Old Mexico and her lost provinces; a journey in Mexico, southern California, and Arizona, by way of Cuba . and arrangement city might have been terraced up, like Genoa, orNaples above the Chiaja. It is picturesque still, in thethin, American way, through the absolute force of cir-cumstances. You enter the retaining-walls of stone orplank through door-ways or grated archways like thepostern-gates of castles. You pass up stone steps in tun-nels or vine-covered arbors within these; or zigzag fromlanding to landing of long, wooden stairways, little terrace streets and places
Old Mexico and her lost provinces; a journey in Mexico, southern California, and Arizona, by way of Cuba . and arrangement city might have been terraced up, like Genoa, orNaples above the Chiaja. It is picturesque still, in thethin, American way, through the absolute force of cir-cumstances. You enter the retaining-walls of stone orplank through door-ways or grated archways like thepostern-gates of castles. You pass up stone steps in tun-nels or vine-covered arbors within these; or zigzag fromlanding to landing of long, wooden stairways, little terrace streets and places, as Charles Place,with bits of gardens, are found sandwiched between the SAy FRANCISCO. 327 regular formation. A wide thoroughfare, Second Street—cut through Rincon Hill, the Xob Hill of a former day,to afford access to water for vehicles—has been the oc-casion of leaving isolated, high and dry, some few oldhouses, with cypress-trees about them, approached bywooden staircases almost interminable. Dark at sunsetagainst a red sky, for instance, they present effects todelight the heart of an HIGH-GRADE RESIDENCES. In this line, however, nothing is equal to TelegraphHill, which bristles with the make-shift contrivances of amuch humbler population. Bret Harte lived there atone time, and asserts that the goats used to browse on his}K)ts of geranium in the second-story windows. Theyalso pranced on the roof at night in such a way that anew-comer thought tliere had been a fine , instead of precipices, you meet with chasms. 328 OLD MEXICO AND HER LOST PROVIXCES. Looking down from tlie roadway, you will see some poorfigure of a woman sewing in a bay-window which wasonce filled w^ith air and sunshine, but now commandsonly a patch of mildewed wall. The views from the hills are of no common you rise on the Cable road you hang in the air abovethe body of tlie city, and above the harbor and its envi-ronment. The Clay Street road, one of the steepe
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1880, booksubjectmexicod, bookyear1883
