The houses in San Francisco as well as other coast towns are built to withstand earthquake shocks. On this account very few brick are used. An earthquake hotel is advertised. In this city, too, one may eat Pasteurized ice-cream without fear of the deadly ptomain.
An orange, as every one knows, is a difficult fruit to eat gracefully, but I’ve learned how to do it in this land of the citron. A gentleman assured me that the only proper place to eat an orange was in the bathtub.
Up and down the length of this coast I’ve not been able to get a decent lemonade. Very few places serve that drink at all. Drinks there are plenty, but no lemonade. Now I know what those warnings mean which hang up in every stateroom on the steamers: “Passengers strictly prohibited from getting into bed with their boots on.”
California is rich in stories of her early days. Just east of San Francisco lies a narrow valley bordering on the bay of San Pablo. The first white man to enter this valley was one Miguel and his wife, who named it El Hambre (Hunger) valley.
Miguel built an adobe hut and planted a garden. Later he started to San Francisco, for supplies. Madam Miguel remained at home to tend the garden. Miguel would return in three weeks and all would be well.
Time passed slowly to the lonely woman. When the three weeks had passed Emilia packed a burro and started out on the trail which her husband had taken. At night she tethered the burro and rolled in her blanket slept by the roadside. Dawn saw her on the trail. The third day her burro neighed and was answered by a donkey which proved to be that of Miguel. Hurrying on she found her husband lying on the roadside, dead. She remained there until the sun set, then covered him with a blanket and returned home.
Later some traders wandering through the valley found her skeleton in the garden. The adobe still stands in the now new town of Martinez.
Dick Brown, miner of Misery Hill, was a sort of recluse, who never made any friends among the miners of the Eldorado of the west.
One day while out prospecting, a landslide carried him down the valley and buried him beneath it. His body was recovered and buried, but his ghost walked nightly at the foot of the old shaft.
A lazy, seemingly good-for-nothing sort of a fellow, Wilson by name, began work in Brown’s mine. It was a good mine and paid Wilson well until some one else began working it. Every morning there was evidence that some one had been at work during the night.