Let us now pursue our walk in a northwesterly direction to the Presidio.  The descendants of the old Spanish families in San Francisco pronounce the word still in the Castilian way, with the vowels long, and the full continental sound is given.  This makes the name very musical as it is syllabled on their lips.  What is the Presidio?  This was originally the Military Post of the Spaniards, but it is now the Military Reservation of the United States.  We are carried back to the old Spanish days as we tread the well kept walks of this garrisoned post.  It was on Sept. 17, 1776, as we learn that it was established.  There were four of these Presidios in California, one at San Diego, the second at Santa Barbara, the third at Monterey, and the fourth here by the waters of the Golden Gate.  They were built on the lines of a square, three hundred feet long on each side, and the walls were made of adobes formed of ashes and earth.  Within this enclosure were the necessary buildings, of the simplest construction, such as the Commandante’s house, the barracks, the store house, the shops and the jail.  The government buildings as a rule were whitewashed.  The chief object of the Presidios was to give protection to the Missionaries and guard them against the Indians.  The full complement of soldiers in each Presidio was two hundred and fifty—­but the number rarely reached as high as this.  The soldiers in those early days were not, as a rule, of the highest standing.  Many of them were from the dregs of the Mexican army, and among them were men sometimes who had committed crime and were in a measure in banishment.

There could be no greater contrast possible than that between the Presidio of Spanish days and the Presidio of the present time, both as to the place and the personnel of the officers and men of the garrison.  As you look around you now your eyes rest on wide and handsome parade grounds, on beautiful gardens where flowers bloom in luxuriance, on groups of the Monterey Cypress, on neatly trimmed hedges, on walks in many places bordered with cannon balls, on attractive buildings which have a homelike aspect with vines climbing the walls, on barracks where the soldiers are made comfortable.  The Presidio looks like a settlement in itself, and is very picturesque.  I will not soon forget the beautiful, balmy afternoon, when I walked through the grounds on my way to the hills above the ocean.  Here everything was suggestive of forethought, of care, of order, of dignity.  The Reservation stretched out on every hand and over to the shore of the Bay northward where it has a water frontage of at least a mile and a half.  In all its area it embraces a landscape, varied and undulating, of one thousand, five hundred and forty-two acres.  It is a noble park in itself and well may the nation be proud of it.  The Presidio was first occupied by United States troops in 1847, on March 4th, when the sword was trembling in the weak hands of Spain.  On November 6th, 1850, President Millard Fillmore set these grounds apart forever as a Military Reservation.  As I walked on, before me to the west, rose hundreds of tents in which were soldiers, some of whom had returned from the Philippine Islands, and others of them were soon to embark for the Orient.  Yonder too is the cemetery, where, as on Arlington Heights above the Potomac, sleep the Nation’s dead; and