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Harriet Harper (ND-ND) http://tinyurl.com/HHarper

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San Francisco Cable Cars

From San Francisco Cable Cars, 1888.

Reader: Jessica Teeter

Tourists have long appreciated San Francisco's cable cars, but not everyone who rides them is prepared for the experience.

In 1888, Maine resident Harriet Harper and a companion spent six months in California, and her letters convey her unabashed opinions, including this vivid description of San Franciso and its cable cars.

If cable-car riding was thrilling in Los Angeles, it is positively terrifying here. It is an alternation of shooting up into the sky like a rocket, and rushing down apparently into the very bowels of the earth. So perpendicular are several of the hills that we, sitting in the rear of the car, completely lost sight of those in the front seats; and this lasted the length of three or four blocks. Only when we reached a bit of level ground did I dare take breath and enjoy the wondrous views that our swift, bird-like circling afforded us.

I cannot truthfully say that the City of San Francisco is a beautiful one; but it is strangely unique, possessing like New Orleans characteristics peculiar to itself.

Harriet Harper's pamphlet Letters from California was printed for private circulation.