San Francisco.—The Golden State.—San Francisco Bay.—Golden Gate.—Conquest of California by Fremont, 1848.—Discovery of Gold.—Rush to the Mines, 1849.—"Forty-niners."—Great Rise in Provisions and Wages.—Miners Homeward Bound.—Dissipation and Vice in the City.—Vigilance Committee.—Great Influx of Miners in 1850.—Immense Gold Yield.—Climate.—Earthquakes.—Productions.—Irrigation.—Streets and Buildings.—Churches.—Lone Mountain Cemetery.—Cliff House.—Seal Rock.—Theatres.—Chinese Quarter.—Chinese Theatres.—Joss Houses.—Emigration Companies.—The Chinese Question.—Cheap Labor.—"The Chinese Must Go."—Present Population and Commerce of San Francisco.—Exports.—Manufactures.—Cosmopolitan Spirit of Inhabitants. San Francisco is situated on the best harbor which our Pacific Coast affords, a little below the 38th parallel of latitude, and about a degree further south than St. Louis, Cincinnati and Washington. It is the western terminus of the Central Pacific Railroad, American gateway to Asia and the far East. As the traveler proceeds thitherward from the Valley of the Mississippi, on descending the western slopes of the Sierras, he finds himself fairly within the Golden State; and in more senses than one does California deserve that name. If it be the summer season the very air seems filled with a golden haze. In leaving the mountains all freshness is left behind. Trees and fields are yellow with drouth, which lasts from April to November. Dense clouds of dust fill the air and settle upon everything. Whole regions, by the means of San Francisco is on a peninsula which extends between the bay of that name and the ocean. Its site is nothing more than a collection of sand hills, which, before the building of the city, were continually changing their positions. The peninsula is thirty miles long and six wide, across the city, which stands on the eastern or inner slope. San Francisco Bay is unsurpassed in the world, except by Puget Sound, in Washington Territory, for size, depth, ease of entrance and security. The entrance to the bay is through a passage five miles in length and about two in width, with its shallowest depth about thirty feet at low tide. Rocks rise almost perpendicularly on the northern side of the entrance, to a height of three thousand feet. A lighthouse is placed on one of San Francisco Bay is about forty miles in length, its widest point being twelve miles. At Oakland, directly east of San Francisco, it is eight miles in width. Alcatraz Island, in the centre of the channel, six miles from the Golden Gate, is a solid rock rising threateningly above the water, and bristling with heavy artillery. It is sixteen hundred feet in length, and four hundred and fifty feet in width. Angel Island is directly north of Alcatraz, and four miles from San Francisco, contains eight hundred acres, and is also fortified. Midway In 1775 the first ship passed the portals of the Golden Gate, and made its way into the Bay of San Francisco. This ship was the San Carlos, commanded by Caspar De Portala, a Franciscan monk and Spanish Governor of Lower California, who set out on a voyage of discovery and exploration. The same man had six years previously visited the sand hills of the present site of San Francisco, being the first white man to set his foot upon them. Portala named the harbor San Francisco, after the founder of his monastic order, St. Francis. A mission was founded there six years later, on the twenty-seventh of June, by Friars Francisco Paloa and Bonito Cambou, under the direction of Father Junipero Serra, who had been commissioned by Father Portala as president of all the missions in Upper California. This was the sixth mission established in California, and up to the year 1800 the Fathers labored with great zeal and industry, had established eighteen missions, converted six hundred and forty-seven savages, and acquired a vast property in lands, cattle, horses, sheep and grain. Presidios or military stations were established for the protection of these missions, and the Indians readily submitted themselves to the Fathers, and acquired the arts of civilization. The Franciscan friars continued complete sovereigns of the land during the first quarter of the present century, and increased in worldly goods. Mexico became a republic in 1824, and in 1826 considerably curtailed their privileges. In 1845 their property was finally confiscated and the missions broken up. The With the exception of the Mission Dolores, there was no settlement at San Francisco until 1835, when a tent was erected. A small frame house was built the following year, and on the fifteenth of April, 1838, the first white child was born. The population of San Francisco, then known as Yerba Buena, in 1842 was one hundred and ninety-six persons. In 1847 it had increased to four hundred and fifty-one persons, including whites, Indians, negroes and Sandwich Islanders. In