University of California Berkeley - Blue and Gold Yearbook (Berkeley, CA)

Page 27 text:

This is the piece of water that one for three hundred days of the college, but for many a long A legend tells us that of worthy memory at 1 Eureka! At the ha Joaquin Valley : to the three-mile stretch of t line of the ocean abov hills of San Francisco was the prospect that from the lips of Henry rant the word. Eu It is true that, one awhile, the bay fogs to Berkeley, but then only vi ' sun-gilt fringes. nce awhile, the Northers sweep around the flank of the Contra Costa Range, but the cold is never great enough to kill a heliotrope. But we are told that Berkeley has no charm of antiquity no classic shades as though age conferred more than natural beauty. We are satisfied. Oxford may have her lime- tree avenue, where her students walk and Yale may have her elms, beautiful and bare, planted with as much pre- the from the University windows Ijat is not only with us at ch for a university site, a pioneer ' s Hock, and immediately cried, -tbe left, a -vista-of- tbe San of Sausalito, and, in front, la sh of sunlit bay, with the blue j would cision as the row along the Champs change those hand-built antiquities for Cordill The 1 ' acific is tradition enough for us. We are Purple misted sky. and breath with the violet-dotted hills to right and left, wHItJfe canyons of Old Moun- tain. with our little streams flowing through perfejbjl alamedas of oak and laurel of willow and bay with our winter of roses, with vur matchless springtime, when myriads of wind-tossed blossoms, blown from orchards and poppy fields, tremble - the canyon gulches.

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The Home of the University HE University of California will not rest satisfied with the intel- lectual leadership of the State nor of the West. Her aim (a worthy one for any institution of the kind) is to become the ideal University of America, and past and present history suggest that such aim will not go very far wide of the mark. In seeking this ideal, California has one advantage which is hound to become of more importance year by year. She enjoys an unrivalled, a matchless. and, indeed, an ideal position. The untravelled Californian finds some difficulty in justly appreciating the advantages enjoyed by the State. The Hay of San Fran- cisco can hardly appear to him as the Queen of Hays. Its environment can with difficulty be thought of as unexcelled. The good things are too close. How does San Francisco Bay, however, compare with the first ports of the world? Nagasaki Harbor, for instance, is picturesque enough, but wants room; Port Jackson, Australia, is roomy enough, but too often as rough as Lake Superior; Hombay is a fine harbor for four months of the year only; Derwent Harbor, Tas- mania, though land-locked and banked with magnificent scenery, is entirely outside of the world ' s traffic; Southampton, with fine anchorage, is merely an artificial roadstead with no scenery, and so on with Cork Harbor, Table Bay, or Wellington Harbor, New Zealand. Climate, room, anchorage, environment, commercial position, and beauty make San Francisco Bay the premier bay of the world. There is, perhaps, only one piece of water that can compare with it, the Bay of Naples. This is the evidence of travelers (the President of Oberlin, for instance), and those who have seen some of these places will not find it difficult to concur in the above judgment. Land-locked to east and west and north, with a twelve- mile stretch toward the San Joaquin Valley, environed, for the most part, by tilted plains, sloping gently from its beaches, spaced with picturesque islands, yet roomy and deep enough for all the navies of the world, a depot for the world ' s traffic, protected from the Northers by the Contra Costa Range, and as calm as an inland lake with advantages such as these, it is in no spirit of rhetoric our bay is named the Queen of Bays. Sometimes, indeed, a heavy blanket of fog blinds its beauty, and, occasionally, its miniature waves are lashed to a white passion, but, oftenest, its waters lie still, shimmering in the silver light of day or in the golden gleam of the afternoon. When the sun is setting out there in the West, it is a royal feast for the eye to trace that red ribbon of sunset from the bay on through the Golden Gate, and, far out there, to where the Farallones lie veiled in purple mist. It is not difficult, at such a time, to travel in imagination into the future and see the world ' s traffic borne across the blue Pacific, along the coast from Alaska and the tropics, and through an inter-ocean canal to and from the Bay of San Francisco, Where great ships ride and rally, And the world walks up and down-- the sea of lights for streaming When the thousand flags are furled, When the gleaming bay lies dreaming, As it duplicates the world.

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It is a curious fact that our Blue and Gold predecessors have touched very lightly on the beauty of either landscape or water. One of this unhappy race, however, mentions the oak-tree groves, where coyotes, Mexicans, and students have successively flourished. French Charlie, too, who kept the famous little restaurant at the terminus of the bob-tail line of yore, is reported as saying: Ze old oaks make ze most glorious firewoods in ze world. The-fellow-and-his-girl genus from San Francisco has been heard to say the oaks were out o ' sight. The vandal tribe of picnickers, too, who bore away armfuls of scarlet columbines and laurel blossoms, certainly showed a sort of appreciation. What with the Art School enthusiast of later years, not to speak of the camera fiend, who has been seen to gleefully press the button on some unoffending old oak, what with the Beautiful Berkeley proclamations of the brass-throated real estate man, and the specimens of feathery ferns and winter poppy petals sent all over the State by the first-year man to the village princess Berkeley ' s fame for beauty has slowly, but consistently, grown. There is some evidence, too, that one of the finest orations ever delivered in Effigy Avenue was inspired primarily by the oaks. That was on the famous evening when the first of our fair sister students arrived from Oakland via the bob-tail line, and after the Juniors of that day had been foUjGed to form a Hying wedge for her protection. Amidst an impressive silence, Imikeu oji.ly by the coyote yelpings from Old Mountain, the orator proceeded to call dwn blessings on the new institution. Straightway, said he, must the men of tjjtlil ' orttlji christen the daintiest of their oaks ' Vivianna ' her name for. like our sister stu- dent, the oak is evergreen; like her, the oak is here to stay ; like her, the dear old oak casts its arms abroad, ever ready to embrace its fellows. .excitement at this ;, however, was so t that the orator rt hurriedly com- d to i n t e r v i e w . ;, Fluszgott of .wherry ( ' reek. The oaks of the - i M Tniversity grounds, however, hold no monopoly of either beauty or tradition. Near this famous oak grove, North-Fork joins Strawberry after a trip around Observatory Hill, and northward of the football campus. North-Fork is a stream of perpetual shade a veritable tangle of wild rose and blackberry, of laurel and creek willow, with here and there a sentinel oak. Brush aside a web of creepers, and your reward is a wealth of fern, scarlet columbine, and thimble-berry blossom. Where North-