on many of the stones in this burial place are footnotes to San
Francisco's early history.

Within the burned area of 1906, above the original waterfront of the
days when the water came up to Montgomery street, there are several
blocks of buildings which were spared by freaks of fate. These buildings
stand near the original Plaza now called Portsmouth Square. It was here
Commodore John Montgomery landed from the "Portsmouth" and raised the
Stars and Stripes on July 4, 1846, almost the seventieth anniversary of
the establishment of the Spanish Presidio. The site of his landing, at
what is now Clay and Montgomery streets, has been marked by one of the
bronze tablets on which the order of the Native Sons of the Golden West
has graven many of the historic episodes of California. Not far away, on
the south side of Sacramento street, between Davis and Front, there is a
brick building marked by a tablet as the site of Fort Gunnybags,
headquarters of the Vigilance Committee, which in 1856 hanged Casey and
Cora, two enemies of law and order, from its windows. In Portsmouth
Square itself, token of a gentler spirit, there stands a drinking
fountain in memory of Robert Louis Stevenson. That prince of idlers and
of prose spent many an hour on the sunny benches of this square. The
streets nearby, where stand the few buildings that escaped the fire,
echo the footsteps of Stevenson, of Mark Twain and Bret Harte. The Hall
of justice faces the square.

The Parrott building, erected in 1853 by Chinese labor with stone
brought from China, remains standing at California and Montgomery
streets.

Around the Plaza centered the life of the pueblo and of the early city
of San Francisco, but now on three sides of it is Chinatown, the