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