Here the scene changes again, this time to San Francisco, the city of many hills, of drifting summer fogs, and sparkling winter sunshine, the old city that now lives only in the memories of those who knew it in the days when Stevenson climbed the steep ways of its streets. Although he had something about him of the ennui of the much-travelled man, and complained that
"There's nothing under heaven so blue,
That's fairly worth the travelling to,"
yet no attraction was lost on him, and the Far Western flavour of San Francisco, with its added tang of the Orient, and the feeling of adventure blowing in on its salt sea-breezes, was much to his liking. My especial memory here is of many walks taken with him up Telegraph Hill, where the streets were grass-grown because no horse could climb them, and the sidewalks were provided with steps or cleats for the assistance of foot-passengers. This hill, formerly called "Signal Hill," was used in earlier days, on account of its commanding outlook over the sea, as a signal-station to indicate the approach of vessels and give their class, and possibly their names as they neared the city. When we took our laborious walks up its precipitous paths it was, as now, the especial home of Italians and other Latin people. Mr. Stevenson wondered much at the happy-go-lucky confidence, or perhaps it was their simple trust in God, with which these people had built their houses in the most alarmingly insecure places, sometimes hanging on the very edge of a sheer precipice, sometimes with the several stories built on different levels, climbing the hill like steps. About them there was a pleasant air of foreign quaintness—little railed balconies across the fronts, outside stairways leading up to the second stories, and green blinds to give a look of Latin seclusion.
In stories of his San Francisco days there is much talk of the restaurants where he took his meals. The one that I particularly remember was a place kept by Frank García, familiarly known as "Frank's." This place, being moderately expensive, was probably only frequented by him on special occasions, when fortune was in one of her smiling moods. Food was good and cheap and in large variety in San Francisco in those days, and venison steak was as often served up to us at Frank's as beef, while canvasback ducks had not yet flown out of the poor man's sight; so we had many a savory meal there, generally served by a waiter named Monroe, with whom Mr. Stevenson now and then exchanged a friendly jest. I remember one day when Monroe, remarking on the depression of spirits from which Louis suffered during the temporary absence of the women of his family, said: "I had half a mind to take him in a piece of calico on a plate."
Once more the picture changes, now to the town of Calistoga—with its hybrid name made up of syllables from Saratoga and California—where we stayed for a few days at the old Springs Hotel while on our way to Mount Saint Helena, to which mountain refuge Mr. Stevenson was fleeing from the sea-fogs of the coast. The recollection of this journey seems to have melted into a general impression of winding mountain roads, of deep canyons full of tall green trees, of lovely limpid streams rippling over the stones in darkly shaded depths where the fern-brakes grew rankly, of burning summer heat, and much dust. At the Springs Hotel we lived in one of the separate palm-shaded cottages most agreeably maintained for the guests who liked privacy. On the premises were tiny sheds built over the steaming holes in the ground which constituted the Calistoga Hot Springs. It gave one a sensation like walking about on a sieve over a boiling subterranean caldron. Determined not to miss any experience, we each took a turn at a steambath in these sheds, but the sense of imminent suffocation was too strong to be altogether pleasant.
Then came the wild ride up the side of the mountain, in a six-horse stage driven at a reckless rate of speed by its indifferent driver, whirling around curves where the outer wheels had scarcely an inch to spare, while we looked fearfully down upon the tops of the tall trees in the canyon far below. If the horses slackened their pace for an instant, the driver stooped to pick up a stone from a pile that he kept at his feet and bombarded them into a fresh spurt. At the Toll House, half-way up the mountain, which still exists in much the same condition as in those days, we arrived as mere animated pillars of fine white dust, all individuality as completely lost as though we had been shrouded in masks and dominoes.
The Toll House was a place of somnolent peace and deep stillness, broken only by a pleasant dripping from the wooden flume that brought down the cold waters of some spring hidden in the thick green growth far up on the mountainside. And such water! He who has once tasted of the nectar of a California mountain spring "will not ask for wine!" At the Toll House we had liberal country meals, with venison steaks, served to us every day. Bear were still killed on the mountain, but I do not remember having any to eat. From this place we climbed, by way of a toilsome and stiflingly hot footpath running through a tangle of thick undergrowth, to the old Silverado mine bunk-house, where the Stevenson family took up their headquarters. People said there were many rattlesnakes about, and now and then we saw indubitable evidence of their presence in a long, spotted body lying in the road, where it had been killed by some passer-by, but fear of them never troubled our footsteps. In The Silverado Squatters Mr. Stevenson says, "The place abounded with rattlesnakes, and the rattles whizzed on every side like spinning-wheels," but I am inclined to think that he often mistook the buzzing noise made by locusts, or some other insect, for the rattle of the snakes.
The old bunk-house seemed to me an incredibly uncomfortable place of residence. Its situation, on top of the mine-dump piled against the precipitous mountainside, permitted no chance to take a step except upon the treacherous rolling stones of the dump; but we bore with its manifest disadvantages for the sake of its one high redeeming virtue—its entire freedom from the fog which we dreaded for the sick man. It was excessively hot there during the day, but there was one place where coolness always held sway—the mouth of the old tunnel, from whose dark, mysterious depths, which we never dared explore for fear of stepping off into some forgotten shaft, a cold, damp wind blew continuously. Just inside its entrance we established a cold-storage plant, for there all articles kept delightfully fresh in the hottest weather. When the coolness of the evening fell, "it was good to gather stones and send them crashing down the chute," and indeed this was almost our only pastime in our queer mountain eyrie. The noise made by these stones as they went bounding down the chute was sent back in tremendous rolling echoes by the mountains on the opposite side of the valley, and it pleased us to liken it to the noise heard by Rip Van Winkle, "like distant peals of thunder," made by the ghosts of Hendrik Hudson's men playing at ninepins in the Catskill Mountains.
Then back to San Francisco, where the only memory that remains is that of a confused blur of preparations for leaving—packing, ticket-buying, and melancholy farewells—for the time had come to return to old Scotland to introduce a newly acquired American wife to waiting parents.
One day Louis came in with his pockets full of twenty-dollar gold pieces, with which he had supplied himself for the journey. He thought this piece of money the handsomest coin in the world, and said it made a man feel rich merely to handle it. In a jesting mood, he drew the coins from his pockets, threw them on the table, whence they rolled right and left on the floor, and said: "Just look! I'm simply lousy wid money!"