The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, April 5, 1896, Page 16

16 THE SAN FRANCISCO CALL, SUNDAY, APRIL 5, 1%96. OMETIMES as I walk the streets | and green valleys, of stretch upon stretc}: - my imagination plays | Of soft flunes billowing C"‘“‘A‘? the hori- mea c trick. As 1 glance | zon. Nor smokestack nor sail is left upon upward to where along some lofty | the bay, but the breakers dash white level the distant figure of a pass- | 8gainst the rugge_d walls of the Gate and ing pedestrian is silbouetted against the channel, and within the harbor the long, able-car poises for its plunge | $1ow waves creep up towarfi a cnrc]}ng 'lma adge, the City seems sudaenly | of uptrodden beach. ’;‘he impression is a to vanish. The climbing streets no longer | strangely vivid oneand xsalmostasiasgmgr- stretch their gray yarallels before me. The | ing in its suggestive wonder as the City it- of this tall buildi nd countless houses disap- | self, which now stretches proudly over pear, and the busy clamor of life about me | what must have seemed to the earliest seems to } and die away. In place of \ comers a most unpromising site for a place gll these comes a vision of rounded hills ‘ of any size or importance. It is worth while, now and then, to stop and consider what has been done to render San Francisco possible upon this penin- sula. There isinspiration in such con- sideration and hope for the accomplish- ment of the wonders that must and will be achieved ere our City is that noble thing which is her “destined end and way.” It is not enough that the ground on which San Francisco stands has been wrested from the sea and redeemed from the fastnesses of the mountains. She is, and must ever remain, a city set upon a hill, which cannot be hid, and she must make herself ready for the scrutiny to which, in the years to come, she will be subjected. ‘The hills of San Francisco are a never- failing wonder and delight, but not less interesting are the valleys that once lay between them, nestling in their hollows and forming what are now the City’s level stretches. Mere names, most of them are, now, identifying tracts wherein lie, as any real-estate dealer will swear to you, ‘‘the most desirable residencesites in the City.” In some instances even the valleys them- selves have disappeared. How many of this generation know that Bpring Valley once lay between Mason and Taylor, Clay and Washington streets, and gave its name to the company that now supplies San Francisco with water? A great springy, boggy hollow, sixty feet deep, was Spring Valley, and from the springs there coming to the surface it was supposed that an adequate water supply could be obtained for the City. So a com- pany was formed, but it got nothing bug a name from the valley. The water supply was a delusion and a snare, S0 rans tradi- tion, and later J. B. Haggin filled in the valley, and the City crept over it, as over many another unmarked and long-forgot- ten grave. Wasnerwoman’s Valley and Washer- woman’s Lagoon are still traditions of North Beach.. The lagoon lay at the foot of Gough and Octavia, where Greenwich and Filbert streets now pass. Here, thirty years ago, so young is our City, the Mexi- can and Indian women—*“the natives,” i the parlance of the time--came flocking {frem the Mission, from the hills and their isolated homes along the beach bearing upon their heads great bundles of clothes, the family wash, for cleansing in the clear, fresh water of the lagoon. They used to | dry them on the sand and among the Wl = e gy 0 e, A View of Washerwoman’s Valley and the Lagoon With the Presidio and Fort Point in the Distance. [This sketch was made from a view taken by C. E. Watkins, the pioneer photographer, in 1556.] scrub oaks and furze bushes that tangled through that whole section, and while the garments bleached in the sun and fluttered in the strong afternoon wind the washer- women chatted and gossiped in the val- ley that still bears their name. What would they have thought, one wonders, had some imaginative prophet told them of the homes that would one day rise where they were even then dipping in their brawny arms and rubbing their gar- ments free from soil? How they would have laughed asthey gathered up their wash at night and went home over the “‘plana roaa” to the Mission to tell the joke to the men. Gone is the lagoon, gone are the washer- women, gone the days ‘‘when sleep was known as the California fever,” and it is sometimes to be questioned whether we who have succeeded them are greatly wiser than those simple souls—whether we are apt to accept with any greater seri- ousness or h a consideration beyond probable increase in land values predic- tions for our City’s future. The scene of Washerwoman's Bay, long ago filled in and built over with factories