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Collection: Books and Periodicals
Three Years in California by John D. Borthwick (1857)(LoC) (423 pages)
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Page: of 423
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44 THE HOUSES.
of gold in the country, it consisted merely of a few
small houses occupied by native Californians, and
one or two foreign merchants engaged in the export
of hides and horns. The harbour was also a favourite watering-place for whalers and men-of-war, cruising in that part of the world.
At the time of our arrival in 1851, hardly a vestige
remained of the original village. Everything bore
evidence of newness, and the greater part of the city
presented a makeshift and temporary appearance,
being composed of the most motley collection of
edifices, in the way of houses, which can well be
conceived. Some were mere tents, with perhaps a
wooden front sufficiently strong to support the sign
of the occupant ; some were composed of sheets of
zinc on a wooden framework ; there were numbers of
corrugated iron houses, the most unsightly things
possible, and generally painted brown; there were
many imported American houses, all, of course,
painted white, with green shutters; also dingy-looking
Chinese houses, and occasionally some substantial
brick buildings ; but the great majority were nondescript, shapeless, patchwork concerns, in the fabrication of which, sheet-iron, wood, zine, and canvass,
seemed to have been employed indiscriminately ;
while lfre and there, in the middle of a row of such
houses, ¥ppeared the hulk of a ship, which had been
hauled up, and now served as a warehouse, the cabins
being figted up as offices, or sometimes converted
into a boarding-house.