A train of three Pullmans, all well filled--but what is this shift
made for, at the last moment, when we thought we were off? Another
car to be attached, carrying to the Pacific coast Rarus and
Sweetzer, the fastest trotter and pacer, respectively, in the
world. How we advance! Shades of Flora Temple and "2.40 on the
plank road!" That was the cry when first I took to horses--that
is, to owning them. At a much earlier age I was stealing a ride on
every thing within reach that had four legs and could go. One
takes to horseflesh by inheritance. Rarus now goes in 2.13-1/4,
and Ten Broeck beats Lexington's best time many seconds. I saw him
do it. And so in this fast age, second by second, we gain upon old
Father Time. Even since this was written more than another second
has been knocked off. America leads the world in trotters, and
will probable do so in running horses as well, when we begin to
develop them in earnest. Our soft roads are favorable for speed;
the English roads would ruin a fast horse.
We traverse all day a vast prairie watered by the Platte. Nothing
could be finer: such fields of corn standing ungathered, such
herds of cattle grazing at will! It is a superb day, and the
russet-brown mantle in which Nature arrays herself in the autumn
never showed to better advantage; but in all directions we see the
prairies on fire. Farmers burn them over as the easiest mode of
getting rid of the rank weeds and undergrowth; but it seems a
dangerous practice. They plough a strip twenty to thirty feet in
width around their houses, barns, hay-stacks, etc., and depend
upon the flames not overleaping this barrier.
Third night out, and we are less fatigued than at the beginning.
The first night upon a sleeping-car is the most fatiguing. Each
successive one is less wearisome, and ere the fifth or sixth comes
you really rest well. So much for custom!
* * * * *
SUNDAY, October 20.
All day long we have been passing through the grazing plains of
Nebraska. Endless herds of cattle untrammelled by fences; the
landscape a brown sea as far as the eye can reach; a rude hut now
and then for a shelter to the shepherds. No wonder we export beef,
for it is fed here for nothing. Horses and cattle thrive on the rich
grasses as if fed on oats; no flies, no mosquitoes, nothing to
disturb or annoy, while the pellucid streams which run through the
ranches furnish the best of water. There can be no question that our
export trade is still in its infancy. The business is now fully
organized, and is subject to well-known rules. At Sherman we saw the
large show-bills of the Wyoming County Cattle Raisers' Association,
offering heavy rewards for offenders against these rules, and the
Cheyenne _Herald_ is filled with advertisements of the various
"marks" adopted by different owners. Large profits have been made in
the trade--the best assurance that it will grow--but from all I can
gather it seems doubtful whether the experiment of exporting cattle
alive will succeed.
We saw numerous herds of antelope to-day, but they graze among the
cattle, and are altogether too finely civilized to meet our idea of
"chasing the antelope over the plain;" one might as well chase a
sheep. As night approaches we get higher and higher up the far-famed
Rocky Mountains, and before dark reach the most elevated point, at
Sherman, eight thousand feet above tide. But our preconceived
notions of the Rocky Mountains, derived from pictures of Fremont _à
la_ Napoleon crossing the Alps, have received a rude shock; we only
climb high plains--not a tree, nor a peak, nor a ravine; when at the
top we are but on level ground--a brown prairie, "only this, and
nothing more."
* * * * *
TUESDAY, October 22.
Desolation! In the great desert! It extends southward to Mexico
and northward to British Columbia, and is five hundred miles in
width. Rivers traverse it only to lose themselves in its sands,
there being no known outlet for the waters of this vast basin.
What caverns must exist below capable of receiving them! and
whither do they finally go?
At the station we begin to meet a mixture of Chinese and
Indians--Shoshones, Piutes, and Winnemuccas. The Chinamen are at
work on the line, and appear to be very expert. At Ogden we get
some honey grapes--the sweetest I ever tasted. It is midnight
before we are out of the desert.
We are up early to see the Sierras. My first glimpse was of a
ravine resembling very much the Alleghany Gap below
Bennington--going to bed in a desert and awaking to such a view
was a delightful surprise indeed. We are now running down the
western slope two hundred and twenty-five miles from San
Francisco, with mines on both sides, and numerous flumes which
tell of busy times. Halloa! what's this? Dutch Flat. Shades of
Bret Harte, true child of genius, what a pity you ever forsook
these scenes to dwindle in the foreign air of the Atlantic coast!
A whispering pine of the Sierras transplanted to Fifth Avenue!
