Cunningham, A. G. Black, P. Longhurst, and G. F. Leidig all took their turn at operating the crude establishment. It was under the management of Black when Clarence King arrived on his pioneer trip with the Geological Survey of California, and one Longhurst apparently even then anticipated future proprietorship by engaging in guiding its guests about the valley. King describes Longhurst as “a weather-beaten round-the-worlder, whose function in the party was to tell yarns, sing songs, and feed the inner man.” His account, in _Mountaineering in the Sierra Nevada_, continues: We had chosen, as the head-quarters of the survey, two little cabins under the pine-trees near Black’s Hotel. [Black was then owner of the Lower Hotel.] They were central; they offered us a shelter; and from their doors, which opened almost upon the Merced itself, we obtained a most delightful sunrise view of the Yosemite. Next morning, in spite of early outcries from Longhurst, and a warning solo of his performed with spoon and fry-pan, we lay in our comfortable blankets pretending to enjoy the effect of sunrise light upon the Yosemite cliff and fall, all of us unwilling to own that we were tired out and needed rest. Breakfast had waited an hour or more when we got a little weary of beds and yielded to the temptation of appetite. A family of Indians, consisting of two huge girls and their parents, sat silently waiting for us to commence, and, after we had begun, watched every mouthful from the moment we got it successfully impaled upon the camp forks, a cloud darkening their faces as it disappeared forever down our throats. But we quite lost our spectators when Longhurst came upon the boards as a flapjack-frier, a rôle to which he bent his whole intelligence, and with entire success. Scorning such vulgar accomplishment as turning the cake over in mid-air, he slung it boldly up, turning it three times, ostentatiously greasing the pan with a fine centrifugal movement, and catching the flapjack as it fluttered down, and spanked it upon the hot coals with a touch at once graceful and masterly. I failed to enjoy these products, feeling as if I were breakfasting in sacrilege upon works of art. Not so our Indian friends, who wrestled affectionately for frequent unfortunate cakes which would dodge Longhurst and fall into the ashes. In 1869 A. G. Black tore down the Lower Hotel and on its site constructed the rambling building which became known as “Black’s.” Upper Hotel