structure of the city is a decided advantage, and that it adds greatly
to the picturesqueness of the impression which it makes on visitors
is obvious. Approaching it at night on an Oakland or Saucelito
ferry-boat, or viewing it from an elevated point, it does not present
to the eye such a limitless area of countless lights as does New York
seen from Union Hill, Hoboken; but the grouping of the lights is more
fascinating, some of them leading in straight, double lines up the
hills; while others are arranged in semicircles along the amphitheatric
valleys. To get a bird’s-eye view of San Francisco in the daytime,
one need not climb arduous towers, as in Eastern and European cities;
but has only to take a front seat on a cable-car,—with an outlook
unimpeded by driver or horses,—to see the city from half-a-dozen high
hills, and as many different points of view. No city in the world can
be seen so easily, so quickly, and so delightfully, as San Francisco,
from these cable-cars, which, in the long run, make perhaps as good
time as the New York elevated trains. It is a constant up and down, and
the sensation of rapidly ascending a hill through rows of handsome
residences and flower gardens, without having to pity the poor, puffing
horses, is as agreeable as the sudden plunges downward, so fast,
and often so precipitous, that by shutting the eyes one can easily
imagine himself to be out tobogganing. The feeling is similar to that
experienced at Mauch Chunk, Pennsylvania, on descending the hill for
twenty minutes on a car whose only motor is gravitation.
The most enjoyable of the cable-car excursions is the one in the
direction of the Golden Gate and Cliff House, connecting in the suburbs
with a new steam-dummy road only completed a short time ago, and not
yet mentioned in the guide-books. This excursion is really one of
the finest in California, and should be missed by no tourist; for it
gives him superb views of the city from several hills, and of the bay
studded with pretty islands, and finally takes him to the very edge of
the Golden Gate, where he can see the ships and steamers entering or
departing for China, Japan, Australia, and every port of Europe and
America. The road continuously skirts the shore, being dug or blasted
out of the precipitous hill-sides; and directly below us are the
Pacific breakers blindly dashing themselves into foam and spray on the
rocks. The terminus is the Cliff House, with its “seal rocks,” densely
inhabited by the sea-lions, which have been too often described to call
for more than mention. There are countless seal rocks between San Diego
and Sitka, but none so near a large city as these, which may be looked
on as a free aquarium and an addition to the Golden Gate Park. They
would have long since been depopulated were they not protected by law.
The fishermen clamor for a repeal of this law, because the seals
kill so many salmon bound for the Sacramento River at the other end of
the bay; but the gain of a few hundred fishermen would be the loss of
three hundred and fifty thousand San Franciscans. As well let the city
fathers turn over the Golden Gate Park to the vegetable gardeners. It
takes up many acres which might be planted with useful cabbages and
onions,—enough to enrich quite a number of gardeners; for it is three
miles long and half a mile wide, containing one hundred and fifty
acres more than the Central Park in New York. Besides, it contains
poison-oak, and is so “unimproved” in part, that only a few years ago
a wildcat was killed in it. Therefore, down with the Park! let it be
exterminated, together with the useless, harshly barking, salmon-eating
seals!
[Illustration: SEAL ROCKS—SAN FRANCISCO.]
No doubt more people have had their first glimpse of the illimitable
Pacific at the Cliff House than from all other places on the
Californian Coast; and it is a most delightful spot to spend a few
hours, although at any time of the year a light overcoat is desirable.
When we are ready to return we have the choice of several roads, none
of which, however, is as attractive as the one we came on. So we once
more connect with the cable-cars and have another five cents’ worth
of tobogganing—without snow or danger of broken limbs. I should think
that cable-car tobogganing parties ought to be among the most popular
amusements in San Francisco. I am sure if I lived there I should ride
to the Cliff House every day in the year. The return trip takes us
through different streets from those we saw before, and on arriving at
the corner of Jones and Washington Streets, a most magnificent prospect
opens before us. We have risen to the crest of a hill, which seems
to be the end of the world, when suddenly the whole city lies far
down below us, and the car makes an almost perpendicular plunge a few
hundred yards, as if determined to lose no time in getting there. You
must hold on tightly, but there is no cause for alarm, as the frequent
accidents on these roads do not happen in such places, but in the
crowded streets below. Presently a still greater surprise awaits us.