How could it grow? Although it shows some faint signs of life,
how sickly are the leaves! As for fruit, there is none. America
had in Bret Harte its most distinctively national poet. His
reputation in Europe proved his originality. The fact is,
American poets have been only English "with a difference."
Tennyson might have written the "Psalm of Life," Browning
"Thanatopsis," but who could have written "Her Letter," or "Flynn
of Virginia," or "Jim," or "Chiquita"? An American, flesh and
bone, and none other. If the East would only discard him, as
Edinburgh society did his greater prototype, he might be forced
to return to his "native heath" in poverty, and rise again as the
first truly American poet. But poets, and indeed great artists as
a class, seem to yield their best only under pressure. The grape
must be crushed if we would have wine. Give a poet "society" at
his feet and he sings no more, or sings as Tennyson has been
singing of late years--fit strains to prepare us for the disgrace
he has brought upon the poet's calling. Poor, weak, silly old man!
Forgive him, however, for what he has done when truly the poet. He
was noble then and didn't know it; now he is a sham noble and
_knows_ it. Punishment enough that he stands no more upon the
mountain heights o'ertopping the petty ambitions of English life,
"With his garlands
And his singing robes about him."
His poet's robes, alas! are gone. Room, now, for the masquerader
disguised as a British peer! Place, next the last great vulgar
brewer or unprincipled political trimmer in that motley assembly,
the House of Lords!
The weather is superb, the sky cloudless; the train stops to allow
us to see the celebrated Cape Horn; the railroad skirts the edge
of the mountain, and we stand upon a precipice two thousand feet
high, smaller mountains enclosing the plain below, and the
American River running at our feet. It is very fine, indeed, but
the grandeur between Pack Saddle and San Francisco, with the
exception of the entrance to Weber Cañon and a few miles in the
vicinity, is all here; as a whole, the scenery on the Pacific
Railroad is disappointing to one familiar with the Alleghanies.
At Colfax, two hundred miles from San Francisco, we stop for
breakfast and have our first experience of fresh California grapes
and salmon; the former black Hamburgs not to be excelled by the
best hot-house grapes of England; and what a bagful for a quarter!
We tried the native white wine at dinner, and found it a fair
Sauterne. With such grapes and climate, it must surely be only a
question of a few years before the true American wine makes its
appearance, and then what shall we have to import? Silks and
woollens are going, watches and jewelry have already gone, and in
this connection I think I may venture to say good-bye to foreign
iron and steel; cotton goods went long ago. Now if wines, and
especially champagne--that creature of fashion--should go, what
shall we have to tax? What if America, which has given to mankind
so many political lessons, should be destined to show a government
living up to the very highest dictate of political economy, viz.,
supported by direct taxation! No, there remain our home products,
whiskey and tobacco; let us be satisfied to do the next best thing
and make these pay the entire cost of government. The day is not
far distant when out of these two so-called luxuries we shall
collect all our taxes; and those virtuous citizens who use neither
shall escape scot-free. Although these sentences were written
years ago, now since we approach the threshold of fulfilment I am
not sure that upon the whole the total abolition of the internal
revenue system is not preferable. We should thus dispense with
four thousand officials. In government, the fewer the better.
No greater contrast can be imagined than that from the barren
desert to the fertile plains below; oleanders and geraniums greet
us with their welcome smiles; grapes, pears, peaches, all in
profusion; we are indeed in the Italy of America at last, and
Sacramento is reached by half-past ten. Since the great flood
which almost ruined it some years ago, extensive dykes have been
built, walling in the city, which so far have proved a sufficient
barrier against the rapid swellings of the American River, that
pours down its torrents from the mountains; but if Sacramento be
now secure against flood, it is certainly vulnerable to the
attacks of the not less terrible demon of fire. Such a mass of
combustible material piled together and called a city I never saw
before: it is a tinder-box, and we are to hear of its destruction
some day. Prepare for an extra: "Great fire in Sacramento; the
city in ashes;" but then, don't let us call it accidental.
