Page:The Tourist's California by Wood, Ruth Kedzie.djvu/169

 BAY AND UPPER COAST COUNTIES 137 and dreamed, and wrote verses, mostly about the west and California. A rough square tower on " The Heights " is his monument to Fremont. A round tower is raised to Browning's memory, and there is a pyramid for Moses. These were his heroes. His own monument, designed by Tilden, is in Oakland Park. Alameda and the towns south of it constitute a fecund belt which girdles desirable estates and prepossessing cottages. Early morning finds the roads a-rumble with carts whose scented loads are destined for San Francisco's basement markets in Bush and Kearny Streets. Italian, Japanese and Chinese growers cull their posies from a net-work of ranches in Alameda, San Mateo and Santa Clara Counties. Some walk to market carrying a brimming basket at either end of a pole supported on the shoulder. Before noon they come back again, baskets empty, the profits of their haggling stowed in their jeans, or beneath the crowns of broad hats. Mt. Diablo was so named by the Spanish for a mysterious wizard of the hills who used to appear in Indian war dress to those who had vision acute enough to see him. The isolated peak commands the country behind Oakland in Contra Costa County, 40 miles east of San Francisco. A Key Route electric train, Oakland - Sacramento, passes near the foot of the mountain, but it may also be