy. Just as we
were entering the park carriage I was greeted by a young friend from
the East, whom I had not seen for years; and then, more than three
thousand miles away from home, I realised how small our planet is
after all. As we rode along the flowery avenues with green lawns
stretching out on either hand and losing themselves in groups of
stately trees and hedges of shrubs and Monterey Cypress we were filled
with delight. We could see the birds, native and foreign, flying from
branch to branch of trees which grew within their gigantic cages, and
occasionally we heard the notes of some songster. Yonder, too, we saw
deer browsing, and elk and antelope. There also were the buffalo and
the grizzly bear; and apparently all forgot that, shut in as they
were in wide enclosures, they were in captivity. We could not fail to
observe the bright flower-beds on every hand, the pleasant groves, the
shady walks, the grottoes of wild design, the woodland retreats, the
sylvan bowers. The park, we were told by our communicative driver,
John Carter, comprises ten hundred and forty acres of ground. He also
pointed out various places and objects of interest. The Museum, by the
wayside, in its Egyptian architecture, is like one of the old temples
of the Pharaohs on the banks of the Nile.
You are carried into the realm of immortal song when you gaze on the
busts of Goethe and Schiller, and your patriotism is stirred afresh
as you behold the monument of Francis Scott Key, author of the
Star-Spangled Banner. The Muses also have their abode here on the
colonnaded Music Stand or Pavilion erected by Claus Spreckles at a
cost of $80,000. Another interesting feature is the Japanese Tea
Garden. Then there is the well equipped Observatory on Strawberry Hill
from which you can look far out to sea, and where star-gazers can
study celestial scenery as the Heavens declare God's glory. Seven
lakelets give charm to the landscape, but the eye is never weary in
looking on Stone Lake, a mile and a quarter in circuit, beautiful
with its clear waters, its shelving shores, its bays and miniature
headlands, while on its calm bosom, ducks of rich plumage and
Australian swans are disporting themselves.
That, however, which attracted our attention most of all was the great
grey stone cross on the crest of the highest point of the Golden Gate
Park. This, chiseled after the fashion of the old crosses of lona and
linked with the name of St. Columba, is the monument erected by the
late George W. Childs, of Philadelphia, Pa., to commemorate the first
use of the Book of Common Prayer on the Pacific coast, when, in 1579,
under Admiral Drake, Chaplain Fletcher read Prayers in this vicinity,
either in San Francisco Bay, or a little further north in what is
called Drake's Bay. But more of this anon. As we walked from the
carriage road, beneath some spreading trees, to get a nearer view of
the Prayer Book Cross, numerous partridges were moving about, without
fear, in our pathway; and had we been minded to frighten them or
do them harm we would have been restrained by yonder symbol of our
redemption, which teaches us ever to be tender and humane towards bird
and beast and all others of God's helpless creatures. The Prayer
Book Cross is seen from afar. It looks down on the city with its
innumerable homes, on the cemeteries within its shadow, on the
Presidio with its tents and munitions of war, on the Golden Gate and
on the waters of the Pacific, and it brings a blessing to all with its
message of love and peace. It is a guide too, to the sailor coming
over the seas from distant lands. As he strains his eyes to catch a
glimpse of the coast the Cross stands out in bold relief against the
eastern sky, and it tells him that he will find a hospitable welcome
and safe harbourage within the Golden Gate. So it is dear to him after
his voyage over stormy seas as was of old
"Sunium's marbled steep"
to the Greek sailor nearing home.
Near Stone Lake we met the head commissioner of the Park who saluted
us with all the easy grace of the Californian; and on the way we had
the opportunity of receiving a Scotch gentleman and his wife into our
carriage; and, later, a clergyman who had been wandering about in the
midst of sylvan scenes, rode with us to the entrance of the Park,
where we bade our new found friends good-bye, each to go his own way,
at eventide.
The third day after our arrival in San Francisco I had a longing
to gaze on the Pacific ocean which I had never seen. There were
no laurels for us to win, such as Balboa justly deserved when he
discovered the Pacific and first beheld its wide waters in the year
1513; but it was a natural desire to look on its broad expanse and to
stand on its shores, along which bold navigators had sailed since the
days of Cabrillo and Drake. Taking a line of cars running out to the
Presidio, Ashton and I walked the rest of the way. A young man named
Logan, a cousin of the famous General Logan, who was in the service
of the government as a mail carrier, but off duty that afternoon,
volunteered most courteously to be our guide. He accompanied us for
more than a mile and a half of the distance beyond the Presidio, but
then had to return to meet an engagement. We went forward climbing the
steep hills and finally found that we were standing on the heights
above the immense ocean, in the grounds of the Government Reservation.
It was a solemn moment when we for the first time beheld the Pacific,
and we were greatly impressed. There the mighty waters, across which
the ships sail to China and Japan and the Sandwich Islands and the
Philippine Archipelago and the South Seas, lay before our eyes. The
darkness of the night was coming on, but the sky far off across the
waters, away beyond the Farallone Islands, was tinged with red and
gold, the fading glories of the dying day. We could see in the glow
of evening the heaving of the sea and the motion of its comparatively
calm surface, in that twilight hour.