What a valley we rush through for the hundred miles which separate
Sacramento from San Francisco! It is about sixty miles wide, and as
level as a billiard-table. Here are the famous wheat fields: as far
as the eye can reach on either side we see nothing but the golden
straw standing, minus the heads of wheat which have been cut off,
the straw being left to be burned down as a fertilizer. Fancy a
Western prairie, substitute golden grain for corn, and you have
before you the California harvest; for four hundred miles this
valley extends, and it is wheat from one end to the other--nothing
but wheat. Granted sufficient rain in the rainy season--that is,
from November till February--and the husbandman seeks nothing more;
Nature does all the rest, and a bountiful harvest is a certainty. In
some years there is a scarcity of rain, but to provide against even
this sole remaining contingency the rivers have but to be properly
used for irrigation; with this done, the wheat crop of the Pacific
coast will outstrip in value, year after year, all the gold and
silver that can be mined. Douglas Jerrold's famous saying applies to
no other land so well as to this, for it indeed needs only "to be
tickled with a hoe to smile with a harvest."
We reached Oakland, the Jersey City of San Francisco, on time to
the minute; the ferry-boat starts, and there lies before us the
New York of the Pacific: but instead of the bright sparkling city
we had pictured, sinking to rest with its tall spires suffused by
the glories of the setting sun, imagine our surprise when not even
our own smoky Pittsburgh could boast a denser canopy of smoke. A
friend who had kindly met us upon arrival at Oakland tried to
explain that this was not all smoke; it was mostly fog, and a
peculiar wind which sometimes had this effect; but we could
scarcely be mistaken upon that point. No, no, Mr. O'B., you may
know all about "Frisco," the Chinese, the mines, and the Yosemite,
but do allow me to know something about smoke. We reached our
hotel, from the seven days' trip, and, after a bath and a good
dinner with agreeable company, were shown as much of the city as
it was possible to see before the "wee short hour ayont the
twal'."
* * * * *
PALACE HOTEL, SAN FRANCISCO, Wednesday Evening, October 23.
A palace truly! Where shall we find its equal? Windsor Hotel,
good-bye! you must yield the palm to your great Western rival, as
far as structure goes, though in all other respects you may keep
the foremost place. There is no other hotel building in the world
equal to this. The court of the Grand at Paris is poor compared to
that of the Palace. Its general effect at night, when brilliantly
lighted, is superb; its furniture, rooms and appointments are all
fine, but then it tells you all over it was built to "whip all
creation," and the millions of its lucky owner enabled him to
triumph. It is as much in place in San Francisco as the Taj would
be in Sligo; but then your California operator, when he has made a
"pile," goes in for a hotel, just as in New York one takes to a
marble palace or a grand railway depot, or in Cincinnati to a
music hall, or in Pittsburgh to building a church or another
rolling mill. Every community has its social idiosyncrasies, but
it struck us as rather an amusing coincidence that while we had
recently greeted no less a man than Potter Palmer, Esq., behind
the counter in Chicago as "mine host of the Garter," we should so
soon have found ourselves in the keeping of Senator Sharon, lessee
of the Palace. These hotels do not impress one as being quite
suitable monuments for one who naturally considers his labors
about over when he builds, as they are apt apparently to prove
rather lively for comfort to the owners, and we have decided when
our building time comes that it shall not be in the hotel line. We
got to bed at last, but who could sleep after such a day--after
such a week! The ceaseless motion, with the click, click, click of
the wheels--our sweet lullaby apparently this had become--was
wanting; and then the telegrams from home, which bade us Godspeed,
the warm, balmy air of Italy, when we had left winter behind--all
this drove sleep away; and when drowsiness came, what apparitions
of Japanese, Chinese, Indians, elephants, camels, josses! passed
through our brain in endless procession. We were at the Golden
Gate; we had just reached the edge of the Pacific Ocean, and
before us lay
... "the wealth of Ormus and of Ind,
Or where the gorgeous East, with richest hand,
Showers on her kings barbaric pearl and gold.
To every blink the livelong night there came this refrain, which
seemed to close each scene of Oriental magnificence that haunted
the imagination:
"And our gude ship sails ye morn,
And our gude ship sails ye morn."
Do what I would, the words of the old Scotch ballad would not
down. Sleep! who could sleep in such an hour? Dead must be the man
whose pulse beats not quicker, and whose enthusiasm is not
enkindled when for the first time he is privileged to whisper to
himself, The East! the East!
"And our gude ship sails ye morn."
* * * * *
HARBOR OF SAN FRANCISCO, Thursday, October 24.
At last! noon, 24th, and there she lies--the Belgic at her dock!
What a crowd! but not of us; eight hundred Chinamen are to return
to the Flowery Land. One looks like another; but how quiet they
are! Are they happy? overjoyed at being homeward bound? We cannot
judge. Those sphinx-like, copper-colored faces tell us no tales.
