ISBN: 9781459068650

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not … Plus…

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1911 edition. Excerpt: ... water has, and this is of them.'' Here, indeed, all is new, nature as well as towns. The very hills of California have an unfinished look; the rains and the streams have not yet carved them to their perfect shape. The forests spring like mushrooms from the unexhausted soil; and they are mown down yearly by forest fires. We are in early geological epochs, changeful and insecure; and we feel, as with a sculptor''s model, that the author may yet grow weary of, and shatter, the rough sketch. Fancy apart, San Francisco is a city beleaguered with alarms. The lower parts, along the bay side, sit on piles; old wrecks decaying, fish dwelling unsunned, beneath the populous houses; and a trifling subsidence might drown the business quarters in an hour. Earthquakes are not uncommon, they are sometimes threatening in their violence; the fear of them grows yearly on a resident; he begins with indifference, ends in sheer panic; and no one feels safe in any but a wooden house. Hence it comes that, in that rainless clime, the whole city is built of timber--a woodyard of unusual extent and complication; that fires spring up readily, and, served by the unwearying trade-wind, swiftly spread; that all over the city there are fire-signal boxes; that the sound of the bell, telling the number of the threatened ward, is soon familiar to the ear; and that nowhere else in the world is the art of the fireman carried to so nice a point. Next, perhaps, in order of strangeness to the speed of its appearance, is the mingling of the races that combine to people it. The town is essentially not Anglo-Saxon; still more essentially not American. The Yankee and the Englishman find themselves alike in a strange country. There are none of those touches--not of nature, and I... Katharine Durham Osbourne, Books, History, Robert Louis Stevenson In California Books>History General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1911 Original Publisher: A. C. McClurg<

ISBN: 9781459068650

General Books publication date: 2009Original publication date: 1911Original Publisher: A.C. McClurg Books History~~General Robert-Louis-Stevenson-in-California~~Katharine-Durham-Osbourne … Plus…

General Books publication date: 2009Original publication date: 1911Original Publisher: A.C. McClurg Books History~~General Robert-Louis-Stevenson-in-California~~Katharine-Durham-Osbourne General Books LLC General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1911 Original Publisher: A. C. McClurg<

ISBN: 9781459068650

Robert Louis Stevenson in California Paperback New Books, Textstream