San Francisco Bay
 

"Our place of destination had been Monterey, but as we were to the northward when the wind hauled ahead, we made a fair wind for San Francisco.  This large bay, which lies in latitude 37º 58', was discovered by Sir Francis Drake, and by him represented to be (as indeed it is) a magnificent bay, containing several good harbors, great depth of water, and surrounded by a fertile and finely-wooded country.  About thirty miles from the mouth of the bay, and on the south-east side, is a high point, upon which the presidio is built.  Behind this, is the harbor in which trading vessels anchor, and near it, the mission of San Francisco, and a newly begun settlement, mostly of Yankee Californians, called Yerba Buena, which promises well.

...

If California ever becomes a prosperous country, this bay will be the centre of its prosperity.  The abundance of wood and water, the extreme fertility of its shores, the excellence of its climate, which is as near to being perfect as any in the world, and its facilities for navigation, affording the best anchoring-grounds in the whole western coast of America, all fit for a place of great importance; and, indeed, it has attracted much attention, for the settlement of "Yerba Buena," where we lay at anchor, made chiefly by Americans and English, and which bids fair to become the important trading place on the coast, at this edge began to supply traders, Russian ships, and whalers, with their stores of wheat and frijoles.;quot;

From Chapter XXI of Two Years Before the Mast, by Richard Henry Dana, Jr., written in 1840 describing his voyage from Boston to the California coast during 1834-36. 

Actually, Dana's report is wrong on one detail, and his geography might also be faulted. There is scant evidence that Drake saw the Golden Gate Strait at the entrance to San Francisco Bay when his party passed these shores in 1579, or was even aware of it.  They did moor north of here near present-day Point Reyes.  Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo in 1542-'43 and Sebastian Vizcaino in 1602 had also failed to see the strait.  The first Europeans to spot San Francisco Bay were probably members of an overland scouting party of Spanish explorer Gaspar de Portola who approached it from the southeast in 1769.