The bay, gleaming in the sun, is crisscrossed in all directions by white ferries. In the harbour stand large ocean steamers. They belch smoke, ready to go off to Yokohama, Honolulu, and Shanghai. From the aerodrome of the military encampment an aeroplane rises and, its wings gleaming in the sun, disappears in the translucent sky. In the middle of the bay on Alcatraz Island, which from the distance looks like an antiquated armoured cruiser, one can make out the building of the federal prison for particularly important criminals. There sits Al Capone, the famous chieftain of a bandit organization which had terrorized the country. Ordinary bandits in America are placed in the electric chair. Al Capone has been sentenced to eleven years' imprisonment, not for bootlegging and not for robbery, but for non-payment of income tax on the money he acquired through robbery and bootlegging. In prison Al Capone writes anti-Soviet articles which the Hearst newspapers print with pleasure. The famous bandit and murderer (something like the cabman Komorov, only much more dangerous) is concerned about conditions in America, and while sitting in prison composes plans for saving the country from the spread of communist ideas. And Americans, great lovers of humour, do not see anything funny in that.

On Telegraph Hill is a high tower from the top of which, we were told, opens a broad view of the city. However, we were not allowed to go to the top. We learned that in the morning an unemployed young man had flung himself from the tower and was crushed, and so for that day it was decided to forbid admission to the tower.

San Francisco Bay is separated from the ocean by two peninsulas, which jut out from the northern and southern sides of the bay and end in high cliffs that form the exit into the ocean. That is the Golden Gate. The northern peninsula, full of cliffs, is covered with a wild forest. San Francisco lies on the southern peninsula, facing the bay.

We drove toward the Golden Gate. On a high cape at the exit into the ocean is a beautiful park and in it a museum of fine arts with numerous reproductions of famous European sculptures. Here ends Lincoln Highway, the autostrada between New York and San Francisco. American technicians are people of amazing modesty. The end of their concrete masterpiece which unites the Atlantic and the Pacific oceans they have marked with a memorial column only three feet high, on which are the letter "L," a small bronze bas-relief of Lincoln, and the inscription: "The Western End of the Lincoln Highway." The names of the builders of the road remain unknown. What of it! The people who a year from now will be driving across the bridges of San Francisco Bay will not know who planned and built them.

Thanks to the kindness of the bridge builders we were granted permission to look at their work. We got into a naval cutter, which waited for us in the harbour, and departed for Yerba Buena Island, located in the middle of the bay. The little island is in charge of the War Department, and one must receive special permission to visit it. The San Francisco-Oakland Bridge, eight and a half miles long, consists of several bridge spans of different types. Especially interesting is its western suspension part, which is 10,450 feet in length. It joins San Francisco with Yerba Buena Island and consists of suspension spans connected by a central stabilizer. On the island the western part of the bridge meets with the eastern part, which connects the island with the land. That part consists of a cantilever span, which stretches for 1400 feet, and several other spans, which are overlapped by latticed girders.

The main work on the island, which is almost completed, is a wide and high tunnel drilled through the cliffs. It is this tunnel which connects both parts. The tunnel and the bridge will be two stories high. On the upper story automobiles will move in six rows. The pedestrians have not been forgotten either. There will be two sidewalks for them. On the lower story in two rows will pass trucks, and between them an electric railway. By comparison with this bridge, the greatest European and American bridges will seem small.

Now they were finishing the spinning of the steel cable on which the bridge will hang. Its thickness is almost a metre in diameter. It is that which, when we were approaching San Francisco, looked to us like thin 'wires dangling over the bay. The guy, which before our very eyes was being spliced in the air by moving machinery, reminded us of Gulliver, whose every strand of hair was tied by the Lilliputians, each to a little peg. That cable, hanging over the bay, is safely provided with a wire net for the workmen to walk on. We ventured to make a short journey along the cable. We felt as if we were on the roof of a skyscraper, with only this difference—that there was nothing at all under our feet except a thin wire net through which the waves of the bay were visible. A strong wind was blowing.

Although the journey was quite safe, we clutched the cable with desperation.

"How thick it is," said Mrs. Adams, trying not to look down.

"A beautiful cable," confirmed Mr. Adams, without letting the upper steel support out of his hands.

The cable is woven out of seventeen and a half thousand thin steel wires, our guide explained to us.

We went into transports of rapture over this figure, and hung on to the cable more firmly than ever.

"And now let us go higher," the guide proposed, "to the very top of the pylon."

But it was impossible to tear us away from the cable.

"What a cable!" Mr. Adams exclaimed. "Just see how thick it is. How many wires did you say ? "

"Seventeen and a half thousand," said the guide.

"I simply don't want to go away from it," Mr. Adams remarked.

"But we don't have to go away from it. We will go up alongside the cable," the guide said naively.

"No, no. In this particular place the cable is especially good! This is a magnificent cable! Just look how faultlessly thin it is and at the same time what durable workmanship!"

Mr. Adams looked down by chance, and instantly shut his eyes.

"An excellent, excellent cable," he muttered. "Write that down in your little books."

"Wouldn't you like to look through the console span of the eastern part of the bridge ? " the guide suggested.

"No, no, sir! What a thing to say! No, this is an excellent cable! I like it very much. This is a perfect, a superior cable. It would be interesting to know from how many wires it is made up."

"From seventeen and a half thousand," our guide said sadly.

He understood that we would not go anywhere else and suggested that we go down. The entire way back we walked without letting the cable out of our hands and admiring its unheard-of qualities.

Only when we found ourselves on the hard rocky surface of Yerba Buena Island did we understand the meaning of the heroism of people who, whistling gaily, were splicing the cable over the ocean.

32 American Football

ON THE fifth day of our life in San Francisco we noticed that the city began to suck us in, just as long ago—thousands of cities, a score of deserts, and a score of states ago—we had been almost sucked in by New York. Our notebooks were filled with a multitude of notes, signifying the dates of business appointments, of business luncheons, and business cocktail parties. We were leading the life of businesslike Americans, without having any business at all. Our days were tremulous with da fear of being late for an appointment. Cursing, we crept around the room, looking for the lost collar button. Like Chichikov, we paid a visit to the mayor of the city, a very charming Italian by the name of Rossi, a bald-headed gentleman with black eyebrows. He showed us a letter from Honolulu which had been sent only the day before, The letter had been brought over by the China Clipper, a flying boat of Sikorsky's. For exactly five minutes we praised the city of San Francisco to the mayor and he treated us to excellent cigars. It was our luck that San Francisco really is a fine city and we were not obliged to lie to Mr. Rossi. We walked out of the City Hall with pleasant smiles on our faces and with apprehension in our hearts. It was high time to break through the ring of business appointments and really begin a business life—that is, wander aimlessly through the city.