The City That Was | Page 5

as large as the saucer of an
after-dinner coffee cup, are blossoming everywhere. Tamalpais is green
to its top; everything is washed and bright. By late May a yellow tinge
is creeping over the hills. This is followed by a golden June and a
brown July and August. The hills are burned and dry. The fog comes in
heavily, too; and normally this is the most disagreeable season of the
year. September brings a day or two of gentle rain; and then a change,
as sweet and mysterious as the breaking of spring in the East, passes
over the hills. The green grows through the brown and the flowers
begin to come out.
As a matter of fact, the unpleasantness of summer is modified by the
certainty that one can go anywhere without fear of rain. And in all the
coast mountains, especially the seaward slopes, the dews and the
shelter of the giant underbrush hold the water, so that these areas are
green and pleasant all summer.
In a normal year the rains begin to fall heavily in November; there will
be three or four days of steady downpour and then a clear and green
week. December is also likely to be rainy; and in this month people
enjoy the sensation of gathering for Christmas the mistletoe which
grows profusely on the live oaks, while the poppies are beginning to
blossom at their feet. By the end of January the gentle rains come
lighter. In the long spaces between these winter storms, there is a
temperature and a feeling in the air much like that of Indian summer in
the East. January is the month when the roses are at their brightest.
So much for the strange climate, which invites out of doors and which
has played its part in making the character of the people. The externals
of the city are - or were, for they are no more - just as curious. One
usually entered San Francisco by way of the Bay. Across its yellow
flood, covered with the fleets from the strange seas of the Pacific, San
Francisco presented itself in a hill panorama. Probably no other city of
the world, excepting perhaps Naples, could be so viewed at first sight.
It rose above the passenger, as he reached dockage, in a succession of
hill terraces. At one side was Telegraph Hill, the end of the peninsula, a
height so abrupt that it had a one hundred and fifty foot sheer cliff on
its seaward frontage. Further along lay Nob Hill, crowned with the
Mark Hopkins mansion, which had the effect of a citadel, and in later
years by the great, white Fairmount. Further along was Russian Hill,

the highest point. Below was the business district, whose low site
caused all the trouble.
Except for the modern buildings, the fruit of the last ten years, the town
presented at first sight a disreputable appearance. Most of the buildings
were low and of wood. In the middle period of the '70's, when, a great
part of San Francisco was building, the newly-rich perpetrated some
atrocious architecture. In that time, too every one put bow windows on
his house to catch all of the morning sunlight that was coming through
the fog; and those little houses, with bow windows and fancy work all
down their fronts, were characteristic of the middle class residence
districts.
Then the Italians, who tumbled over Telegraph Hill, had built as they
listed and with little regard for streets, and their houses hung crazily on
a side hill which was little less than a precipice. The Chinese, although
they occupied an abandoned business district, had remade their
dwellings Chinese fashion, and the Mexicans and Spaniards had added
to their houses those little balconies without which life is not life to a
Spaniard.
Yet the most characteristic thing after all was the coloring. The sea fog
had a trick of painting every exposed object a sea gray which had a
tinge of dull green in it. This, under the leaden sky of a San Francisco
morning, had a depressing effect on first sight and afterward became a
delight to the eye. For the color was soft, gentle and infinitely attractive
in mass.
The hills are steep beyond conception. Where Vallejo street ran up
Russian Hill it progressed for four blocks by regular steps like a flight
of stairs. It is unnecessary to say that no teams ever came up this street
or any other like it, and grass grew long among the paving stones until
the Italians who live thereabouts took advantage of this herbage to
pasture a cow or two. At the end of four blocks, the pavers had given it
up and the last stage to the summit was a winding path. On the