March, 1848, the city contained two hundred houses, and eight hundred and fifty inhabitants. In November of the same year, the first steamer, a small boat from Sitka, made a trial trip around the bay. In this year the first public school and the first Protestant church were established. This year marked the great era in the history of San Francisco. In the fall of 1847, Captain John A. Sutter, a Swiss by birth, who had resided in California since 1839, began erecting a saw mill at a place called Colorna, on the American River, a confluent of the Sacramento, about fifty miles east of the city of that name. James W. Marshall, who had taken the contract for erecting the mill, was at work with his men cutting and widening the tail-race when, on January eighteenth, 1848, he observed some particles of a yellow, glittering substance. In "My man Bob, who is of Irish extraction, and who had been in the mines about two months, returned to Monterey about four weeks since, bringing with him over two thousand dollars, as the proceeds of his labor. Bob, while in my employ, required me to pay him every Saturday night in gold, which he put into a little leather bag and sewed into the lining of his coat, after taking out just twelve and a half cents, his weekly allowance for tobacco. But now he took rooms and began to branch out; he had the best horses, the richest viands, and the choicest wines in the place. He never drank himself but it filled him with delight to brim the sparkling goblet for others. I met Bob to-day, and asked him how he got on. 'Oh, very well,' he replied, 'but I am off again for the mines.' 'How is that, Bob? you brought down with you over two thousand dollars; I hope you have not spent all that; you used to be very saving; twelve and a half cents a week for tobacco, and the rest you sewed into the lining of your coat.' 'Oh, yes,' replied Bob, 'and I have got that money yet. I worked hard for it, and the devil can't get it away. But the two Reports of the new El Dorado reached the States, and during 1849, from Maine to Louisiana came the gold seekers. From every country in Europe, from Australia and from China, additions were made to the throng of pilgrims, who, by the Isthmus, around the Horn, across the seas, and by the terrible journey overland, all rushed pell mell up the Sacramento, stopping at San Francisco only long enough to find some means of conveyance. We have no space to tell the story of that time. Men came and went. Some made fortunes. Others returned poorer than they came. Many who attempted the overland route left their bones bleaching on the plains. Some went back to their homes, and others remained to become permanent citizens of California. What the F. F. V.s are to Virginia, and the Pilgrim Fathers to Massachusetts, the "Forty-niners," a large number of whom still survive, will be, in the future, to California. During 1848 ten million dollars' worth of gold had been gathered on the Yuba, American and Feather rivers. The city of San Francisco had, in January, 1849, two thousand inhabitants, and these were in a hurry to be off to the mines as soon as the rainy season was over. Ships began to arrive from all quarters, and July of that year found the flags of every nation floating in the bay. Five hundred square-rigged vessels lay in the harbor, and everybody was scrambling for the mines. These multitudes of people, though they thought only of gold, yet had to be fed, clothed and housed after a fashion. There were no supplies adequate to the demand, and provisions went up to fabulous prices. Apples sold for from $1 to $5 apiece, and eggs at the same rates. Late in the year of 1849 the reaction came. The steamers were filled with downcast miners, thankful that they had enough left to take themselves home. Others having acquired something, stopped at San Francisco, and plunged into the worst forms of dissipation. The city during this and the following year held a carnival of vice and crime. Women there were few or none, save of the worst character, and gambling dens, dance houses, and drinking hells flourished on every street. In 1850 a Vigilance Committee was organized by the better class of citizens, which soon exercised a wholesome restraint upon the criminal classes. In the same year California was admitted to the Union without the preliminary of a Territorial Government, and San Francisco was chartered as a city. Courts were established, and the lawless community came under the dominion of law and order. By this time the great haste which seized everybody in his eagerness to obtain gold and return home to enjoy it, had somewhat subsided. Men began to realize that there were other means of making money besides digging for it. Gardens were planted and orchards set out, and it was discovered that the apparently barren soil of the State would yield with a fruitfulness unparalleled in the East. San