land, insufficient depth of water; at Saucelito, where whalers, Russian and other, had been accustomed to refit, Tamalpais, 2700 feet high, as against Telegraph Hill, but 300. Distant Benicia and Vallejo the latter now the naval station of the Pacific Coast, and once briefly the capital of the State were much too far away. Steam was little in use. The greater part of the ships came under sail, and there were no tugs to pull them. They must be able to get in and out with the greatest attainable expedition.
Such ships as these were, according to the accounts we have of them! The most antiquated and dangerous hulks were furbished up once more for this last voyage. The eager humanity they carried took little heed of perils and discomforts so they were but on the way to the goal to which all adventurous spirits turned. When the port was still but a beggarly scattering of huts and tents it could muster two hundred sail, good and bad, at once. Many of them never got out again. It was not on account of nautical difficulties, but partly because they had no return cargoes, and principally because their crews ran away from them to the mines the moment foot touched shore. Certain craft were beached and converted into dwellings; others, utilized for a time as warehouses, rotted at their moorings, and to-day form "made ground." The remarkable city to which they came, which had eight hundred and fifty souls in 1848, and twenty thousand in '49, has now, in an existence of thirty-four years, three hundred thousand.
The buildings on the level made ground stand generally on foundations of piling. The practice prevails, too, of tying them well together with iron rods, against the jar of the occasional earthquake, which is among San Francisco's idiosyncrasies. It is proposed to improve the
