By the end of January the gentle rains come lighter. In
the long spaces between these winter storms, there is a temperature and
a feeling in the air much like that of Indian summer in the East.
January is the month when the roses are at their brightest.
So much for the strange climate, which invites out of doors and which
has played its part in making the character of the people. The externals
of the city are - or were, for they are no more - just as curious. One
usually entered San Francisco by way of the Bay. Across its yellow
flood, covered with the fleets from the strange seas of the Pacific, San
Francisco presented itself in a hill panorama. Probably no other city of
the world, excepting perhaps Naples, could be so viewed at first sight.
It rose above the passenger, as he reached dockage, in a succession of
hill terraces. At one side was Telegraph Hill, the end of the peninsula,
a height so abrupt that it had a one hundred and fifty foot sheer cliff
on its seaward frontage. Further along lay Nob Hill, crowned with the
Mark Hopkins mansion, which had the effect of a citadel, and in later
years by the great, white Fairmount.
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