Page:Hard-pan; a story of bonanza fortunes (IA hardpanbonanza00bonnrich).pdf/264

252 the plaza. The adobe of the Señora Briones lay farther round in the hollow of North Beach; her father had often shown her where it stood. Now the myriad roofs of a metropolis stretched far away, filling the valley and cresting the adjacent hills. Domes and the crosses on church steeples caught the light, and from this great height the girdle of silver water encircled it like a restraining bond.

The Italian and Spanish quarter was even more interesting. It was farther round, on one of the steepest faces of the hill. The streets seemed to share the characteristics of their occupants. They all started out bravely from the level ground, ascended for a few energetic blocks, then gave up the effort and appeared to lazily collapse in a debris of unkempt houses and squalid yards. But no one seemed to care. A tranquil indifference pervaded the quarter. Only the old houses—grave, stucco-fronted dwellings, with long windows under floriated cornices, and iron balconies skirting the upper stories—had the air of looking out on this degradation of the once prosperous region with the sad, patient dignity of a broken old age. Here and there, too, stood those dwellings, relics of Spanish taste, which maintain a secret and arresting suggestion of mystery. They are ramparted from vulgar eyes by a high plaster wall, which, through a curved arch-