Page:The Tourist's California by Wood, Ruth Kedzie.djvu/133

SAN FRANCISCO 105 holds the ocean itself hurling a thunderous spray on the cliffs of Point Lobos. A king's house may have no richer prospect than these arbours on Telegraph Hill. A short distance away is the hill where the Rus- sians used to bury the dead of their colony, and where, later, fine homes were built in the midst of gardens. In the Russian Hill district at Lombard and Hyde Streets, Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson resided after her husband's death. San Francisco has no memory more redolent than that of her adopted literary sons Ross Browne, Hittell, Henry George, Mark Twain, Bret Harte, Stoddard, Stevenson who tasted fame, some of them for the first time, while living and working within her borders. Stevenson had met Mrs. Osbourne in France while making his Inland Voyage in a canoe. After she returned to her home in California, he came over-seas when he was about thirty to be near her. His journey from New York is described in Across, the Plains, which was written following the Christ- mas season of 1879 when he came from Monterey to San Francisco and found lodgings at Number 608, Rush Street, in a lank, ungainly house since torn down. He frequented the old rooms of the Bohemian Club on Pine Street. His love of the sea drew him to North Beach among the " tall