The car turns a corner, and without a moment’s warning we are in China,
which we had imagined five thousand miles away. In other parts of the
city we see an occasional Chinese laundry and a few Chinamen mingled
with the throng of Americans; but here the proportions are more than
reversed,—Chinese men, women, and children, Chinese shops and signs,
Chinese conversation, and Chinese smells monopolize the attention.
San Francisco has more than twenty thousand Chinese, hence it may be
imagined that Chinatown is not a village. Anti-Mongolians like to
compare it to a cancer which is eating its way through the vitals of
the city, constantly enlarging at the edges. Blocks upon blocks in
some of the best streets are given over to the Asiatic invaders; and
while the large buildings formerly occupied by Americans have been
left standing, they have undergone such a thorough metamorphosis that
if the Chinese should ever be driven from the city (as they were from
Tacoma), the simplest way to Americanize these streets again, would be
to blow them up with dynamite and rebuild them—which would also perhaps
be the best way for sanitary reasons. But while the main buildings and
streets have been left as originally laid out, a number of side streets
and narrow alleys—exact copies of those in China—have been created to
connect them, and fill up every vacant yard and corner; for a Chinaman
is not happy unless crowded as closely as salmon in an Alaskan creek.
What adds to this effect of crowding is that all life and activity
seems to be concentrated on the ground floor, no business being
apparently carried on in the upper floors, which look uninhabited and
empty, without window curtains, or shutters, or signboards, or other
signs of habitation, excepting in the restaurants, whose outsides, from
base to roof, are gayly and gaudily decorated, and illuminated at night
with Chinese paper lanterns. The old stores with their large rooms have
been subdivided into many smaller ones—some of them only fifteen to
twenty feet wide or even less. The place of signboards is taken by the
well-known wide scrolls of red paper with Chinese characters printed on
them, and pasted vertically on the street side, while smaller ones are
pasted on the windows. Some of the narrowest alleys have no stores, but
only cheap eating-houses, gambling-places, and rows of barred windows,
behind which wretched female slaves solicit passers-by. Among them are
some rather pretty faces, but others are hideously marked by disease.
In the gambling-dens domino-playing seems to be the favorite game. It
is different from ours, though the blocks are similar, and some of
the players are as expert in mixing and placing them, and as excited
and flushed as the poker-players who monopolize the smoking-room on
transatlantic steamers.
The principal impression given by Chinatown is that these Mongolians
chiefly live to eat, though on looking at their provisions, one often
wonders that they can eat and live. About two-thirds of all the stores
are meat, fruit, or grocery stalls. The fruits and vegetables exposed
for sale are mainly American varieties, though among them are some
strange to our eyes. The bundles of long sticks tied together, seen
everywhere, are sugarcane from the Sandwich Islands, of which the
Johns—and demijohns, as the boys are called—seem to be especially fond.
Of watermelons, John seems to be as inordinately enamored as a negro.
The butcher-shops have the largest collections of curiosities. Pork and
poultry are the favorite meats of Chinamen, but they must of course
do everything differently from our way. We smoke our pork and eat our
poultry fresh; they eat their pork fresh and smoke their poultry.
Smoked ducks, chickens, and geese are suspended everywhere as a bait
to passing epicures. Dried and smoked fish, some from China, fill up
large barrels, and some are eaten fresh. Poultry also is sometimes
eaten fresh—at least certain parts, for in one heap on the counter you
will see the entrails of chickens; in another, the combs and beards
of roosters; and in a third, the heads and claws! Nothing is wasted.
A frequent sight is a large tub filled to the brim with cold boiled
rice. I bought a cake in a baker’s shop, below the pavement, marked
with neat Chinese letters. When I opened it, subsequently, I found that
behind the inoffensive-looking crust it harbored rice and another finer
grain, watermelon seeds, little pieces of bacon, several hazel-nuts,
and some other mysterious ingredients. Obviously I had come across a
sort of Chinese mince-pie. I didn’t eat it. In another store I bought
an album containing a collection of Japanese girls, some of them real
beauties (the Chinese, I was informed, do not allow their women to be
photographed), some very cheap silk handkerchiefs embroidered on both
sides; and for seventy cents an elegantly carved bamboo, shaped like a
large dude’s cane and containing inside a telescoped fishing-rod, which
I subsequently found useful in trouting in the brooks near Lake Tahoe.
