The Legends of San Francisco

The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Legends of San Francisco, by
George W. Caldwell
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Title: The Legends of San Francisco
Author: George W. Caldwell
Release Date: July, 2004 [EBook #6076]
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Language: English
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0. START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, THE
LEGENDS OF SAN FRANCISCO ***
This eBook was produced by David Schwan
>.
Legends of San Francisco
Other Books by the Same Author:
Legends of Southern California.
Oriental Rambles.
Rainbow
Stories.
The Wizzywab.
Legends of San Francisco
By
George W. Caldwell, M. D.
Dedication.
My San Francisco on her seven hills is smiling,
Beside an opalescent sunset sea;
There is a magic in her bracing air
beguiling,
Yet filling all with tireless energy.
The tingling tang of open sea the
breeze is giving;
The fog rolls in and drives heat languors out,
And thrills her loyal
subjects with the joy of living,
And puts the love of idleness to rout.
When in the valleys, fervent summer heat oppresses,
And gives no, respite night or day,
There is a City that the cooling
fog caresses,
Upon the breezy San Francisco Bay.
When winter rains and sun have
wrought in fragrant flowers

A multicolored carpet on the land,
A charm is in her circling hills and
redwood bowers
That only those who see can understand.
She has a mystic charm in all the changing seasons -
A lure that brings the stranger to her door,
And in these pages I will
give the Indian's reasons
For charms and lures, never told before.
The legends of the hills, the
fog, the gulls, the waters
Idealize the beautiful and true;
Allow me, therefore, California's
Native Daughters,
To dedicate this book of verse to you.
Contents.
The Maid of Tamalpais
The Twin Guardians of the Golden Gate

The Sea Gulls
The Islands of the Bay
The Lake of Merita
The Maid of Tamalpais.
This she told me in the firelight
As I sat beside her campfire,
In a
grove of giant redwoods,
On the slope of Tamalpais.
Old she was, and bent and wrinkled,
Lone survivor of the Tamals,

Ancient tribe of Indian people,
Who have left their name and legend

On the mountain they held sacred.
On the ground she sat and
brooded,
With a blanket wrapped around her -
Sat and gazed into
the campfire.
On her bronze and furrowed features,
On her hair of
snowy whiteness,
Played the shadows and the firelight.
Long she
gazed into the embers,
And I feared I had offended
In the question I
had asked her.
Then she spoke in measured accents,
Slowly, with a

mournful cadence,
And long intervals of silence.
"You have asked me why my people
Will not climb Mount
Tamalpais -
Why we hold the mountain sacred.
I am old, and when
the Raven
Calls my spirit to the Father,
None will know the ancient
story,
Sacred legend of the Tamals.
Therefore, I will tell the story,

I will tell and you shall write it,
Else it will be lost forever;
I will
tell it that the paleface
May respect our sacred mountain."
"In the morning of creation
All the world was covered over
With
the flood of troubled waters.
Only Beaver and the Turtle
Swam
about upon the surface.
Beaver said, 'I'm very weary.'
Turtle said,
'Dive to the bottom.'
Beaver dove and brought up gravel,
Laid it on
the back of Turtle;
Dove again and brought a pebble,
Then another
and another.
Pebbles grew to rocks and boulders,
As a peak above
the waters -
Thus was Mount Diablo fashioned.
Beaver sat upon the mountain,
Gazing out across the waters;
Saw a
single feather floating;
Feather grew into an Eagle;
Eagle flew and
sat by Beaver.
Long they talked about creation,
Counseled, planned,
and reconsidered,
Then they moulded clay with tules;
Beaver
placed his hair upon it,
Eagle breathed into its nostrils
Thus Coyote
was created.
Coyote barked and sat beside them.
Many creatures
were created;
Some with hair, and some with feathers;
Some with
scales, or shells, or bristles.
Other peaks and mountain ridges

Then appeared above the waters.

Walls of hills were then continued
North and south, to hold the
waters
In a mammoth lake, that, filling
All the Sacramento Valley,

Found its outlet to the ocean
Through the Russian River Canyon.

Round the lake the blazing mountains
Spouted