Part 16

"The American miners and merchants, eager for the earliest news of the approaching mails and merchandise, erected a signal station on the top of Loma Alta, about where that flag-pole is. When a vessel was seen entering the Golden Gate, the black arms of the semaphore on top of the building were raised in varying positions indicating to the watching town below, where every one knew the signals, whether it was a bark, a brig, a steamer or other kind of craft. This was the first wireless station on the coast.

"There comes a side-wheeler," I exclaimed, raising my arms upward in a slanting position, as a big liner from Yokohama entered the channel. "Now fancy every office and bank closed, every law-court adjourned, every gaming table deserted; the shore black with people and long lines forming from the post-office windows to await the anchoring of the vessel, the landing of friends and freight, and the sorting of the mail by Postmaster Geary."

My companion made a telescope of his two hands and examined the Nippon Maru. "You are discharged for inefficiency," he said. "You are reporting a side-wheeler for a screw-propeller."

"There is no signal in the code for such modern inventions," I retorted. "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 assisted 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 shore, 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 assault that gave the belligerent name to Battery Street?"

"It was a precaution against assault," 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 passengers 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 'butt 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. Nob 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 nobby 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.