An old man with a bookstall on the street, of whom I bought an
illustrated volume, altogether upset my notions of Chinese morality. I
asked him how much it was, and understood him to say “four bits”; so I
gave him fifty cents and walked off with the book. But he ran after me,
and saying “_two_ bits,” gave me back a quarter. His countrymen seemed
to be pleased to see me walking along with a Chinese book under my arm,
and several of them smiled and greeted me, which they had not done
before. The majority of the Chinese in San Francisco belong, of course,
to the lowest classes of their race; but there are among them some of
refined and educated appearance, though I could not make out whether
those wearing goggles as large as butter-plates thereby intended to
convey the impression that their eyes had been greatly injured by
excessive study. Women are frequently seen wobbling along the street,
dressed in blue or black blouses and baggy trousers, almost like those
of the men, though much wider. Their deformed feet are placed on solid
wooden soles with embroidered silk above, and their faces are almost as
greatly deformed as their feet by the hideous Chinese custom of combing
the hair tightly back from the forehead. More numerous than the women
are children of both sexes, dressed in the most gaudy green, blue, and
other costumes and caps. Their round cherubic faces, sparkling eyes,
and fresh, healthy complexion present a cheerful contrast to the sallow
complexion, sunken cheeks, and hollow eyes of the adults, victims of
opium-smoking and other forms of dissipation.
Chinatown in the daytime may be freely visited by the “Melican” man and
woman. At night it is advisable to take a policeman or a guide, and
leave the women at home, unless their nerves are shock-proof. The scene
at night differs from that in the daytime; for whereas in the morning
Chinatown seems little more than a big market-place, at night it is
one vast barber-shop in which half the population seems to be engaged
in shaving and mutilating the other half. There are no curtains; and
if you stop a minute and look into one of the tiny shops on the ground
floor or in the cellar, you will see a tonsorial artist deftly shaving
his victim’s head, chin, eyebrows, lashes, nose, clean his ears, etc.
Perhaps you are standing this moment over a Chinese dormitory; for
space is expensive in so large a city, and John utilizes every inch
of it by making his bed under the sidewalks. We follow the guide
into subterranean haunts, down several flights of rickety stairs, to
get a peep at the opium-dens. It is estimated that there is only one
Chinaman out of every five in San Francisco who does not revel in his
daily opium debauch, and even that fifth man uses it occasionally as
a sedative. Some manage to get drunk on ten cents’ worth a day, while
others need as much as a dollar’s worth, of a superior quality. It was
the ten-cent variety we saw on this tour. The guide occasionally drops
a quarter in certain places, and is in return allowed free access with
his protégés. In dingy little rooms, not much larger than a state-room
in a steamer, there are several bunks, in each of which lies or sits a
Chinaman, in varying stages of stupid intoxication. Some are already
asleep, others are just lighting their pipes, and not one of them
pays the slightest attention to the intruders, unless spoken to. One
helpless old wreck lies on a bundle of rags, which, the guide said,
he has not left for five years. His hands and face are mere bones
covered with yellow parchment, but he still has strength and brains
enough left to obey the guide when commanded to show us the process of
opium-smoking by holding a little lump of the drug in the flame of a
small lamp, where it burns and is turned round like sealing-wax, and
then stuffed into the small pipe and smoked, the fumes being inhaled
through the lungs and puffed out through the nose. It is not a pleasant
odor, but it doubtless serves to disguise other odors infinitely worse.
The only ventilation in these rat-holes is a little slit, six inches
by two, above the door: yet here these Asiatics spend the whole night,
the lodging being included in the price of the opium. In one place we
passed through a kitchen with a closet in the middle of it, but as a
general thing we did not find subterranean Chinatown as filthy as it
has often been described; certainly not so bad as some of the places
visited in New York and London on “slumming” excursions. The fear that
Chinatown might become a breeding-place of bacterial epidemics leads
the sanitary authorities to look well to their duties; and besides,
San Francisco never has any “hot waves,” and its climate is in other
respects unfavorable to pestilential diseases, so that Chinatown has
not proved such a plague spot as it might become under less favorable
conditions.
