Page:Mexico, California and Arizona - 1900.djvu/321

 Rh Palace Hotel, the Market Street shot-tower, and the homes of some of the great millionnaires who have made such a stir in their day and generation. Three or four of these latter top California, or "Nob," Hill, with a prominence in keeping with their owners' station. They are those of the railroad kings, Crocker, Stanford, and Hopkins—the mining kings having up to this time expended their principal building efforts in the country. "Nob" Hill is three hundred feet high, plebeian Telegraph Hill nearly as much, and Russian Hill, to the west—the latest precinct taken into favor for fine residences—three hundred and sixty. Murray Hill, New York, be it noted, is but seventy-eight. The riff-raff of Telegraph Hill climb, as is seen, by a multitude of wooden stairways; but how in the world do the Croesuses get up to their habitations, which cut the sky-line so imposingly? We shall see.

The city does not begin directly at the ocean, but a mile or two within. It follows the inner shore of a long, narrow peninsula which comes from the south to meet one coming from the north, and forms with it the strait and bay. It is, indeed, an inland sea, this bay. You go south-ward upon it thirty miles, northward as far, and thirty miles north-eastward to the Straits of Carquinez—which has Benicia on one side, and Martinez, the point of departure for ascent of the peak of Mount Diablo, on the other. Through these straits you pass, again, into Suisun Bay, which receives the waters of the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers, and is itself some twenty miles in extent.

You are struck, on coming ashore from Mexico, with the excessive thinness of everything American. Our be-