The Lure of San Francisco Part 9

"I suppose the fog of your practical realism is too obscuring for you to see that clipper just coming in," I continued, as a full-rigged ship spread its filled sails against the glowing sky of the late afternoon.

"The lady is a bit sarcastic, Billy," he addressed the goat, "but we'll examine it." Then peering through his telescoped hands again, "It's the clipper ship Eclipse," he announced, "built especially for speed, in the exigencies of the San Francisco trade, with long, narrow hull, and carrying an extra amount of canvas. She has made the trip from New York in three-quarters of the time required by any other kind of craft, and demands, therefore, nearly double the price for freight." He looked at me for approval.

"What a whetstone for the imagination the business sense is!" I commented. "Perhaps if your grandfather owned shares in the Eclipse, you will be able to see the second signal station erected the next year on Point Lobos, just beyond the Fort. From there a vessel could be decried many miles outside the Heads and the signal repeated by the station here on Telegraph Hill, relieved the inhabitants of several more hours of anxiety."

"Anxiety is a mild term if one couldn't hear for a whole month from the girl who had his heart," he commented. "It's bad enough when she won't write, even with a telegraph and railroad between." He was tracing some characters in the ground at my feet, with a stick. "Thirty-four days," I made out.

"If you've sufficiently recovered from the climb, shall we see how the city looks from up here?" I asked.

For answer he sprang up and a.s.sisted me to my feet. We walked to the opposite side of the park, where the city lay extended before us.

"Imagine a forest of masts here in the bay, about seven or eight hundred; the water laying Montgomery Street beyond the Merchants'

Exchange--that yellow brick building with the little arched cupola; and wharves running out from every street to reach the ships lying in deep water, every one swarming with teams and men hurrying to and fro.

Connect them with piled walks over the water on the lines of Sansome and Battery Streets and you have a picture of Yerba Buena Cove in forty-nine. Heap up freight and baggage on the sh.o.r.e, erect thousands of tents on the sand dunes around the edges of a town of shanties and adobes climbing over the hills and you have our miner's metropolis," I sketched for him.

"I see it," he said, shutting his eyes. "Now a wave of the magic wand and the scene is changed." He opened them again.

"The magic wand is a steam-paddy, working day and night leveling off the sand-hills and shoveling them into the bay. The wharves are converted into streets and many good ships, whose crews having deserted for the mines, being pulled up and used as storage ships, are caught by the rising tide of sand and converted into foundations for buildings. Such was the 'Niantic' at Clay and Sansome."

"Oh yes, the 'Niantic!"

"The third building on the site still retains the name."

"What was the case of a.s.sault that gave the belligerent name to Battery Street?"

"It was a precaution against a.s.sault," I corrected. "Captain Montgomery erected a fortification of five confiscated Spanish guns on the side of this hill overlooking the harbor after he had taken possession of the Mexican town. It was known as Fort Montgomery, or the Battery. It was on the bluff just where Battery Street joins the Embarcadero down there, for the hill came out to that point."

"Did the earthquake shake it down?" His question was tinged with triumph.

I crushed him with a look. "The ships that came loaded with freight and pa.s.sengers took it away with them as ballast," I explained, "and of recent years some contractors blasted it off and paved streets with it until it was rescued from further demolition by some appreciative landmark lovers of a women's club."

"What a fortunate interference! But the despoilers got a good slice of it, didn't they? There wouldn't have been much of it left in a few years."

"No more than there is of Rincon Hill, over there at the southern corner of Yerba Buena Cove." I was considerably mollified by his appreciation.

"It was the best residence quarter of the fifties, but the 'unkindest cut' of Second Street, which brought no good to anyone, not even its commercial promoters, left it a place of the 'b.u.t.t ends of streets,' as Stevenson says, and inaccessible, square-edged, perpendicular lots whose only value lies buried underneath them. I fear its scars can never be remedied."

"You have several hills left," he consoled me as his eye traveled along the broken western skyline. "What is their role in this historic drama?"