We had asked a question last night by telegraph, and here is the
reply brought to us on the deck. It ends with a tender good-bye.
How near and yet how far! but even if the message had sought us
out at the Antipodes, its power to warm the heart with the sense
of the near presence and companionship of those we love would only
have been enhanced. In this we seem almost to have reached the
dream of the Swedish seer, who tells us that thought brings
presence, annihilating space in heaven.
We start promptly at noon. Our ship is deeply laden with flour,
which China needs in consequence of the famine prevailing in its
northern provinces, not owing to a failure of the rice, as I had
understood, but of the millet, which is used by the poor instead
of rice. Some writers estimate that five millions of people must
die from starvation before the next crop can be gathered; but this
seems incredible. And now America comes to the rescue, so that at
this moment, while from its Eastern shores it pours forth its
inexhaustible stores to feed Europe, it sends from the West of its
surplus to the older races of the far East. Thus from all sides,
fabled Ceres as she is, she scatters to all peoples from the horn
of plenty. Favored land, may you prove worthy of all your
blessings and show to the world that after ages of wars and
conquests there comes at last to the troubled earth the glorious
reign of peace. But no new steel cruisers, no standing army. These
are the devil's tools in monarchies; the Republic's weapons are
the ploughshare and the pruning hook.
For three hundred miles the Pacific is never pacific. Coast winds
create a swell, and our first two nights at sea were trying to bad
sailors, but the motion was to me so soft after our long railway
ride that I seemed to be resting on air cushions. It was more
delightful to be awake and enjoy the sense of perfect rest than to
sleep, tired as we were; so we lay literally
"Rocked in the cradle of the rude imperious surge,"
and enjoyed it.
To some of my talented New York friends who are touched with
Buddhism just now and much puzzled to describe, and I judge even
to imagine, their heaven, I confidently recommend a week's
continuous jar upon a rough railway as the surest preparation for
attaining a just conception of Nirvana, where perfect rest is held
the greatest possible bliss. Lying, as I did apparently, upon air
cushions, and rocked so softly on the waves, I had not a wish;
desire was gone; I was content; every particle of my weary body
seemed bathed in delight. Here was the delicious sense of rest we
are promised in Nirvana. The third day out we are beyond the
influence of the coast, and begin our first experience of the
Pacific Ocean. So far it is simply perfect; we are on the ideal
summer sea. What hours for lovers, these superb nights! they would
develop rapidly, I'm sure, under such skyey influences. The
temperature is genial, balmy breezes blow, there is no feeling of
chilliness; the sea, bathed in silver, glistens in the moonlight;
we sit under awnings and glide through the water. The loneliness
of this great ocean I find very impressive--so different from the
Atlantic pathway--we are so terribly alone, a speck in the
universe; the sky seems to enclose us in a huge inverted bowl, and
we are only groping about, as it were, to find a way out; it is
equidistant all around us; nothing but clouds and water. But as we
sail westward we have every night a magnificent picture. I have
never seen such resplendent sunsets as these: we seem nightly to
be just approaching the gates of Enchanted Land; through the
clouds, in beautiful perspective, shine the gardens of the
Hesperides, and imagination readily creates fairy lands beyond,
peopled with spirits and fays. It is not so much the gorgeousness
of the colors as their variety which gives these sunsets a
character of their own; one can find anything he chooses in their
infinite depths. Turner must have seen such in his mind's eye. "I
never saw such sunsets as these you paint," said the critic of his
style. "No; don't you wish you could?" was the reply. But I think
even a prosaic critic would feel that these Pacific pictures have
a spiritual sense beyond the letter, unless, indeed, he were
Wordsworth's friend, to whom
"A primrose by a river's brim
A yellow primrose was to him,
And it was nothing more."
He, of course, is hopeless.
* * * * *
THURSDAY, October 31.
