“Since this is an historic pilgrimage, we must take a look at the spot where the first house stood.  Is it far?”

“Only a few blocks,” I assured him.  “But we shall have to venture into the heart of Chinatown.”

We made our way up Sacramento Street, where the straight-lined grey business blocks gave way to fantastic pagoda-like buildings gaily decorated in green, red, and yellow.  Bits of carved ivory, rich lacquer ware and choice pieces of satsuma and cloisonne appeared in the windows.  In quiet, padded shoes, the sallow-faced, almond-eyed throng shuffled by, us; here a man with a delicate lavender lining showing below his blue coat, there a slant-eyed woman with her sleek black hair rolled over a brilliant jade ornament, leading by the hand a little boy who looked as if he had stepped out of a picture book with his yellow trousers and pink coat.

We turned to the right at Grant Avenue, passing a building conspicuous on account of its elaborately carved balconies hung with yellow lanterns and ornamented with plants growing in large blue and white china pots.  The Bostonian looked curiously at the Orientals lounging about the door, then his face brightened as he read the words, “Chop Suey.”

“It’s a Chinese restaurant,” he exclaimed delightedly.  “Let’s go in for a cup of tea, as soon as we have taken a look at your historic landmarks.”

On the northwest corner of Grant Avenue and Clay Street, we paused before a dingy four-story brick building on whose sides were pasted long strips of red paper ornamented with quaint Chinese characters.  I secretly wished that the building had been designed as a gay pagoda with bright colored, turned-up eaves like many of those in Chinatown and that its windows had displayed the choice embroideries and carved ivories of some of its neighbors, but as we peered through the glass, we saw only utilitarian articles for the coolie Chinaman.

“Rather a sordid setting for my story,” I bemoaned.  “The first house in commercial San Francisco stood here.  It was only a sail stretched around four pine posts, but two years later was replaced by a picturesque, red-tiled adobe, so commodious that the Spaniards called it the Casa Grande.  I am afraid the building now occupying the spot where the second house stood will be equally disappointing,” I said ruefully, as we recrossed the street to where a Chinese butcher and vegetable vender was displaying his wares.  We gazed curiously at the dangling pieces of dried fish, strings of sausage-like meat, unfamiliar vegetables, lichee nuts and sticks of green sugar cane.

“Somewhat different from the silks, satins and laces displayed on this spot by Jacob Leese in Spanish days,” I reflected.  “He was a Bostonian, who like Richardson had become an adopted son of California and settled at Yerba Buena for the purpose of trading with the American vessels.”

“This must have been a lively business center.”  The man raised his voice above the rumble of the wagons and cars.  “Two little houses in the midst of a sea of sand-dunes and no settlement nearer than the Mission.”