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The autumn of 1850 saw quite a city-like settlement round Yerba Buena cove. Prices of most necessities and some luxuries had come down within the reach of the masses, but were still high enough. Several new journals were started, such as the Pacific News and Commercial Bulletin. The El Dorado gambling- house, from a canvas tent, had become a fine three- story brick building. The bay was noisy with steamers, many of which were transformed sailing boats, with old boilers which burst with the slightest provocation.
The fire of 1850 put an end to many irregularities. People then began to build in a more substantial manner. The fire of 1851, however, made a clean sweep of all that had been done, and the city began to assume a more regular appearance. Brick houses and planked streets took the place of the huddled huts and tents of the previous years. The bay was alive with shipping ; by midsummer over a hundred steam- ers had entered and departed.
- ' Old things are passing away," sighed the medita-
tive man, by old things referring to things two years old. The hills were being cut dow^n and the hollows filled up. Montgomery street, which was the original high-water mark, was now in the heart of the city, and Sansome street, which had been filled up between Jackson and California streets, was the new water line. The water lots between Montgomery and San- some were first piled, and then filled in. South of California, the steam excavator was busy scooping up the sand-hills, and dropping them into the low places alono; the border of the cove. A rail-track was laid on Battery street, along which cars were seen flying back and forth all day, dumping their loads into the water, the conductor, mounted on the foremost truck, lustily blowing his horn to give warning of approach.
The space bounded by Montgomery, Pacific, Jack- son, and Kearny streets was, in the spring of 1851, a hollow filled with little wooden huts planted promis- cuously, with numberless recesses and fastnesses filled