We have been a week at sea. Can it be only seven days since we
waved adieu to bright eyes on the pier? We begin to feel at home
on the ship. The passengers are now known to each other, and
hereafter the days, will slip by faster. I went down with the
doctor and Vandy to see the Chinamen to-day. What a sight! Piled
in narrow cots three tiers deep, with passages between the rows
scarcely wide enough for one to walk, from end to end of the ship
these poor wretches lie in an atmosphere so stifling that I had to
rush up to the deck for air. So far three have died, and two have
become crazy. My foolish curiosity has made the voyage less
satisfactory, for I cannot forget the danger of disease breaking
out among this horde, nor can I drive the yellow, stupid-looking
faces out of mind. The night of the day in which I had gone below
we were playing a rubber of whist in the cabin when the port-hole
at my head was pushed open, and a voice in broken English shouted,
"Crazee manee; he makee firee, firee!" I jumped round and saw a
Chinaman. Such an expression--Shakespeare alone has described it--
"And with a look so piteous in purport,
As if he had been loosed out of hell
To speak of horrors."
Fire! that epitome of all that is appalling at sea, the danger
each one instinctively dreads, but no one mentions. One ran one
way and one another. The doctor (a real canny Scot, who sings "My
Nannie's awa'" like Wilson) was over the rail and down the hold in
a moment. I ran to Captain Meyer's room on the upper deck and
roused him. He too was down and in the hold like a flash--brave
fellows that they are, these "true British sailors." I waited the
result, knowing that if fire had really started, a general
stampede of Chinamen would soon come from the hatches; but all was
still. How long those few moments seemed! In a short time the
captain returned, looking, in his night-clothes, like a ghost. One
of the crazy men had broken loose from his chains, and the
Chinamen were panic-stricken. The watchman wanted the most
startling alarm, and found it, undoubtedly, in that word fire. It
is all over; but when he next has to sound an alarm let him "take
any form but that."
We have a reverend missionary and wife, with two young lady
missionaries in embryo, who are on their way to begin their labors
among the Chinese. They are busily engaged learning the language.
Poor girls! what a life they have before them! But apart from all
question of its true usefulness, they have the grand thought to
sustain them, and ennoble their lives, that they go at the call of
what seems to them their duty. We watch the Chinese eating and
laugh at their chopsticks, but we forget that one reason why John
Chinaman prides himself upon being at the pinnacle of civilization
is that he uses these very chopsticks. (None of the races of Asia,
and until recently he knew no other, have ever got beyond
chopsticks, the use of which was first taught China, while most
of them don't even have them yet.) Let us not forget that our
ancestors were using their fingers--barbarians that they
were--when the Chinese had risen, centuries before, to the
refinement of these sticks, for the fork is only about three
hundred years old. Shakespeare probably, Spenser certainly, had
only a knife at his girdle to carve the meat he ate, the fingers
being important auxiliaries. We must be modest upon this chopstick
question. It costs the ship eleven cents (5-1/2 d.) per day a head
to feed these people, and this pays for a wholesome diet in great
abundance, much beyond what they are accustomed to.
While on the subject of the Chinaman I may note that of course we
did not get through California without hearing the Chinese problem
warmly discussed. It is the burning question just now upon the
Pacific coast, but it seems to me our Californians' fears are, as
Colonel Diehl would put it, "slightly previous." There are only
about 130,000 Chinese in America, and great numbers are returning
as the result of hard times, and I fear harder treatment. There is
no indication that we are to be overrun by them, and until they
change their religious ideas and come to California to marry,
settle, die, and be buried there, it is preposterous to believe
there is any thing in the agitation against them beyond the usual
prejudice of the ignorant races next to them in the social scale.
I met the owner of a quicksilver mine, whose remarks shed a flood
of light upon the matter. The mine yields a lean ore, and did not
pay when worked by white labor costing $2 to $2.50 per day. He
contracted with a Chinaman to furnish 170 men at one-half these
rates. They work well, doing as much per man as the white man can
do in this climate. He has no trouble with them--no fights, no
sprees, no strikes. The difference in the cost enables him to work
at a profit a mine which otherwise would be idle; and to such as
talk against Chinese labor in the neighborhood, he replies, "Very
well, drive it off if you please, but the mine stops if you do."
The benefit to the district of having a mine actively at work has
so far insured protection. This is the whole story. Our free
American citizen from Tipperary and the restless rowdy of home
growth find a rival beating them in the race, and instead of
taking the lesson to heart and practising the virtues which cause
the Chinaman to excel, they mount the rostrum and proclaim that
this is a "white man's country," and "down with the nigger and the
Heathen Chinee," and "three cheers for whiskey and a free fight!"
The Chinese question has not reached a stage requiring
legislation, nor, if let alone, will it do so for centuries to
come--and not then unless the Chinese change their religious
ideas, which they have not done for thousands of years, and are
not likely to do in our time.
* * * * *