Pedal and Path: Across the Continent Awheel and Afoot

by George B. Thayer

Chapter XVII.

With the Veterans.

A bicycle is of little use in the city of San Francisco, that is, in the city proper. The horizontal streets are too roughly paved and the perpendicular streets are of course unrideable. It may be exaggerating the case a little to speak of the streets as being perpendicular, but many of them are nearer that than they are level. The city is full of hills, such as Telegraph Hill, where there is a beer garden in the shape of an old castle, and Nob Hill where Flood, Stanford, and other California millionaires have built some of their fine residences. A cable line of street cars runs over these hills, and it is quite a treat at first to take a ride upon these cars. They go noiselessly up a grade that often rises one foot in three, as steep as the Mount Washington Railroad, and yet the speed of the car does not slacken in the least, either going up or down, the rate being somewhat faster than horse cars. Unlike the dummy or grip-car in Chicago, which has a train of three or four cars, these have only one car attached, which is often crowded to its utmost, but should the grip lose its hold on the cable the car can be instantly lifted off its wheels on to runners that would prevent the car sliding down the steep grade at a very dangerous speed.

The cable, the power which moves the cars, runs along under the center of the track entirely unseen, and the grip, a flat, iron beam, in the center of the dummy, slides along in a slot in the center of the track, and by an ingenious contrivance grasps or lets go of the running cable at the will of the gripman. The power is communicated to the cable by running it over grooved wheels at a central station in the cable car line, which is often three or four miles long. In the rapidity of transit, this system on a level is a great improvement upon horse cars, and in surmounting these long, steep hills, where horse-power would be utterly useless, it works equally well.

But to return to the bicycle. In going out to the Presidio, a government reservation, west of the city, a mile or so, and to the fort which stands just at the Golden Gate, I found excellent roads, and so on, all the way to the Cliff House, which is four miles out on the shore of the Pacific; but the drifting sand caused a few dismounts. Strange as it may seem, this sand is the cause of great expense to the people here. It drifts like snow, covering up fences, houses, and in time blocking up thoroughfares if left undisturbed.

On the way out I passed square miles of sand hills that were being blown by the westerly winds into heaps and drifts thirty or forty feet high. And one of the petty annoyances from the sand is the dust that is constantly filling every nook and corner of stores, shops, and dwelling-houses. The trouble from flies is as nothing compared to the evil which housekeepers have to endure from their greatest enemy, dust. There is something about this California dust that is more penetrating than Eastern dust, for the pedals on the machine would in other places remain in good running order for several weeks after cleaning, but here they get gummed up in a very few days.

A most novel attraction at the Cliff House is the sea lions that swarm all over a mass of rocks out in the ocean, perhaps a hundred and fifty feet from the cliff. Here hundreds of these growling, snarling animals crawl up out of the cold waves, floundering over each other in search of a warm place to sleep in, and disturbing other slumberers, thus creating a constant uproar. The grounds and flower gardens about the residence of Adolph Sutro, of Sutro Tunnel fame, are certainly very pretty—the most beautiful I have seen—and the situation, just back of the Cliff House, and higher up, is a very fine one.

After a short trip across the bay, by water and rail, to Alameda, the Saratoga of California, all interest was lost for awhile in everything else in the growing excitement attending the Grand Army Encampment. To one who had been so long in coming across the continent, the sight of those who had so recently left Connecticut was a real pleasure, and I keenly enjoyed looking at fellow Yankees, especially into the faces of those from Hartford. But it was a great disappointment to see Connecticut unheralded in the grand procession except by a small banner belonging to the New Haven Post. The colors that should have made the forty members from Connecticut who joined in the procession distinguishable in the thousands of other marching veterans, arrived an hour after the parade was dismissed.