“O’er the foothills, through the meadows,
  Midst the canons’ lights and shadows,
    Spreading with their amber glow,
    Lo, the golden poppies grow! 
  Golden poppies, deep and hollow,
  Golden poppies, rich and mellow,
  Radiant in their robes of yellow,
    Lo, the golden poppies grow!”

The honour of having named the Gate, however, is generally conceded to General John C. Fremont.  In his “Memoirs” he says:  “To this Gate I gave the name of Chrysopylae or Golden Gate, for the same reasons that the harbour of Byzantium (Constantinople) was named the Golden Horn (Chrysoceras).”  It has been hinted nevertheless that Sir Francis Drake gave it its appellation; and if this be so the euphonious name would be suggested by his ship in which he sailed along this coast, the Golden Hind. At first the ship bore the name of Pelican, but at Cape Virgins, at the entrance to the Straits of Magellan, Drake changed it to the Golden Hind, in honour of his patron Sir Christopher Hatton, on whose coat of arms was a Golden Hind.  Not without interest do we follow the fortunes of this ship.  When finally she was moored in her English port after her voyages, and was put out of commission as unseaworthy, and fell into decay, though guarded with care, John Davis, the English navigator, had a chair made out of her timbers, which he presented to the University of Oxford, still guarded sacredly in the Bodleian Library.  No wonder that Cowley, while sitting in it, wrote his stirring lines, and apostrophised it as “Great Relic!” How noble this thought.

  “The straits of time too narrow are for thee—­
  Launch forth into an undiscovered sea,
  And steer the endless course of vast eternity;
  Take for thy sail, this verse, and for thy pilot, me!”

Had we stood on these lofty shores by the Golden Gate in the early summer of 1579 we would have descried the Golden Hind ploughing the waters of the Pacific northward.  Her course was as far north as latitude 42 deg. on June 3rd.  Owing, however, to the cold weather Drake returned southward to find a “convenient and fit harbour” for rest and refitting of the vessel; and, as one of the narrators of the voyage writes, “It pleased God to send us into a fair and good bay, with a good wind to enter the same.”  Was this what is known as Drake’s Bay or popularly as Jack’s Bay, southeast of Point los Reyes, or was it the Bay of San Francisco?  Justin Winsor, in his Narrative and Critical History of America, and Hubert Howe Bancroft, in his History of California, discuss this matter in an exhaustive manner; and the reader after sifting all the evidence afforded, will still be free to form his own judgment.  Some writers, wishing to give the glory to the Spaniards, arrive at conclusions hastily, though of course a name like that of Bancroft carries great weight and his arguments deserve the highest consideration.  The question then is, Was the Golden Hind the first ship to cross the bar and pass through the Golden Gate, in the name of Queen Elizabeth of England?  Or was it Juan Bautista de Ayala’s ship, San Carlos, in August, 1775, in the name of Charles III. of Spain?