hall, post-office, the more gorgeous saloons, with cigar
shops, fancy stores, ancllivery stables, were on Kearny
street, the street of loafers, litigants, lawyers, officials,
politicians, the idle and the employed, and also the
street of fast riding, which in those days was more
common than now. Montgomery street from the be-
ginning was the Wall street of San Francisco, the
street of bankers, brokers, gold-dust buyers, jewellers,
book-stores, and newspaper offices, with a free sprink-
linof of restaurants and drinkhig- saloons. Below Mont-
gomery street, on land reclaimed from the bay, were
the large warehouses, wholesale stores, and auction
houses. On San some street was the American thea-
tre and several hotels. On Battery and Front streets
were many brick buildings well stocked with goods.
Davis street, built wholly on piles and the last opened,
was the resort of seafaring men, and the shops mostly
contained ships' supplies. To these and the intersect-
ing streets from Jackson to California, with the ex-
ceptions of the Clark point and iron manufactories of
Happy valley, the business of San Francisco was
chiefly confined— a small area, truly, when we consider
the astonishing amount of traffic carried on within
these limits.
Wo is me for I am in trouble 1 was the one long continuous wail of San Francisco from birth till past babyhood. Born of disorder, corruption rankled in its blood. Colic and physic were its alternate compan- ions during infancy, and of times the remedy was ten- fold worse than the disease. Wealth untold was its heritage, but all of it was given, before she numbered six years as a city, for an enormous debt. This was her first trouble, vast property in her pueblo lands, and ravenous wolves to lap it up. Water in front and drifting sand-hills behind, the equalizing or grading of which was a trouble. Fires were a trouble, and streets, and debt ; the hounds of '51 and the ballot-box stuflPers of '56 were troubles. Yet withal the child grew and waxed fat.
