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Vicente Pérez Rosales (1807-1886) http://tinyurl.com/VRosales

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Crowded with Ships

From Recuerdos del Pasado [California Adventure], 1947. Read Online Download PDF

Reader: Daniel Maloney

Forty-Niners arriving in California were often astonished by the inventive spirit that thrived here—a spirit that touched everything, right down to the sidewalks.

Like many of his countrymen, Chilean Vicente Pérez Rosales came to California seeking gold. What he found instead was a San Francisco port clogged with ships put to a novel purpose.

The bay was crowded with ships, all of them deserted. Passengers and crews were raising the unstable population to over 30,000. And so intense was the activity of transient and permanent residents alike, that the city was growing and being transformed as if by magic. Long wharves had already been built out over huge redwood piles, but were being lengthened; and others, only half finished as yet, ran out from every street that came down to the water's edge, disputing with the mud of low tide room for thoroughfare and new buildings. Owing to the shortage of other material right at hand for pier construction, boxes and sacks of earth were heaped up at the muddy waterline in one place, while in another spot piers, warehouses and streets were improvised by grounding a row of ships in a line from the ends of the city streets. Shops were then built over the beams and boards resting upon the ships.

Vicente Pérez Rosales published Recuerdos del pasado in Chile in 1890; it was translated into English under the title California Adventure in 1947.