Francisco began to be more than a canvass city. Mud flats were filled in and sand hills leveled, houses, hotels and stores erected, and a wild speculation began in city property. Lots which a few The site of San Francisco was fixed by chance. More desirable places might have been selected, but the influx of miners dropped upon the first spot convenient for them to land, from which to start post-haste to the mines, and that spot is indicated by the present city. Owing to its location its climate is not in all respects desirable. The general climate of the coast is tempered, both in summer and winter, by a warm ocean current, which, flowing northward along the coast of China and Siberia, takes a turn to the south when it reaches Alaska, and washes the western coast of the continent of America. It is so warm that it produces a marked Thunder storms are of rare occurrence at San Francisco, but earthquakes are exceedingly frequent. Probably not a year elapses in which slight shocks are not felt in the State. Sometimes these shocks extend over vast areas, and at other times are merely local. On October twenty-first, 1868, a severe earthquake occurred at San Francisco, swaying buildings and throwing down numbers in process of erection. The houses of the city are mostly built with a view to these disturbances of nature. The dwelling houses are seldom more than two and one-half stories in height, while the blocks of the The climate is so mild and so favorable that the productions of California embrace those of both temperate and semi-tropical latitudes. The sand hills of San Francisco were found, with the help of irrigation to produce plentifully of both fruits and flowers, and the suburbs of the city display many greenhouse plants growing in the open air. Roses bloom every month in the year, and strawberries ripen from February to December. In San Francisco the mean temperature in January is 49° and in June 56°. The average temperature of the year is 54°. The California market, between Kearney and Montgomery streets, extending through from Pine to California streets, displays all the fruits, vegetables and grains of the northern States, raised in the immediate neighborhood of the city, while oranges, lemons and pomegranates are sent from further south. The tenderer varieties of grapes flourish in the open air, and the State produces raisins which command a price but little below those of Europe. The thrift of the fruit trees of California is most remarkable. Most trees begin bearing on the second year from the slip or graft, and produce abundantly at three or four years of age. Their growth and the size of their productions are unequaled on the continent. The above mentioned market is one of the sights of the city, and should not be missed by the visitor. Irrigation has been found necessary to render the sand hills about San Francisco productive, and windmills have become familiar objects in the landscape, their long arms revolving in the ocean breeze, while little Montgomery street is the leading thoroughfare, broad and lined with handsome buildings. Toward the north it climbs a hill so steep that carriages cannot ascend it, and pedestrians make their way up by means of a flight of steps. From this elevation a fine view is obtained of the city and bay. Kearney and Market streets are also fashionable promenades, containing many of the retail stores. The principal banks and business offices are found on California street, and the handsomest private residences are on Van Ness avenue, Taylor, Bush, Sutter, Leavenworth and Folsom streets, Clay street Hill and Pine street Hill. The city extends far beyond its original limits, having encroached upon the bay. Solid blocks now stand where, in 1849, big ships rode at anchor. It is laid out with regularity, most of its streets being at right angles with one another. The business streets are generally paved with Belgian blocks or cobble stones, and most of the residence streets are planked. The city does not present the handsome and showy architecture of many cities of the east, though here and there are fine edifices. It is yet too new, and too hurriedly built, to have acquired the substantiality and grandeur of older cities. Between fine brick or stone structures several stories high are sandwiched insignificant wooden houses of only two stories, the relics of a past which is The City Hall will, when finished, be surpassed by few structures in the country. The Palace Hotel, at the corner of Market and New Montgomery streets, is a vast building, erected and furnished at a cost of $3,250,000. It is entered by a grand court-yard surrounded by colonnades, and from its roof a birds-eye view of the whole city can be obtained. Baldwin's Hotel, at the corner of Marshall and Powell streets, is another palatial structure, costing a quarter of a million more, for building, decorating and