“Never.”

The miner drew a square on the gravel path with his stick.  “The El Dorado was here, the Veranda here and the Bella Union here,” he said, punching holes on the three corners of Kearny and Washington.  “They were the finest and they had the best locations in town.  The El Dorado paid forty thousand dollars a year for a tent and twenty-five thousand a month for a building on the same site later.”  The end of his stick deepened the hole on the southeast corner.

My eyes wandered from the plan to the real location.  “Why, there is the name ‘Veranda’ over there now,” I exclaimed as the black letters on a white awning caught my eye.

“Yes, it is pretty near the old site, but it’s a poor substitute for its predecessor,” he added scornfully.  “There was great style in those days —­fine bars, lots of glass and mirrors and pictures worth thousands of dollars.  The doors were always open from eleven in the morning ’til daylight the next morning, and a steady stream of people were pouring in and out all the time.  Everybody was there.  There weren’t no special inducement to stay home nights, when your residence was a bunk on the wall of a shanty and the fellers over you and under you and across the room weren’t even acquaintances.  I got a pretty good room after awhile in the Parker House”—­he drew a small oblong south of the El Dorado—­ “for a hundred dollars a week, but I didn’t stay long.”

“I should think not—­at that price.”

“Oh, it wasn’t the price.  One of my friends paid two hundred and fifty.  But you see it got pretty warm at the Parker House, that Christmas eve, and so we all moved.  They cleared away the hot ashes of the hotel and built the Jenny Lind Theatre on the spot.  That was the first big fire.  We had them right along after that, every few weeks.  Six big ones in eighteen months, with lots’ of little ones in between.”

“Then the last fire wasn’t a new experience for you,” the Bostonian suggested.

“Lord, no!  Rebuilding was a habit with us early San Franciscans.  We didn’t begin to feel sorry for a man ’til he’d lost everything he owned three times.  The Jenny Lind Theatre went down six times and the seventh building was sold for the City Hall.  It stood right there”—­he pointed to the handsome new Hall of Justice—­“until it went up in the last fire.”

“You are sure it wasn’t the earthquake that finished it?” inquired the skeptic.

“Certainly not,” I flared.  “The Relief Committee met there that morning to lay their plans while the fires were raging south of Market Street.”

He acknowledged defeat by changing the subject.  “Was the old Spanish Custom House here?” he asked, pointing to the western side of the diagram.

“Yes,” assented the miner, and he traced an oblong on the northern end, “and just behind it, on Washington Street, was Sam Brannan’s house.  He was the Mormon leader, you know, and brought a shipload of his followers to establish a settlement in forty-six.  He published our first newspaper, the ‘California Star,’ in his house.”