A pictorial description of the United States; embracing the history, geographical position, agricultural and mineral resources .. . esented daily theirhmg bills of fare, rich with the choicesttechnicalities of the Parisian , vessels were coming in day afterday, to lie deserted and useless at theiranchorage. Now scarce a day passed,but some cluster of sails, bound outwardthrough the Golden Gate, took theirway to all the corners of the tlie magic seed of the Indian jug-gler, which grew, blossomed, and borefruit, before the eyes of his spectators,San Francisco seemed to h
A pictorial description of the United States; embracing the history, geographical position, agricultural and mineral resources .. . esented daily theirhmg bills of fare, rich with the choicesttechnicalities of the Parisian , vessels were coming in day afterday, to lie deserted and useless at theiranchorage. Now scarce a day passed,but some cluster of sails, bound outwardthrough the Golden Gate, took theirway to all the corners of the tlie magic seed of the Indian jug-gler, which grew, blossomed, and borefruit, before the eyes of his spectators,San Francisco seemed to have accom-plished in a day the growth of half acentury. It was but a brief period after theabove sketch of San Francisco was pen-ned, that that fated city was visited bythe first of those calamitous fires, abovereferred to, which have six times deso-lated its finest streets, and proved a seri-ous check to its growth and first of these took place on the 24ihof December, breaking out in a gam-bling-house on Portsmouth square, andrapidly spreading to the adjacent t>ui!d-ings. in a short time, the finest portion. m 614 DESCRIPTION OF THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA. of a laige block of houses was burnedto the ground. The fire presented afearful spectacle. Fortunately the weath-er was calm, as the slightest wind wouldhave exposed the entire city to almostinevitable destruction. The loss wasestimated at one million, and a half ofdollars. With the genuine spirit of Yan-kee enterprise, many of the sufferers bythe fire commenced business the nextday in tents, and others on the same dayprej)ared the site of the ruins for theerection of new buildings. Another fire took place in San Fran-cisco, on May 4th, 1850, which destroyedover two hundred buildings and prop-erty to the amount of over four millionsof dollars. The fire commenced in theUnited States hotel, and spread withterrible rapidity in every direction. Itwas found impossible to arrest its prog-ress, except by tearing down
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1860, bookidpictorialdes, bookyear1860