and business buildings, is reproduced from a photograph taken in 1856 by San Fran- cisco’s pioneer photographer, C. E. Wat- kins. It is the only comprehensive view of that part of the City extant, and has never before been reproduced in book, newspaper or magazine. In this connec- tion 1t may be observed that Mr. Watkins possesses a collection of treasures in the shape of views of San Francisco prior to 1860, and these he contemplates some day incorporating in a work which will be of historic value. Mr. Watkins was the earliest outdoor scenic artist in the West. St. Ann’s Valley is another almost buried memory of early days. St. Ann's the name, but even the traditions of the valley seem lost. It lay along Eddy street, west of what is now Powell. Yet scarcely forty-five years have passed since the Bowie cottage was built where Sutter street now crosses Stockton,and a home was established in the wilderness, out of sight of the City or any human habitation. Out that way ran theroad to the Mission, through soft sand into which a_horse's feet sank deep and made no sound, wind- ing among the scruboaks that tore a rider’s clothing and scratched his hands and his face, so narrow was the road, over toilsome dunes dotted here and there with charcoal-burners’ huts, winding in and out where Ellis, O'Farrell, building stands as a sort of monument to | A SCENE IN MISSION Geary, Post and Sutter streets have since cut the sand wastes, and on through VALLEY NEAR THE MISSION [¥rom an old-time sketch.] OF SAN FRANCISCO. Hayes Valley, where Colonel Tom Hayes, afincultynn, politician, duelist and good fellow, lived upon his ranch. Four blocks west of Larkin street, along Hayes, stretches Hayes Valley that once deserved its name. There is no hint in the pha- lanxed gray buildings stretching their un- broken fronts along those uptown business blocks of the time so few years ago when fresh fields and pastures green invited the foot and rested the eye, wearied with the sight and feel of toilsome sand. And yet there is something delightfully reminis- cent in the name that still clings to the district and brings a purer breath in its very sound. We may forget Colonel Hayes —we probably shali—but to call even the most prosaic street a valley is suggestive of better and more beautiful things. One’s imagination need not linger along the street. On the impetus of that word val- ley it may swing out to the hills that it al- ways implies and gain freedom. eyond Hayes Valley, to the south, lay the Mission Valley, broad, fertile, weil watered, perfectly " sheltered, smiling in the sunshine, chosen as were all the sites chosen by those wiseold padres, with an unerring instinct. They knew where to locate, and they knew how to build, those earnest, single-minded Spanish priests. We have followed them faithfully in the first, locating where_they have shown us desirable places. Would we had been wiser still, and had builded as they showed us how, with perfect adaptation to thesur- rounding landscape. Do you suppose it is an accident that mone of those old Spanisb buildings and houses are the un- sightly blots upon the country that most of our modern structures are? The same creek that watered Hayes Valley flowed on into the Mission. Most of us still remem- ber how it used to meander through ‘Woodward’s Gardens. The names given to the districts south of Market street are suggestive of what those localities must have been in early days. They were settled upon and built up much later than was the section to the north and nearer the beach, yet they have been tkte first to yield to the encroach- ments of business. Happy Valley lay to the soutlr of Market street and east of Sec- ond. The first settlers there were such as found the wild life at ““The Cove” too tur- bulent for them, and they went to Happy Valley to rest in narrow, grassy homes, borne thither by their fellows—and of those whn:I there lay down none have yet awak- ened. It was fire drove later settlers into Happy Valley. Once, twice, thrice the who desired security went over south of Market street and "built homes—the first real homes the City had in any num- ber. It is interesting to note how they builded in those days. The houses that circie South Park shoulder each other as though they feared a breath of air might find its way into_that once aristocratic quarter. They built_in blocks, with deep areas, taking New York City houses for their models, and one thinks feelingly of what must have been the dampness of some of those basements. Along Harrison and Bryant streets and up_and down the Rincon they did better. There is still an air of stateliness and leisure about some of those old garden-surrounded houses, now for the most part sheltering the philantropies of that section, and having a curiously stranded