Page:Mexico, California and Arizona - 1900.djvu/345

 tion of town you have to begin a back-breaking climb. The ascent is like going up-stairs, and nothing less.

The San Francisco householder of means is "like the herald Mercury new-lighted on a heaven-kissing hill." How in the world, I have asked, does he get up there? Well, by the Cable road. I consider the Cable road one of the very foremost in the list of curiosities, though I have refrained from bringing it forward till now. It is a peculiar kind of tramway, useful also on a level, but invented for the purpose of overcoming steep elevations.

Two cars, coupled, are seen moving, at a high rate of speed, without jar and in perfect safety, up and down all these extraordinary undulations of ground. There is no horse, no steam, no vestige of machinery, no ostensible means of locomotion of any kind. The astonished comment of the Chinaman, observing this marvel for the first time, may be worth repeating once more, old as it is:

"Melican man's wagon, no pushee, no pullee; go top-side hill like flashee."

The solution of the mystery is an endless wire cable hidden in a box in the road-bed, and turning over a great wheel in an engine-house at the top of the hill. The foremost of the two cars is provided with a grip, or pincers, running underneath in a continuous crevice in the box with the cable. When the conductor wishes to go on he clutches with his grip the cable; when he wishes to stop he lets go and puts on a brake. There is no snow and ice to clog the central crevice, which, by the necessities of the case, must be open. The system has been applied, however, with emendations, in Chicago, and also on the great Brooklyn Bridge, at New York.

The great houses on the hill, like almost all the residences of the city, are of wood. It seems a pity, considering the money spent, that this should be so. It is