Page:Dawn and the Dons.pdf/73

51 sacred sign or image, possessing supernatural powers. To propitiate it and gain its friendship, they had placed food beside it; but when they saw the food was left untasted, they made offerings of arrows and feathered crests as a sign of friendship and peace.

The San Antonio, under instructions, had gone on to what was reckoned to be the latitude of the great estuary or inland sea—San Francisco Bay—seen by the Portola party on its former trip. But the vessel did no more than reach the designated latitude when, without doing any exploring, and without even noting the entrance to the estuary, the Golden Gate, she turned back and arrived: at the port of Monterey, which, it appears, was more easily found by sea than by land, on May 31, just a week after the arrival of Portola and his party.

Three days later, June 3, 1770, in the shadow of the Vizcaino oak, were enacted the solemn and stately ceremonies that re-established California as a part of Spain’s New World Empire. This oak has an interesting history, the relation of which may warrant a brief pause in our story.

At each edge of the American continent an oak tree has become historically prominent. On the Atlantic the famed and revered Charter Oak gained renown when, in 1687, Connecticut’s Royal Charter suddenly disappeared and escaped falling into the hands of the officers of King James. The tree was blown down during a storm on August 21, 1856, but a section of its trunk was preserved by the Connecticut Historical Society, and a