furnishing, than the Palace Hotel. The Grand Hotel, Occidental, Lick House, Russ House and Cosmopolitan are all established and popular hotels. The largest and finest church edifice on the Pacific Coast is that of St. Ignatius, Roman Catholic, in McAlister street. The finest interior is that of St. Patrick's, also Roman Catholic, in Mission street between Third and Fourth. The First Unitarian church, in Geary street, is one of the finest churches in the city, remarkable for the purity of its architectural design and the elegance of its finish. The Chinese Mission House, at the corner of Stockton and Sacramento streets, will prove interesting to strangers. The Roman Catholics, who number among their adherents all the Spanish citizens, make no concealment of their intention to gain a majority of the population. But though they are a power in the community, and have many churches, the different Protestant sects are largely represented. Indeed, San Francisco is thoroughly tolerant in matters of religion. Not only do Catholics and Protestants find their own appropriate places of worship, but the Jews There is but one road leading out of the city, but within the city limits there are many modes of conveyance. Cars propelled by endless wire cables, which move along the streets without the assistance of either horse or steam power, intersect the city in every direction. Omnibuses run out on the Point Lobos road to the Cliff House; and he who has not ridden or driven thither and watched the seals on Seal Rock, has not seen all of San Francisco. This is the one excursion of the city; its one pet dissipation. Everybody goes to the Cliff. A drive of five or six miles, on a good road, over and through intervening sand hills, brings the visitor to the Cliff House. This road leads by Laurel Hill, or as it was formerly called, Lone Mountain Cemetery, two and one-half miles west of the city, within whose inclosure a conical hill rises to a considerable height above the surrounding level country. On its summit is a large wooden cross, a prominent landmark, and within the cemetery are several fine monuments, conspicuously that of Senator Broderick, and a miniature Pantheon, marking the resting place of the Ralston family. The Lone Mountain possesses an unrivaled outlook over city, bay, ocean and coast range. The Cliff House is a large, low building, set on the edge of a cliff rising abruptly from the ocean, and facing west; and from it you have a grand view of the Golden Gate, while oceanward you strain your eyes to catch some glimpse of China or Japan, which lie so far away in front of you. But you see instead, if the day be clear, the faint but bold outlines of the Farallon Islands, Late in the year of 1876 I completed my horseback journey across the continent, dashing with my horse into the surf to the westward of the Cliff House. A long and wearisome, but at the same time interesting and reasonably exciting ride, was at an end, and after viewing San Francisco, I was free to enjoy those luxuries of modern civilization, the railway cars, on my homeward route. SEAL ROCKS, FROM THE CLIFF HOUSE, NEAR SAN FRANCISCO. SEAL ROCKS, FROM THE CLIFF HOUSE, NEAR SAN FRANCISCO. The Farallones de los Frayles are six islets lifting up their jagged peaks in picturesque masses out in the ocean, twenty-three and one-half miles westward of the Golden Gate. The largest Farallon extends for nearly a mile east and west, and is three hundred and forty feet high. On its highest summit the government has placed a lighthouse, and there the light-keepers live, sometimes cut off for weeks from the shore, surrounded by barrenness and desolation, but within sight of the busy life which ebbs and flows through the narrow strait which leads to San Francisco. These islands are composed of broken and water-worn rocks, forming numerous sharp peaks, and containing many caves. One of these caves has been utilized as a fog-trumpet, or whistle, blown by the force of the waves. The mouth-piece of a trumpet has been fixed against the aperture of the rock, and the waves dashing against it with force enough to crush a ship to pieces, blows the whistle. This fog whistle ceases entirely at low water, and its loudness at all times depends upon the force of the waves. The Farallones are the homes of innumerable sea birds, gulls, mures, shags and sea-parrots, the eggs of the first two being regularly collected by eggers, who make a profitable business The Cliff House has also its sea-lions, on Seal Rock, not far from the hotel, and the visitors are never tired of watching them as they wriggle over the rocks, barking so noisily as to be heard above the breakers. Formerly numbers of them were shot by wanton sportsmen, but they are now protected by law. "Ben. Butler" and "General Grant" are two seals of unusual size, which appear to hold the remainder of the seal colony in subjection. If