twenty yokes in a team, drawing huge wagons hitched one behind another, like the cars in a railroad train, laden with redwood lumber going down to the bay for shipment to San Francisco.
This redwood lumber has some valuable properties, with others of the opposite character. It contains a large amount of iron, and no pitch, and will resist the action of water without showing a sign of decay for many years. It will receive a beautiful finish, and may be colored and varnished to resemble rosewood so closely that the eye of the most expert wood-worker may be deceived. It shrinks less than pine in drying, and is particularly valuable, therefore, for the outside of houses when there is no pressure upon it. But on the other hand it is almost as brittle as glass, and a two-inch plank of it, resting on the ends, will not support the weight of an ordinary man. It splits with the least blow, and is so soft that I have known a small terrier dog, shut up in a new barn built of it, gnaw a hole through the side, or door, and make his escape in half an hour.
Some half-dozen years ago a curious illustration of the unreliableness of redwood occurred in San Francisco. Workmen were engaged in putting a new asphaltum roof upon the three-story brick block on the southeastern corner of Montgomery and California Streets, and a drayman, who had brought them some material, stood on the battlement wall looking at them. Something attracting his attention, he stepped backward, and to the horror of the spectators cleared the wall entirely, and fell in a perfectly upright position the whole height of the build-