Many tourists who are anxious to see the opium-dens feel inclined to
draw the line at the restaurants, at least so far as eating there is
concerned. But there are Chinese restaurants in San Francisco which
vie in elegance of furnishing and fine gilded carvings with the most
famous Parisian cafés. A good cup of tea can here be obtained, and
there can be no harm in tasting the half-dozen kinds of preserves and
cake served with it—all for twenty-five cents. There is preserved
ginger, and small oranges, and pickled melon, China nuts and other
delicacies, and a sort of oyster-fork to eat them with. In one of the
rooms you will probably see several Chinamen eating a sort of ragout
out of a large bowl, with chopsticks—every mouthful being first dipped
into a kind of sauce. The bowl is held close to the mouth, to make the
chopsticks less elusive substitutes for spoons. Eating with chopsticks
is exciting and somewhat like fishing: you never know when you will get
the next bite.
The thing to visit next is one of the temples, or Joss Houses, of which
there are dozens in the city, some belonging to trade associations.
Visitors are allowed to go behind the altars as close to the hideous
idols as they please, the keepers themselves seeming to look upon their
charge as a sort of dime museum; and as the admission is free, they try
to earn an honest penny by selling little bundles of incense tapers to
visitors.
It is getting late, and they are ready to lock the door after we are
out; but the theatre is still a-going, and to that we now repair. As
the floor is crowded, we walk right on to the stage, through a side
gate, and sit down near the actors. Our presence does not jar with the
scenery, as there is none of that commodity visible, unless it be the
band, which occupies the centre of the stage and fills the air with
Mongolian noise and dissonance. The instruments may be described as
a gong or cymbals, a stick struck rapidly on a noisy board, and an
embryonic banjo and violin which sounds like a hysterical oboe. Yet
there is melody and harmony occasionally in these last two instruments,
which almost incessantly accompany the actors’ words, as in a modern
music-drama, leaving their noisy neighbors to emphasize the murders
and other striking episodes. The actors sometimes stand on the stage
floor, sometimes on a chair or table. Their declamation is a sing-song
in a high falsetto voice. There are no women, but the best actor is
an impersonator of female rôles, and has his face painted and his
hair combed back in the most “stylish” way. The faces of these actors
are utterly void of expression. Having heard enough of their play,
we went into the green-room, where one of the actors explained to us
his costumes and their prices in China. In a corner there was tea on
tap, to which every one seemed to resort at intervals of five minutes.
We went out by the other stage door, and stood in the very centre of
the stage, watching the musicians; yet our presence there did not
seem in the least to disconcert the spectators, who, with hats on,
were attending to the play with open-mouthed interest, though they
never applauded or laughed or gave any other signs of approval or
disapproval. Sometimes, however, they do throw cigar-ends and other
objects at actors who offend them by their art or sentiments.
Dime museums, shooting-galleries, dirty little restaurants, cheap drug
and clothing stores, and similar places generally mark the transition
from Chinatown to San Francisco proper. In one or two streets the
transition is of a different sort, leading gradually through more
elegant Chinese stores and wholesale houses to the American quarters.
San Francisco has many fine streets, in strolling through which one
can easily believe the statements that the city has one-third of all
the wealth on the Pacific Coast, harbors fifty millionaires, and has
exports including treasure to the value of more than a hundred million
dollars a year. Such streets as Market, Kearney, Montgomery, and Post
would attract attention even in Paris or London, and there is evidence
of general prosperity in the numerous elegant residences as well as in
the thronged business streets. Of late, an uneasy feeling has betrayed
itself over the rivalry of the Canadian Pacific Railway and its harbor
town, Vancouver, in attempting to secure the trade with Japan and
China, the distance being somewhat in favor of Vancouver. But there
is plenty of room for several large cities on the Pacific Coast; and
San Francisco, having the only good harbor between San Diego and Puget
Sound, need not be afraid of retrograding if the Canadians get some
of the tea trade. Even if they should get the whole of the Asiatic
trade, which is impossible, the handling and shipping of California
wine, fruit, and agricultural products would suffice always to make
San Francisco one of the three or four largest cities in America; and
the opening of the Nicaragua Canal will give its trade a new and great
impetus.
