Just then something happened which was appropriate in America, tin-land of automobile wonders. A petrol station appeared, a small station with only one pump, but how overjoyed we were to see it! Again service began! Life began! A sleepy man, muttering "Yes, ma'am" and "No, ma'am," filled our tank full of petrol. After twenty miles, we noticed that he had forgotten to screw on the cap. We drove to the very city of Fresno without a cap, afraid to throw cigarette butts out of the window, because we decided that open petrol might catch fire and our car would go to the devil, and along with it, of course, we too would go to the devil.

For a long while we travelled along a highway planted on both sides with palms.

The city of Fresno, famous, as Mr. Adams told us, because many Greeks live there, was asleep. There was not a soul on the streets. Only one extraordinarily tall policeman walked slowly from store to store, stopping at each one to make sure that the lock was intact. The American Greeks could sleep in peace.

When we drove up to the hotel it was twelve o'clock—midnight.

The speedometer showed that that day we had travelled three hundred and seventy-five miles. Mrs. Adams had sat behind the wheel for sixteen hours on end. It was a real record. We wanted to shout "Hurrah!" But we could not. We had lost our voices.

31 San Francisco

ABOUT FIFTY MILES away from San Francisco travellers become witnesses of a struggle between two competing organizations, the owners of the San Mateo Bridge and the owners of the ferry. The point is that to reach San Francisco from the Oakland side one must pass across the bay. At first you meet small modest bill-boards along the road. On one of these the bridge is advertised, and on the other the ferry-boats. So far travellers do not understand anything. As the bill-boards become wider and higher, the voices of the owners of the ferry begin to sound more persuasive.

"The shortest and cheapest way to San Francisco is across San Mateo Bridge," shout the owners of the bridge.

"The quickest and pleasantest journey to San Francisco is in the ferry! A first-class restaurant! An enchanting view of the Golden Gate!" shout the ferry owners at the top of their voices.

At the point where the roads branch out the bill-boards attain idiotic dimensions. They shut out the sky and the sun. Here the traveller must finally decide on his direction.

We chose the ferry, evidently out of a sense of contradicting the owners of the San Mateo Bridge. We saw several machines turn decisively in the direction of the bridge, apparently because of a feeling of dislike for the ferry owners.

Having passed Oakland, the petrol-asphaltish appearance of which confirmed once again that we were in America, we stopped at the ferry dock. A small line of automobiles was already waiting there. We did not have to wait long—about ten minutes. A bell rang out, and a broad-nosed ferry, with two thin and high stacks side by side, came to the dock. The sailors dropped a gangplank, and one after the other several score automobiles drove off the ferry. We did not see a single pedestrian passenger. The machines drove past our motorized column, in the direction of Oakland. Immediately the bell rang again and it was our turn to drive one after the other to the warm places still smelling of petrol and oil. The entire operation of unloading and loading the ferry took no more than two minutes. The automobiles were disposed on the lower deck, on either side of the engine-room, in two rows on each side, and the ferry pulled away.

"I don't think we have to lock our car," remarked Mrs. Adams, look ing at the passengers, who, carelessly leaving the doors of their cars open, went to the upper deck.

"But I'll take the key to the motor with me in any case," said Mr, Adams. "You must remember, Becky, that caution is the traveller's best friend."

We went above. Over the engine-room was an open space with wooden benches, two pinball games, automatic chewing-gum machines, and a small restaurant. Forward and aft were decks reserved for promenading, while on either side, over the automobiles, were several bridges with two lifeboats at each end. Astern the star-spangled banner snapped in the wind.

Here was the old steam-boat world, with the smells of seaweed and hot machine oil, with the taste of salt on the lips, with peeling enamel on the rails, with whistles and steam, with a fresh Novorossiisk wind and Sebastopol seagulls that, crying, floated on the wind above the stern, The bay was so wide that at first we could not make out the opposite shore on the horizon. At that point the width of the bay is more than five miles. We seemed to be going out into the open sea.

"I surmise, gentlemen," said Mr. Adams, "that you do not expect to feast your eyes on the Golden Gate?"

We said that that was precisely what we intended to do.

"In vain, sirs! The Golden Gate is very much like your Muscovite Myasnitsky Gate, in the sense that it does not exist at all. It is simply an exit from the bay into the ocean, which, by the way, cannot be seen from the ferry-boat."

"But the ferry-boat advertised down the entire length of the road a view of the Golden Gate!"

"You ask too much of the joint stock company of the San Francisco ferries," Mr. Adams said. "You acquire the right to ride across the bay, You receive harbourage for your car. You can obtain chewing gum from an automatic machine. Yet, in addition, you expect to see the Golden Gate! Truly, you must take pity on the owners of the ferry. If even now they can scarcely manage to exist because of competition with the San Mateo Bridge, what will happen to them in another two years when that thing over there is finished, in fighting which they spent a million dollars?"

Mr. Adams pointed with his hand to a construction which from a distance looked like cables stretched across the bay.

So that's what it was—this world-renowned technical wonder—the famous suspension bridge! The nearer the ferry came to it, the more grandiose it seemed. To the right, almost on the horizon, could be seen the contours of another bridge being built across the bay.

The Empire State Building, Niagara, the Ford plant, the Grand Canyon, Boulder Dam, sequoias, and now the suspension bridges of San Francisco—they were all phenomena of the same order. American nature and American technique not only supplement each other in order jointly to astonish the imagination of man, but to squelch him. They gave expressive and precise conceptions of the extent, the dimensions, and the wealth of the country, where everything, no matter what it might be, must be the tallest, the broadest, and the most costly in the world. If it's an excellent road, then it must be a million miles long. If there are automobiles, then there must be twenty-five million of them. If it's a house, a building, then it must be a hundred and two stories high. If it's a suspension bridge, then it must have a main span a mile long.

Now Mrs. Adams could freely cry: "Look! Look!" Nobody stopped her. And she took full advantage of her right. The ferry passed a barred pylon which rose out of the water. It was broad and high, like " General Sherman." From its top our ferry must have seemed as small as a man at the bottom of the Grand Canyon. Half of the pylon was painted an aluminium colour. The other half was as yet covered with red lead.

From this point we could already have a good view of San Francisco, which grows out of the water like a little New York. But it seemed pleasanter than New York. A gay white city coming down to the bay in an amphitheatre.

"Here, gentlemen," said Mr. Adams, "you don't know what this bay really is! Seriously! The fleets of all the governments of the world can find room here. Yes, yes. It would be well to gather them all here, all of those fleets, and sink them all."