house by winding down its bare sides, now Broadway
and Pacific streets, and leaping the slough, now Jack-
son street, wading through the bay, now Montgomery
street, up a sand bank, now Washington street, to an
open space, now Kearney street and the Plaza, thence
fifty paces south to the point of destination. I can
well remember, also, when an unobtrusive casa, com-
pared with the immense structures which* now rise
heavenward here and there at magnificent distances,
was all that, in the way of internal, or for that mat-
ter, external improvements, met the eye; when the
Parker house, the old Portsmouth house, the United
States hotel, Howard's store, the venerable adobe on
the Plaza, then a custom-house, afterwards a broker's
shop, and now no more, with one or two other shan-
ties, looked to us immigrants of '49 like palaces; when
seraped natives chased the wild bullock over the sur-
rounding hills, satisfying a lean lank traffic, not com-
merce, with the offering of a hide or horn; when a
Chinepe was a lusus naturse, and a woman on the
street — which was an imao;inarv line drawn in red and
blue ink on paste-board — an absolute and unmitigated
wonder."
The pile-driver, both the man and the machine, was an institution of San Francisco's babyhood. Without the driving of piles, the water-lots of the cove could not be reclaimed, and without their reclamation own- ership was of little avail. The manner of it was in this wise : from one end of a lumbering scow rose, high in the air, two perpendicular beams, between which played a large lump of iron. A primitive steam- engine, standing back of the upright beams, drove the machinery. On or near the spot destined to be re- claimed floated hundreds of piles, that is, young trees, from twelve to eighteen inches in diameter, cut thirty or forty feet in length, carefully trimmed and sharp- ened at one end. With its claws, which were attached to the end of a chain, the machine seized one of these floating logs near the large end, and with a
