The reason, of course, is that on the mountainous streets which the cable-cars climb traffic of any other sort is practically impossible. No good American walks more than a block or so on a quite level street, and you might as well ask him to walk up the side of a house as to climb Nob Hill.
Wherefore the cable-cars rush solitary up and down through a wilderness of stone-paved, grass-grown streets, flanked by palaces whose owners, I presume, have horses and carriages. How they get them down to the city and up again is one of the two or three unsolved problems which I brought away with me. Another of these is: Why did the practical American genius think it worth while to pave the precipices which they call streets round Nob Hill?
Talking about streets reminds me that they don’t say street much in San Francisco. There isn’t time. They just mention the name. This is the way my guide-booker speaks somewhat flippantly of the streets in Millionairetown:
“Upon taking the car you immediately pass through the banking and insurance district, climb up one of the steepest hills of the city to Nob Hill, passing on the left at the corner of Powell the late Senator Stanford’s residence, corner of Mason, the late Mark Hopkins’ residence.... Corner of Taylor, the residence of the late A. M. Towne.... Corner of Jones, Mr. Whittles’.... Corner of Taylor, the Huntington residence, while opposite is the residence of the late Charles Croker, adjoining, and on the corner of Jones is the residence of his son, W. H. Croker.”
“Powell” has a cable one and a quarter inches in diameter, twenty-six thousand feet long, and weighing sixty-six thousand six hundred and twenty-five pounds. Some San Franciscan cables last three months. This was expected to last about five weeks. You can understand how terrific the clutch and the wear and tear must be when you sit down on the front seat of a car carrying thirty or forty people, and see a hill half as steep again as the one from Richmond up to the Star and Garter rush down underneath you at about sixteen miles an hour. It was here that the newly landed Chinaman saw his first cable-car and made the historic remark:
“No pushee, no pullee; all same go like hellee,” which brings me, no very great distance, only a few blocks in fact, from Millionaireville to Chinatown.