two begin to fight and squabble about a position which each wants, either "Ben" or the "General" quickly settles the dispute by flopping the malcontents overboard. The higher these creatures can An early drive to and a breakfast at the Cliff House, with a return to the city before the sea-breeze begins, is the favorite excursion of the San Franciscan. The road passes beyond this hotel to a broad, beautiful beach, on which, at low tide, one can drive to the Ocean House, at its extreme end, and then return to the city by the old Mission grounds, which still lie in its southwestern limits. The Mission building is of adobe, of the old Spanish style, built in 1778. Adjoining it is the cemetery, with its fantastic monuments, and paths worn by the feet of the Mission fathers and their dusky penitents. The largest and finest theatre of the city, and one of the finest in the United States, is the Grand Opera House, at the corner of Mission and Third streets. Four other theatres and an Academy of Music, furnish amusements to the residents of the city. Woodward's Gardens, on Mission street between Thirteenth and Fourteenth streets, contains a museum, an art galley, and a menagerie. There are also two Chinese theatres, one at 618 Jackson street, and the other at 625½ Jackson street. The Chinese Quarter of San Francisco, which has become famous the world over, occupies portions of Sacramento, Commercial, Dupont, Pacific and Jackson streets. It is a locality which no stranger should fail to Women are scarce in this quarter, and only of the courtezan class; but here and there one meets you, dressed usually in Chinese gown and trowsers, with hair arranged in the indescribable Chinese chignon, and carrying a fan—for all the world as though she had stepped off a fan or a saucer—and not more immodest in demeanor than the same class in our eastern cities. There are few or no Chinese wives in San Francisco. Chinese immigration takes the form of an immense bow, beginning at China, stretching to the Pacific coast of America, and retiring again to its starting point; for every Chinaman expects to return to his native land, either alive or dead. He does not take root in American soil. He comes here to make a little money, leaving his family behind him, and, satisfied with a very modest competence, returns as he came. If he dies here, his bones are carried back, that they may find a resting-place with those of his ancestors. Therefore the women imported are for the basest purposes. But to return to this Chinese Quarter. Here is the old St. Giles of London, the old Five Points of New York magnified and intensified. Here congregate the roughest and rudest elements, and here stand, shamelessly revealed, crime and bestiality too vile to name. In one cellar The Joss houses, or temples of the Chinese, are more in the nature of club houses and employment bureaus, than of religious houses. The first floor contains the business room, smoking or lounging room, dining room, kitchen, and other offices, which are used by the Emigration Company to which the building belongs. The second floor contains a moderate-sized hall, devoted to religious rites. Its walls are decorated with moral maxims from Confucius and other writers, in which the devotees are exhorted to fidelity, integrity, and the other virtues. The Joss or Josh is an image of a Chinaman, before whom the Chinese residents of San Francisco are expected to come once a year and burn slips of paper. Praying is also done, but as this is by means of putting printed The Chinese have no Sunday, and are ready to work every day of the week, if they can get paid for it. Their only holiday is at New Year, which occurs with them usually in February, but is a movable feast, when they require an entire week to settle their affairs, square up their religious and secular accounts, and make a new start in life. The Chinese have one saving virtue. They pay their debts on every New Year's day. If they have not enough to settle all claims against them they hand over their assets to their creditors, old scores are wiped out, and they commence anew. The six Chinese Emigration Companies, each representing a Chinese province, manage the affairs of the immigrants with a precision, minuteness and care which is unparalleled by any organization of western civilization. Before the passage of the anti-Chinese law, when a ship came into port laden with Chinamen, the agents of the different companies boarded it, and each took the names of those belonging to his province. They provided lodgings and food for the new comers, and as quickly as possible secured them employment; lent them money to go to any distant point; cared for them if they were sick and friendless, and, finally, sent home the bones of those who died on American shores. These companies settle all disputes between the Chinese, and when a Chinamen wishes to return