Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 21.djvu/282

Rh 262 A N 8 A his grandfather in the earldom, 20th October 1729. He was educated at Eton and at Trinity College, Cambridge, which he entered in 1735. After a voyage round the Medi- terranean, he returned to England and began to take an active interest in politics as a supporter of Sir Robert Walpole. A clear and lucid rather than a brilliant debater, his style of address always won the attention of his audience, and his accurate knowledge secured their respect. The high opinion the Government entertained of his judgment and his diplomatic abilities was evidenced by his appointment in 1746 as plenipotentiary to the congress at Breda, which was continued till peace was negotiated at Aix-la-Chapelle in 1748. On his return he became first lord of the admiralty, retaining the post until June 1751. He held the same office from 1763 to 1765, and again from 1771 till the dissolution of Lord North's administration in 1782. He died 30th April 1792. His Voyage Round the Mediterranean was pub- lished posthumously in 1799, accompanied with a memoir. SANDWICH ISLANDS. See HAWAIIAN ISLANDS. SANDYS, GEORGE (1577-1644), famous in the reigns of James I. and Charles I. as a traveller and a metrical translator. He was born in 1577, the youngest son of an archbishop of York, studied at St Mary Hall, Oxford, and afterwards probably at Corpus Christi, and began his travels in 1610. The record of them was a substantial contribu~ tion to geography and ethnology, written in a style always interesting and often eloquent, interspersed with versified scraps of quotations from classical authors. He travelled from Venice to Constantinople, thence to Egypt, thence by way of Mount Sinai to Palestine, and back to Venice by way of Cyprus, Sicily, Naples, and Rome. Later on in his life he published translations of Ovid's Metamor- phoses, the first book of the jEneid, and various books of Scripture. His verse was praised by Dryden, and de- servedly so, for it has vitality as well as a clearly marked rhythm. He died in 1644. Selections from his poetry were published by the Rev. H. J. Todd in 1839. SAN FERNANDO, formerly ISLA DE LEON, a fortified city of Spain, in the province of Cadiz, near the head of the inner bay, and 9 miles by rail from the city of Cadiz (see vol. iv. p. 627), is a modern town with straight and level streets, two churches, two hospitals, several barracks, and a school of navigation, with an observatory. It has considerable trade in the salt produced in the neighbouring " salinas." The population within the municipal limits (which include the " poblacion" of San Carlos and the naval arsenal of La Carraca) was returned as 26,346 in 1877. SAN FRANCISCO, a city of the United States, the largest commercial city of California and of the Pacific coast, is situated in 37 47' 22"'55 N. lat. and 122 25' 40*-76 W. long., on the end of a peninsula which has the Pacific Ocean on one side and the Bay of San Francisco on the other. The width of this tongue of land within the city limits is about 6 miles, and its whole length about 26. The original site of San Francisco was so uninviting that many of the pioneers doubted if a place of much importance could ever spring up there. The hills (Russian Hill, 360 feet ; Telegraph Hill, 294 feet ; and a number of others, ranging from 75 to 120 feet) were barren and precipitous, and the interspaces, especially on the westerly side, were made up largely of shifting sand-dunes ; on the east side, however, the land sloped gently towards the bay,. and 1 there was the further advantage of a small cove extending inland nearly to the present line of Montgomery Street. This cove has since been filled up and built over. After an attempt to found the commercial metropolis at Benicia, 30 miles north on the Straits of Carquinez, it was evident that no other place within easy distance from the ocean possessed so many advantages for the site of a city as this barren peninsula. The Bay of San Francisco is reached from the ocean through the Golden Gate, a strait about 5 miles long and averaging 1 mile in width, with a depth of 30 feet on the bar at the entrance and from 60 to 100 feet within. The bay, which extends past the city in a south- south-east direction for about 40 miles, is about seven miles wide in front of the city, while its greatest width is 12. Connected with the Bay of San Francisco on the north by a strait 3 miles wide is San Pablo Bay, about 10 miles in length and the same in bread tb, having at its extreme northerly end Mare Island, the site of the navy yard. This bay, again, is connected by the Straits of Carquinez with Suisun Bay, 8 miles long and 4 wide. The total length of these bays and connecting straits is 65 miles. This great inland water, sheltered and for the most part navigable by the largest craft, receives the two great Environs of San Francisco. rivers of California, the Sacramento and the San Joaquin. In the Bay of San Francisco are Alcatraz Island (30 acres), strongly fortified ; Angel Island (800 acres), fortified; and Yerba Buena, or Goat Island (about 300 acres). The presidio or fortified settlement of San Francisco was founded on 17th September 1776, and the mission (San Francisco de los Dolores) in the following October. In 1830 the population of the presidio consisted of about fifty Spanish soldiers and officers; these added to the number at the mission made an aggregate population of about 200. Beechy, who visited the harbour and presidio in 1 826, has left the following description : " The governor's abode was in a corner of the presidio, and formed one end of a row of which the other was occupied by a chapel ; the opposite side was broken down, and little better than a heap of ruobish and bones, on which jackals, dogs, and vultures were con- stantly preying. The other two sides of the quadrangle contained stone houses, artificers' shops, and the jail, all built in the humblest style with badly burned bricks and roofed with tiles. The chapel and the Government house were distinguished by being whitewashed."