air amid the business that has crept up all around them. As a localjty for the mora luxurious homes of a great city Happy Valley was well chosen. It was accessible. It was sheltered. It looked out upon & beautiful marine view. It was not too hilly for people not yet accustomed to the idea of exertion in California, and no one could have predicted the changes thata score of vears would bring, or that the inexpressible folly of the ‘‘Second-street cut” would ever he sanctionea by a sane eople. But the business portion of the ity spread rapidly, and, following the “line of least resistance,” poured into Happy Valley almost before the com- fortable homes were built, and their own- ers fled, disconsolate, to Nob Hill, to the ‘Western Addition and to North Beach. Beyond Hgppy Valley, from Folsom street to Brannan, from Third street to the water, lies Pleasant Valley, once sug- gestive of its name, now as pleasant as grime and smoke, the hum of machinery, the clangor of engine bells and steam whistles and the human flotsam and jet- sam of & seacoast city’s water front can make if. The valleys of San Francisco! Safe, sheltered, beautiful spots they once were. Will they ever be beautiful againtr Or shall the spreadin- City make of those not yet fully surrounded piaces like unto these? ~Islais and Laguna Honds, Merced and Mountain Lake still remain to us, almost unhurt. We ought to consider, as the City creeps out toward them, whether we must really build and grow in such fashion that some future chronicler shall be moved to relate with wonder how the wild flowers bloomed, birds sang and clear water once sparkled in the sunshine where he will then see but squalor and ugliness City was burned down, and then those and ruin. ApELINE KNAPP. UNG up in a big frame in the office of the rounchouse at the | West Oakland yards of the South- | ern Pacific system is an engrossed list of locomotive engineers em- ployed on the California division of Mr. | Huntington’s railroad, and that list is| headed by the name of Emile Frick, the engineer who has been longest in the ser- vice of the compary. He was engaged in running an engine between Oakland and Alameda when the latter:city boasted of the only ferry landing on the other side of the bay, and long prior to the time of the absorption of that line by the Southern | Pacific corporation. Since 1864 he has been in continuous service either between the two cities mentioned or between East | Oakland and Oakland Mole. But even that early date does not represent the be- ginning of Frick’s experience in engineer- ing. He obtained his tuition in the science | of running & locomotive while in the employ of the French banking firm of Pioche & Bayerique, which, as old pioneers will remember, constructed the first rail- road in the State of California—the Sacra- mento Valley Road, from the capitol city to Placerville. The Frenchmen sank loads of gold in their enterprise, but they lacked the railroad genius that was soon after their failure to build up the fortunes of the Stanfords, the Crockers and the Hunt- ingtons. Frick’s engine on the old Alameda line was the F. B. Atherton. He left the en- gine for another on a new route November 2, 1869, and just twelve days afterward the Athberton collided with an overland pas- senger trsin, and from the resultant wreck sixteen dead bodies were taken. The Atherton’s nistory ended in the tale of telescoped trains. Krick points with pride to the fact that he has never met with an accident of consequence in all his years of life on the rail. 1 I live till next November,” remarked Engineer Frick, as he peered from his cab-window down the Seventh-street track along which he was speeding, *‘1 shall have completed twenty-seven years on this line under Southern Pacific manage- ment. Ihaven’t made very long runs nor very fast runs, but [ have averaged eight hours a day and at least 3000 miles a month during all that time.”’ In November Mr. Frick will have trav- eled a distance of 972,000 miles, dating from 1869, and his mileage during the five years preceding that date, even if he were making only 500 miles a month, would bring the total up above the million mark. In other words, he has easily completed a distance equal to two round trips to the moon, and with enough miles to spare to circle the globe a few times in addition. It will be noted that Mr. Frick has made (necessarily) slow time on his runs. If 1t oe assumed that the moon is 240,000 miles distant from the earth, atrain going at the rate of a mile a minute wonld complete a distance equal to that of the round trip between this sphere and the silvery orb of night in 33315 days. '0 some it may sound rather absurd to speak in commcnplace about the earth’s silvery satellite; but Camille Flammarion, the eminent French