terest, facing the City Hall and the Post Office. Clay Street Hill was
higher then than now. I know it because I climbed to its top to call on
a boy who came on the steamer and lived there. There was but little
settlement to the west of the summit.

The leading hotel was the International, lately opened, on Jackson
Street below Montgomery. It was considered central in location, being
convenient to the steamer landings, the Custom House, and the wholesale
trade. Probably but one building of that period has survived. At the
corner of Montgomery and California streets stood Parrott's granite
block, the stone for which was cut in China and assembled in 1852 by
Chinese workmen imported for the purpose. It harbored the bank of Page,
Bacon & Co., and has been continuously occupied, surviving an explosion
of nitroglycerine in 1866 (when Wells, Fargo & Co. were its tenants) as
well as the fire of 1906. Wilson's Exchange was in Sansome Street near
Sacramento. The American Theater was opposite. Where the Bank of
California stands there was a seed store. On the northeast corner of
California and Sansome streets was Bradshaw's zinc grocery store.

The growth of the city southward had already begun. The effort to
develop North Beach commercially had failed. Meiggs' Wharf was little
used; the Cobweb Saloon, near its shore end, was symbolic. Telegraph
Hill and its semaphore and time-ball were features of business life. It
was well worth climbing for the view, which Bayard Taylor pronounced the
finest in the world.

At this time San Francisco monopolized the commerce of the coast.
Everything that entered California came through the Golden Gate, and it
nearly all went up the Sacramento River. It was distinctly the age of
gold. Other resources were not considered. This all seemed a very
insecure basis for a permanent state. That social and political
conditions were threatening may be inferred when we recall that 1856
brought the Vigilance Committee. In 1857 came the Fraser River stampede.
Twenty-three thousand people are said to have left the city, and
real-estate values suffered severely.

In 1860 the Pony Express was established, bringing "the States," as the
East was generally designated, considerably nearer. It took but ten and
a half days to St. Louis, and thirteen to New York, with postage five
dollars an ounce. Steamers left on the first and fifteenth of the month,
and the twenty-eighth and fourteenth were religiously observed a