home, they examine his accounts, and oblige him to pay his just debts before leaving. The means for doing all this are obtained in the shape of voluntary contributions from the immigrants. These companies do not act as employment bureaus, for these are separate and thoroughly organized institutions. The English spoken by the Chinese is known as "pigeon English," "pigeon" being the nearest approach which a Chinamen can make to saying "business." Most English words are more or less distorted. L is always used by them for r, mi for I, and the words abound in terminal ee's. The Chinese problem is one which is agitating the country and giving a coloring to its politics. The Pacific States seem, by a large majority of their population, to regard the presence of the Mongolian among them as an unmitigated evil, to be no longer tolerated. Eastern capitalists have hailed their coming as inaugurating the era of cheap labor and increased fortunes for themselves. Hence the discussion and the disturbances. A lady who had made her home in San Francisco for several years past, says, in a letter to the writer of this article, "A person not living in California can form no conception of the curse which the Chinese are to this section of the world." Yet without them some of the great enterprises of the Pacific coast, notably the Central Pacific Railroad, would have remained long unfinished; and they came also to furnish manual labor at a time when it was scarce and difficult to obtain at any price. The Chinaman is a strange compound of virtue and vice, cleanliness and filth, frugality and recklessness, simplicity and cunning. He is scrupulously clean as to his person, indulging in frequent baths; yet he will live contentedly with the The latter alternative seems inevitable, and it has already begun. China, with her crowded population, could easily spare a hundred million people and be the better for it. Those one hundred million Chinamen, if welcomed to our shores, would speedily swamp our western civilization. They might not become the controlling power—the Anglo-Saxon is always sure to remain that—but as hewers of wood and drawers of water, as builders of our railroads, hands upon our farms, workers in our factories, and cooks and chambermaids in our houses, a like number of American men and women would be displaced, and wages quickly There seems to be no assimilation between the Caucasian and the Mongolian on the Pacific slope. In the East an Irish girl recently married a Chinaman; but in San Francisco, though every other race under the sun has united in marriage, the Chinaman is avoided as a pariah. White and yellow races may meet and fraternize in business, in pleasure, and even in crime; but in marriage never. Chinamen rank among the most respected merchants of San Francisco, and these receive exceptional respect as individuals; but between the two races as races a great gulf is fixed. The Chinese immigrant takes no interest in American affairs. His world is on the other side of the Pacific. And the American people return the compliment by taking no interest in him. It is undeniable that, by a certain class of San Francisco citizens, popularly known as Hoodlums, the treatment of the Chinese population has been shameful in the extreme. A Chinaman has no rights which a white man is bound to respect. Insult, contumely, abuse, cruelty and injustice he has been forced to bear at the hands of the rougher classes, without hope of redress. He has been kicked, and cheated, and plundered, and not a voice has been raised in his behalf; but if he has been guilty of the slightest peccadillo, how quickly has he been made to feel the heavy hand of justice! It seems a pity that before the cry was raised with such overwhelming force, "The Chinese must go!" some little effort had not been made to adapt them to Western civilization. They are quick to take ideas concerning their labor; why not in other things? We have received and adopted the ignorant, vicious hordes San Francisco had, in 1880, a population of 232,956. The commerce is very large, and must every year increase as the West is built up. The chief articles of export are the precious metals, breadstuffs, wines and wool. She has important manufactures, embracing watches, carriages, boots and shoes, furniture, iron and brass works, silver ware, silk and woolen. California seems peculiarly adapted to the silk industry, and her silk manufactures will probably assume marked importance in the future. The wonderful climate and unequaled productiveness are constantly attracting immigration, and the Pacific Central, which spans the continent, has vastly improved on the old methods of travel by caravan across the plains and over the mountains. The population of San Francisco is cosmopolitan to the last degree, and embraces natives of every clime and
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