astronomer, insists that it is really a terrestrial province. Its distance is but thirty times the diameter of our globe, so that thirty earths joined together side by side on the same line would form a suspension bridge sufficient to unite the two worlds. Flammarion declares that the distance is scarcely worthy of an astronomical title. OQur satellite is, from all points of view, the first halting place on_a celestial journey. Now, if we can imagine a bridge of globes, why not imagine also a train crossing the bridge? Leaving the dearth of atmosphere out of the question, or sup- vlying the train-foiks with some Yankee contrivance by which they could avail themselves of air to be continuousl umped along the track from the o.u-zg so that the lunar investigators might be as well off as divers who breathe from the bottom of the sea), what a glorious scheme is unfolded for the revealment of wonders in the domain of our next-door heavenly neighbor. What a picnic Engineer Frick might en- joy if he landed, for instance, in the vicin- ity of the Sea of Serenity and Lake of Dreams. There is no water in these seas. The accompanying drawing, reproduced from Flammarion’s Popular Astronomy, shows clearly, on theone hand, the sandy, i tunneled them with great facility. asperities on the lunar soil, chains of mountains like the Carpathians, the Ap- penines, the Caucasus and the Alps. The moon is covered with a solid crust. If the satellite could be reached from the earth, that crust might be pierced with the ex- plosives and the internal gas of the lunar | orb be piped down to the earth in such quantities as to make light and heat so | outrageously cheap as to extinguish the oil trust and drive electricity out of the illuminating field. In the moon the novel state of affairs would be presented wherein trains could run over the surface of the seas which no ships could sail on. 1t the Rocky Mountains had been simi- lar in structure to the mountains of the moon, the railroad corapany could h’fve [he lunar mountain is all holiow, and the sides of the mountain, which surround each amphitheater, are cut out almost to the peak to a depth which varies from 10,000 to 13,000 feet. And what a bonanza the moon would offer for ‘the colonizer, if he could prove its inhabitability and secure its accessibility. The surface of the hemi- sphere which we see at full moon is 1,182,- 500 square leagues. This could, of course, be reclaimed to a great extent by irriga- tion, the water to be either forced up from the Pacific or obtained by boring into the on the earth will be appropriated, and the moon will then be a still more excellent field for speculation. Perhaps it is better that there is no bridge of globes, and that trains can’t be run to the moon. England would then want to make it a province of the empire, and that might plunge Grover Cleveland or his successor and the Ameri- can press into another war in order to make Sulisbury or some other Premier prove that he never intended to infringe on the Monroe doctrine, and would never | insist on flying the Union Jack on the moon while fair Diana was smiling on the American side of the world. But we have almost forgotten that the moon is here an altogether secondary con- sideration. Literature is too full of these unnecessary diversions. Writersnowadays introduce many irrelevant matters, to the detriment of their main stories. We have fallen into the same error, and let us has- | ten back to Engineer Frick as he is. ‘“When I was given charge of an engine in 1864, T was 18 years of age,” continued Mr. Frick. *I started in young at railroading. No, I am not a native. I was bornin Eng- land, of French parents, and am an Amer- ican by adoption and preference. Look young, do I? Well, take a look at my fireman there. He's 25 and bigger than | | his father, but he's my son. I wason this | same run before he was born. I have run | interior of the moon. The time is nearing when all the land an engine over this track when there were thick woeds on either side, and I have ob- A VIEW OF A PORTION wrinkled, undulating nature of thesoil of the lunar seas, and on the other hand the crateriform nature of all the mountains. The walls of the seas of Serenity, Rains and Humors form the longest series of OF THE MOON’S SURFACE. [ Reproduced from Flammarion's Popular Astronomy.] \| Q) Emile Frick, the Oldest Engineer in Point of Service in the Emploja# 8 South- ern Pacific Company. [Reproduted from a photograph.] served Oakland's progress day by day and step by etep.”’ There is a rather interesting bit of his- tory connected with Frick’'s coming to California. His father, Dominique Frick, was a French republican, who was com- pelied to flee to England asa refu?a dur- ing the reign of Louis Philippe. In 1848, when the French monarchy was over- thrown, and Louis Napoleon (afterward Emperor Napoleon III) was made Presi- dent of the republic, Dominique Frck re- turned to Paris, to be eventually ap- pointed Consul to Honolulu. From there Emile Frick was sent to San Francisco to be educated, and here he soon enhisted in the employ of Pioche & Bayerique, became thoroughly Americanized, withdrew his allegiance to the throne which Louis Na- poleon ascended and enrolled himself under the stripes and stars. - Emile Frick will leave at the end of the month to attend the session of the Grand International Division, Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers, at Ottawa, Ontario. He will represent Leland Stanford Divi- sion No. 283, West Oakland. The big ses- sion convenes May 13. The Grand Inter- national, Division embraces 535 subordi- nate divisions, with a total membership of 27,000 locomotive engineers. e STORIES OF WHIST. The Game Has Sometimes Played a Se- rious Part in Public Affairs, - Many strange stories are told of whist- playing, but none can excel this: Bome years ago there was a whist clubin Somersetshire, England, composed mostly of ministers. They met every Sunday evening in the back parlor of a barber. Four of these were one time acting as pall- bearers at the funeral of a reverend brother when a delay occurred, owin%w the grave being not quite ready, and the coffin was set down at the chancel. By way of whil- ing away the time one of them produced a pack of cards from his pocket and proposed a few hands of whisw. The rest gladly as- sented, and they were deep in their game, using the coffin as a table, when the sexton came to announce that the preparations were com plete. : Goldsmith tells of an old lady who, lying sick unto death, played cards with the curate to pass the time and after winning all his money had just pro d when the revolution broke out in Paris re- eated and frantic messages were sent to Ehnrlen X. informing him of the state of affairs. The King was engrossed in cards however, and not to be disturbed, and each time the reply came, *His Majesty is playing whist.”” nother cool whist-player was Lord 8ligo. When the news arrived that his magnificent residence was on fire he stopped only & moment to ascertain whether or not his presence could be of ma- terial service on the scene of the conflagra- tion. Finding that it would not, he calmly took ug. the hand which had been dealt him while he was talking with the messen. ger and resumed play. Unless Espartero and his foe, Marota, are much belied, their quarrel was settled by a game of cards in a farmhouse at Ber- ara, where they met to arrange a truce etween their respective forces. No sooner did Espartero enter the room than the first won all Marota’s money; then his own conditions for the truce, article by article, and finally the entire submission of the Carlist army. Within twenty-four hours Marota had paid his debt, and the fierce Carlist war was at an end. A Yarborou gn hand is & hand in which there1s no card above a nine spot. The name given to this hand is derived from a certain Lord Yarborough, who used to of- fer the attractive but very safe wager of £1000 to £1 that a hand of thissort would not be dealt. His lordship may have worked out the chances, or he may no but the fact is_that such a hand occu only once in 1827 rounds, although Pem- bridge says he hasheld three Yarboroughs in a single evening. His lordship’s wager, to be quite fair, should have been £1827 to £1. 1Itissaid that he won his wager many thousand times. AccordinF toa recent report a young lady at a whist party held ten of the thir- teen trumps. Such a hand is exceedingly rare. As for the chances of holding a thir- teen-trump hand they are calculated to be 160,000,000,000 to 1, At the Union Club of Boulegne some years aso the dealer dealt the twenty-six red cards to himself and partner lng the black cards to their opponents. When we come to realize that !ge odds against such a round of hands are 8,000,000, 1, we must admit that this was a very remarka- ble deal. Louise Phillippe, while playing whist one evening dropped & louis and stopped the game to look for it, whereupon a Ig';- eign Embassador, one of the party, set fire to a billet of 1000 Irancs to give a light to the King in his search under the table. Ehu Embassador evidently had money to urn. smart Broadway, New York, druggist has this sign hanging outside his store; it marks the new era of drug selling, Is it any wonder that he has to enlarge his quar- ters, that his clerks are busy, and that his store is one of the most popular along the leading thor- oughfare? ou can afford to trade Carlist chief chalienged him to a game of tresilio, a challenge the Christino com- mander accepted with alacrity. Espartero with a druggist that has such a motto as that