Gathering clouds hung over the horizon and formed the shadows in the
picture. Every picture has light and shade. It is a portrait of life.
We stood silently for a time drinking in all the beauty of the scene,
well nigh entranced, awed, thrilled betimes; and at last in order to
give fitting expression to the thoughts within our hearts, I suggested
that we should hold a brief service in recognition of His power who
holds the seas in the hollow of His hands, Who had guided our feet in
safe paths and byways of the world, often over its troublesome waves.
Ashton said an appropriate Collect from the dear old Prayer Book of so
many tender and far off memories, while I expressed my feelings in the
grand words of the Psalm--"Thy way is in the sea, and Thy paths in the
great waters, and Thy footsteps are not known." We felt God's presence
in that hushed hour, we saw in vision the divine Christ walking over
the waters to us!
In our wanderings about the city the sleeping places of the dead
naturally attracted our attention; and where, especially, on Sunday
afternoons, the living congregate to mourn over their loved ones, to
scatter flowers on their graves, or to while away an hour amid scenes
which have a melancholy interest and tend to sobriety and remind one
of another land where there is no death for those who pass through the
Golden Gate of eternity. Cemeteries have always attracted the living
to their solemn precincts at stated times, anniversaries and fiestas.
It is so in all lands, among all peoples no matter what their creed,
and in all ages. Jew and Gentile alike, Mohammedan and Christian, by
visiting tomb or grassy mound with some token of their affection, the
prayer uttered, the tear shed, the blossoms laid on sacred soil, after
this manner cherish the memories of the departed. And it is well!
Scenes which the traveller may witness in the Campo Santo of Genoa or
in the Koimeteria of Athens, on Sundays, in the Mezâristans of Skutari
on the Bosphorus and Eyûb on the Golden Horn, on Friday afternoons,
and in the Kibroth of old Tiberias by the Sea of Galilee or outside of
the walls of Jerusalem, on Saturday or in the Cimenterios of Mexico
City on fiestas, all testify to the universality of the deep and
tender feelings of reverence and affection which animate the human
heart and make all men as one in thought and sentiment as they stand
on time's shores and follow the receding forms of their kindred and
friends with wishful eyes bedimmed with tears across the Dark River!
While there is a Burial Place for the soldiers who die for their
country or in their country's cause, on the grounds of the Presidio,
the principal cemeteries of San Francisco seem to cluster around
Lone Mountain in the northwestern part of the city and south of the
Military Reservation. These are Laurel Hill, Calvary, Masonic and Odd
Fellows. The Jews have their special burying ground between Eighteenth
and Twentieth streets, and the old Mission cemetery where some of the
early Indian converts and Franciscan Fathers sleep their last sleep,
is close by the Mission Dolores, on the south side.
The group around Lone Mountain is dominated by a conspicuous cross on
the hill top, which, as a sentinel looks down with a benison on the
resting places of the dead, and, in heat and cold, in storm and
sunshine, seems to speak to the heart about Him "Who died, and was
buried, and rose again for us." To this picturesque spot too the
Chinese have been attracted, and they bury their departed west
of Laurel Hill, with all the rites peculiar to the followers of
Confucius.
But what thrilling histories of men from many lands are entombed in
all these tens of thousands of graves, what fond hopes are buried
here, what withered blossoms of life mingle with this consecrated soil
by the waters of the Pacific! Many a one who sought the Golden West in
pursuit of fortune found all too soon his goal here with unfulfilled
desire, while anxious friends and relatives beyond the seas and the
mountains or on the other side of the continent awaited his home
coming for years in vain. Here, indeed, are no rolls of papyrus, no
hieroglyphics, as in Egyptian tombs, to tell us the story of the
past, but it is written in the experiences of the gold seekers, it is
interwoven with the life of the city, now the mistress of the great
ocean which laves her feet, and it is burned into the memories of many
living witnesses.
If yonder grave could tell its tale it would speak to you of a
misspent life which might have been a blessing--of midnight revels and
mad excesses and Circe's feasts, the ruin of soul and body. And this
grave could talk to you about one who, far away from home and
kindred, had pined and wasted away in his loneliness, and had died of
homesickness. But while you are touched with the pathetic recital,
that grave near by reads you a lesson of patience, of heroism, of
faith, of purity of soul and body preserved in the midst of fiery
temptations, even while strong men were yielding themselves up to
"fleshly lusts which war against the soul."
The shrubs and trees and flowers on which you gaze, and which are
green and blossom the year round, now beautify all and mother earth
softens with her ministries the severities of the past, and sunlit
skies bend over the dead, as of old in many lands, and star-bedecked
heavens tell still to the living, as once to those whose bodies
mouldered here, the story of the life beyond, where glory and riches
and honour are the heritage of the faithful!