Market Street is the Broadway of San Francisco, but it differs from
Broadway in New York in being as crowded in the evening as in the
daytime. Yet the evening crowd is not the same as the day crowd, being
bent on pleasure merely, like the multitudes which promenade in the
alamedas of Spanish cities, late in the afternoon. San Franciscans
are too busy to give up the afternoon hours to pleasure, so they have
their daily street review and reception between eight and ten o’clock
in the evening, during which hours Market Street is as crowded as
Fifth Avenue on Sunday afternoons. The throng comes to an abrupt end
a block or two above the Palace Hotel, and visitors stepping thence
into a comparatively deserted street are apt to be surprised on
suddenly finding that they have to elbow their way through a dense,
moving mass of men and women. It seems strange that the crowd should
not include the Palace Hotel in its promenading line, so as to give
the guests in the large bay-windows, which make up the entire front
of this immense structure, a chance to review it. San Franciscans are
fond of boasting of this as being the largest hotel in the world, and
one of the most sumptuously furnished, having cost about seven million
dollars. Few cities, indeed, are so well supplied with good hotels as
San Francisco, which has four of the first rank besides the Palace.
There are accommodations and prices to suit all purses, but I do not
believe there is another city in the world where one can get such an
elegantly furnished, spacious room, with board, for three dollars a
day, as on the upper floors of the Palace, where the air, light, and
view are better than on the more expensive lower stories. The fare is
generally good in these hotels, as it ought to be in the metropolis of
a State which furnishes all the staples and delicacies of the table in
abundance and always in season. Butcher’s meat, however, as elsewhere
on the coast, is frequently tough, and poultry seems to be exceedingly
scarce or expensive, for it is seldom seen on the bill of fare. There
are some restaurants, too, where good meals can be obtained; but
it makes one indignant to find that even here in the chief city of
California, some of the restaurateurs are too idiotic, or dishonest,
or both, to furnish California wines under California labels at
sensible prices. The California wines are there, of course, but under
French labels and at fancy prices, varying from two to five dollars;
whereas, if the wine (which is really much better and purer than
nine-tenths of all imported French clarets) were honestly labelled, it
could be sold at a quarter of those prices. The same humbug flourishes
in most Eastern restaurants, but here one would think the mob would
rise in its patriotic indignation and State pride, and summarily expel
these short-sighted, swindling restaurateurs. Claret is so cheap by the
gallon that it ought to be served free with meals, as in Spain, instead
of that deadly American drink, ice-water.
There are cheap eating-houses in San Francisco where a poor man can get
soup, meat, a dish of vegetables, and a glass of claret or beer,—all
for ten cents. There is no exaggeration in Mr. J. S. Hittell’s
statement that “the wages of labor are still fifteen to thirty per
cent higher than on the other side of the continent, and fifty to one
hundred per cent higher than in Europe, while the cost of living is
lower than in either.” Notwithstanding Chinese competition (about which
a great deal too much fuss is made in California, since the Chinamen
are absolutely needed, especially in harvest-time), it is doubtless
true that there are few places in the world where the laboring-man
fares so well as here, owing to the cheapness of provisions and the
ease with which a cheap suburban residence on the back hills or across
the bay may be reached.
In the matter of picturesque suburbs, San Francisco is admirably
supplied. Cross the bay in any direction, and you will find no end of
fine sites for villas or towns, and the suburban capabilities of the
islands which beautify the bay have hardly begun to be exploited. Every
half-hour a large and comfortable ferry crosses the bay directly east
to Oakland, noted as a city of elegant homes. A few miles beyond lies
Berkeley, the Cambridge of California, being the site of the University
of California. But neither Cambridge in New England nor in Old England
has a view to compare with that obtainable from Berkeley University and
the hills rising up behind it,—a view which includes San Francisco, the
bay, looking like a large lake, and some fine mountain groups. Here
is some of the best society to be found in the West, and connected
with the University is a gallery and good library for the use of the
students, whose ranks generally include seventy or eighty young women.