"The ridge running down the peninsula is the San Miguel Range, crowned by Twin Peaks, with the Mission at its foot. n.o.b Hill, next, acquired its name in the sixties, when the bonanza and railroad kings erected their residences there. Before the fire"--I felt my color rising, but there was no shade of change in my companion's expression--"the mansions of the 'Big Four' of the Central Pacific--Huntington, Hopkins, Stanford and Crocker--and the Comstock millionaires--Flood, Fair and others--filled with magnificent works of craftsmen and artists, had more than local fame."

"From this distance, with three of the largest buildings in the city, the hill hardly seems to have fallen from its high estate," he observed.

"You are quite right. It still lives up to its name, for the Fairmont Hotel and the Stanford Apartments, christened for two of its former magnates, and the brown-stone Flood mansion, remodeled for the Pacific-Union Club, are no whit less n.o.bby than their predecessors."

"The next hill?" He turned his gaze to the houses perched on the top and clinging part way down its steep sides.

"A little graveyard where the Russian gold-seekers were laid to rest gave its name. It is now the home of the artists and the artistic."

"A city built on the water and the hills, and rebuilt on the ashes of seven fires," he commented. "It is almost incomprehensible." After a moment's pause: "How much of the city was burned by the last fire?"

I glanced sharply at him. There was no shade of irony in his tone and his face showed only sincerity.

"All that you can see, from the fringe of wharves at the waterfront to the top of the hills and down into the valley beyond, except these houses here at our feet, saved by the Italians with wine-soaked blankets, and a few on the heights of Russian Hill."

"It was colossal!" he exclaimed. "Think of it! a whole city wiped out."

I lowered my eyes to the goat nibbling beside us. "The courage and energy that rebuilt it is herculean." His enthusiasm was c.u.mulative.

"And rebuilt it in practically three years! No wonder you date all things from the fire."

Billy flickered his tail and solemnly winked at me.

"It is getting late," I said, "but the sun is just setting. Shall we watch it before we go?"

Without speaking, he followed me back to our first point of view. The crimson ball was sinking into the sea, with its Midas touch turning the water and sky to molten gold. The last rays gilded the cliffs on either side of the entrance to the bay, and burnished the heads of the nodding poppies at our feet. From the Presidio came the m.u.f.fled boom of the sunset gun.

"Could Fremont have chosen a better name?" exclaimed the man at my side.

"The Golden Gate it is, indeed!"

"It certainly is well named," I agreed, "for everyone can interpret its meaning according to his mood and character. Some see only what Fremont saw, an open door to commerce; to others it is the entrance to h.o.a.rds of gold, stowed away in hills and streams; to the poet it speaks of the golden poppies that streak the hillsides, but I like to think of it as did the Indians, who called it 'Yulupa,' the Sunset Strait."

Silently we watched the lights of the city come out, one by one, until it seemed as if the heavens lay beneath us.

"I hoped when I left Boston that you would return with me," he said gently, "but I can't ask you to leave this. I didn't understand then, but now--"

The lights became blurred and the night seemed suddenly to have grown cold.

"Of course, you couldn't be happy--"

The voice did not sound like his. I had been in a dream for two days. I had thought he cared just as I did, but he couldn't, or he would realize that nothing counted but--I bit my lips to keep from crying out.

"Boston is too cold for a girl with the warmth of California in her heart."

Cold! Didn't he know that life with him would make an iceberg paradise?

Didn't he realize--? But, of course, he didn't care as I did! This was only a subterfuge. I straightened proudly.

"I can't ask you to go back with me," he was saying, "but I can stay here with you." His hand crept over mine. "Our business needs a manager on this coast. Will you help me make a home in San Francisco, dear?"

Below, the lights of the city danced with happiness and a glad new song rang in my heart.

Here ends 'The Lure of San Francisco. A Romance Amid Old Landmarks."

Written by Elizabeth Gray Potter and Mabel Thayer Gray and Ill.u.s.trated from Sketches in Charcoal by Audley B. Wells. Done into a book by Paul Elder and Company at their Tomoye Press in San Francisco under the supervision and care of H. A. Funke, in July, Nineteen Hundred and Fifteen.