Commonwealth Network
From the back of the card:
After thirty long days of the monotony of a calm ocean, one is likely to welcome with eager eyes the first sight of any land. Nor are we less eager if the ocean has not been calm. But the sight of the home land, with the knowledge that the grandest sights of our journey are still before us, thrills us with a new joy. Nature at San Francisco opens her arms to home-comers in a magnificent land-locked harbor -- one of the finest in the world.
We have come up to one of the higher terraces in the beautiful Sutro Gardens and are looking down upon the Cliff House, a favorite resort for visitors. Just out in the water we see the "Seal Rocks" where hundreds of sea lions lie basking in the sun or, barking and coughing, leap and play in the water.
Back of us lies San Francisco, famous for its old Spanish Missions, for its early turbulent history of the gold-seekers, for its mysterious and fascinating and dangerous Chinese Quarter, for the unparalleled natural wonders in its vicinity. Old guidebooks gently warned us in these words: "Earthquakes occur occasionally in San Francisco, but are never very destructive. The severest (1868) caused the loss of one life." What a different tale was told in April, 1906 when in one of the most terrible catastrophies in history, unknown hundreds were buried or burned, hundreds of thousands were made homeless, and hundreds of millions of dollars worth of property were destroyed!...