Telegraph Hill of Unique Fame

"Would you like to go up 'crazy owld, daisy owld Telegraft Hill'," I asked in a softened mood as we moved away. "There is just about time."

"Indeed I should," he answered. "Can we take in some of the other things you archaeologists were mentioning on the way? I don't want to miss anything."

"We must leave the Parrott and Niantic buildings until some other day, but you can see the Montgomery Block if you wish," and we turned down Washington Street. "It was built on piles, by General Halleck's law firm. William Tec.u.mseh Sherman's bank was nearby, but I suppose most of Boston's business men were generals-in-chief of the United States Army."

My irony was ignored and as we reached the corner of Montgomery, I continued: "It was on this spot that James King of William, editor of the 'Bulletin,' was shot down by James P. Casey, the ballot-box stuffer.

The newspaper office was at the other end of the block on Merchant Alley, and that evening's editorial accused Casey of electing himself supervisor and stated that he was an ex-convict from Sing Sing. Within an hour after the paper appeared, Mr. King was carried dying to his room in the same building. It was this murder that brought the second Vigilance Committee into existence. While the immense funeral cortege, the largest San Francisco has ever known, escorted the body of Mr. King up this street toward Lone Mountain Cemetery, Casey and Cora, another criminal, were hung in front of the Vigilance, Headquarters on Sacramento near Front."

"You called it Fort Gunnybags ?" he queried.

"Yes, it was so named from the precautionary bulwark of sand-filled sacks piled up in a hollow square in front to protect the entrance. A bronze plate marked the old building before the fire."

We turned into Columbus Avenue. "Your beloved Stevenson used to live at No. 8, there on the gore where the Italian Bank is," I said. "We are coming to the Latin Quarter, a section that has always been given over to foreigners, for in early days 'Sidneyville,' peopled by ticket-of-leave men from the penal colony of Australia, and 'Little Chile' of the Peruvians and Chileans, cl.u.s.tered close around the base of Telegraph Hill."

"The very place Stevenson would choose, where life was flavored with history and the mystery of the foreign. But where are you going?" he exclaimed, stopping short as I began to ascend the steps by which Kearny Street climbs the hill.

"I thought you wished to see the site of the Marine Signal Station." I looked down at him from the fourth stair with feigned surprise.

"I do, indeed, but--can't we go up by a funicular and come down this way?" he compromised. "My Boston calves protest."

"Oh well, we can go by the level a little farther, but I thought you liked the 'flavor of the foreign.' Anyway, we ought to see Earl c.u.mmings' old man," I remembered.

"What is his fatherland and his business?" he asked as his eye traveled over the shop signs "Sanguinetti, Farmacia Italiana," "Molinari & Cariani, Grocers;" "Oliva & Brizzolara, Real Estate."

"His birthplace is the World Universal, and his profession-leading us back to nature," I answered. Then, as we pa.s.sed the spick and span concrete facade of the Patronal Church of St. Francis, with its rear of burned brick: "This is the direct descendent of the old Mission," I told him, "the first Parish Church of San Francisco. It was gutted by the fire and is being very gradually restored. A notice within administers an implied rebuke: 'The First Erected--the Last Restored.'"

We paused at the iron fence of the small green triangle cut off from Washington Square by the slant of Columbus Avenue, and peered at the fine bronze figure of a sinewy old man stooping to drink from his hand on the edge of the little pool.

"Mr. c.u.mmings' message to his universal brothers," he commented. "None could fail to be refreshed by it. My strength is renewed. Let us ascend," and he turned up Filbert Street.

Dark-eyed women lounged in the doorways of the houses that cling to the perpendicular sides of the hill. "The Italian pervades," I volunteered, "but there are Greek, Sicilians, Spaniards and French." The whole was reminiscent of the South of Europe, but the Neapolitan scene of cleated walks and steep steps lacked the enlivening color notes of the homeland.

"Not even a red shirt on a clothes line," I regretted, but a flood of soft voweled Italian from a woman in a third story window, musically answered by a man in the street below, brought consolation.

"The opera's own tongue," the Bostonian commented.

"Well, you leave it to me," finished the man in the street.

"Sure, Mike, I will," responded the woman.

My companion halted in consternation.

"We make American citizens of them all," I a.s.serted.

"Les pet.i.ts enfants aussi," I added as a child ran past, shouting a response in irreproachable English to the Parisian command of her mother.

We turned through the rude stone wall into Pioneer Park and along the unkept paths shaded by eucalyptus, cypress and acacia trees and came upon the open height where the mountain-hemmed bay lay in broad expanse before us, dotted with islands and with ferries streaking their way across its blue-gray surface.

"Wonderful," he exclaimed under his breath.

'"O, Telegraft Hill, she sits proud as a Queen, And th' docks lie below in th' glare,'"

I quoted from Wallace Irwin.

He lowered his gaze to the numerous wharves running out into the water, with teams appearing and disappearing at the entrances of the covered docks, like lines of busy ants.

"'And th' bay runs beyant her, all purple and green Wid th' gingerbread island out there,'"

I continued the quotation.

"What are those terraced buildings?" he queried.

"It has been the military prison for years. It is Alcatraz Island."

He looked his inquiry.

"Spanish for Pelican," I answered, seating myself on a rock. "Ayala, the captain of the 'San Carlos,' the first ship to enter the bay, named it from the large number of the birds he found on it, and the big island to the right that looks like a portion of the main land is Angel Island, abbreviated from Ayala's Isla de Nuestra Senora de los Angeles."

"And Goat Island?" he questioned as he threw himself down on the gra.s.s.

"Yerba Buena," I corrected. "The other name was colloquially applied when Nathan Spear, being given some goats and kids by a Yankee skipper, put them over there. There were several thousand on the island in forty-nine, but the Americans killed them all off by night in spite of Spear's protests."

"Not all of them," he denied as he shied a stick at a white head reaching from below for a gra.s.sy clump.

"'And th' goats and chicks and brickbats and sticks Is joombled all over the face of it, Av Telegraft Hill, Telegraft Hill, Crazy owld, daisy owld Telegraft Hill,'"

I laughed.

"I suppose the Spaniards must have had a name for this sightly hill,"

said the Bostonian, his eye tracing the rugged skyline across the bay, along the Tamalpais Range on the north, and the San Antonio Hills on the east.

"Yes, Anza christened it in 1776 when he climbed up here for a view after selecting the sites for the Presidio and the Mission. He called it La Loma Alta, and the High Hill it remained until the Americans put it to commercial use in forty-nine. The little town on the edge of the cove in the hollow of the hills was unconscious of a ship entering the harbor until she rounded Clark's Point, the southeast corner of this hill, and dropped anchor in full view--"

"Any relation to Champ?" he interrupted.

"No, Clark was a Mormon, although he afterward denied it, who had built a wharf in the deep water along the precipitous bluff, where ships could always disembark even when the ebb-tide uncovered mud-flats elsewhere along the sh.o.r.e of the cove.

"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 semaph.o.r.e 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 sh.o.r.e 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.