the three principal business streets of the city, has fallen almost
entirely into the hands of the Chinese; but in her general treatment of
Chinamen, Portland differs widely from her rival cities in Washington.
From Tacoma the Mongolians were driven formally, a few years ago, by
a mob, headed by the mayor and a brass band. Seattle tried the same
game, but there the mob was foiled by the interference of the sheriff.
Portland, on the other hand, deals gently with its two thousand
Chinamen, because they are found useful, and sometimes indispensable.
A Portlander has explained this matter as follows: “In a city where
white help cannot be got at the rate of thirty dollars a month for
plain cooks and twenty dollars for chambermaids, Chinamen at those
prices, either in the kitchen or overhead, are a blessing. Indeed,
the amicable relations between the Chinese and the whites here is
due largely to a tacit agreement on a division of labor. All over the
city you see that the men employed on street-mending and other public
works are white. Wherever you see a pile of cordwood and a man sawing,
splitting, and carrying it in, you will find him a Chinaman. When a
well-to-do Chinaman wants a drive in a hack, a white man sits before
him on the box. The Chinese have not intruded into any of the skilled
trades to the exclusion of the whites. Their barbers shave only their
own countrymen. Their cobblers confine their mending to Chinese shoes.
Their compositors set only Chinese type. Their carpenters are employed
on Chinese buildings and cabinet work exclusively. You will often see a
drayman delivering freight with a Chinese helper, or a white gardener
directing his Chinese assistant in the use of the hoe and the rake.
The absurd notion, so prevalent in some parts of the East, that the
Chinaman works for almost nothing, is quickly dispelled when you come
to strike a bargain with one. If he is to dig in your garden as a
common laborer, he stands for his dollar a day as firmly as the white
man. He will saw your wood gladly, but he must have a dollar a cord for
it, or a dollar and seventy-five cents if he also splits it, carries it
in, and piles it up in your cellar.”
In the country, the Chinamen are even more indispensable than in the
city; and the demand for them during harvesting and hop-picking time
is always greater than the supply. They are hired through the agency
of Chinese bosses, who send them wherever they are wanted, with cooks
and a general outfit, and pay them a small sum a day, keeping the
lion’s share for themselves. At other times of the year the Chinese
are employed in making “clearings” for agricultural purposes. Oregon
has about fifteen million acres of timber land, with a soil that is
excellent for grain or fruit, provided the timber can be removed. To
do this with white labor is so expensive as to take away the possible
margin of profit. But the Chinaman does it for a smaller sum, and thus,
instead of being the farm-laborer’s enemy, he enables him to earn a
living on the ground cleared by the heathen. The cost of clearing an
acre varies from twenty-five to one hundred dollars.
Market-gardening in Oregon, as in California, is almost entirely in the
hands of the Chinese, and where-ever in the neighborhood of Portland
you see a brook large enough to irrigate a garden, you will usually
find a Chinaman in possession of the ground. Even where the gardens
or orchards belong to Americans, Chinamen are hired to do most of the
work. And they do it well, with rare exceptions. Usually they have a
separate hut, where they do their own cooking; or else they occupy a
portion of the barn, in which case, if the chickens lay their eggs
therein, it is sometimes found that the number of cackling chickens
exceeds the number of eggs found in the trough in the evening.
To judge by the articles found in their provision stores, the wealthier
among the Chinese appear to be as great epicures as their countrymen at
home; while of the poorer ones, if you ask one what he had for dinner,
he will invariably reply, “I eatee licee” (rice). Yet they are always
glad to get what is left over at the table, and this makes it the more
remarkable that they are so contented with their insipid boiled rice,
without condiment of any sort.
Heathen John is, of course, quite as willing to work on Sunday as on
any other day; but once in a while a day comes along which is marked
sacred in his calendar, and then it is difficult to persuade him to
do anything. I once witnessed a curious scene on a farm near East
Portland. Strawberries being over-ripe, the four Chinese laborers
had been persuaded to pick all day, though they had expressed a
great desire to have a holiday. In the evening they had a grand
performance in front of their barn. A whole roast chicken was brought
out in a plate and placed on the grass, surrounded by half-a-dozen
bowls of rice-wine, and a number of burning candles, though it was
still daylight. The oldest of the men went through a series of bows
and genuflections, and then poured out libations of the wine, after
offering some to the spectators, who politely declined it. Then a few
dozen perforated papers with Chinese characters on them were thrown
into the flame, one after another, the chicken was carried back into
the barn, and the ceremony was over. One of the younger Chinamen
explained to us that what we had witnessed had been done to conciliate
the gods. “We workee to-day, long (wrong). ’Ligious holiday. Now allee
lightee” (right). He added that he and the other two young men would
not have done it, but that the old man was very strict in his religious
observances and had induced them to join him.
Afterwards we asked this same young man to sing for us, which he did
after much coaxing, and a solemn and repeated promise that we would
not laugh. He sang three verses in a shrill falsetto voice, each time
a few notes higher, the effect being similar to that of the Edison
phonographic speaking-dolls. He accompanied his song with dance and
pantomime, but when one of his companions tried to accompany him on
a peculiar instrument which sounded like a cross between a violin and
oboe, he did not encourage him, and explained to us “he no play.”
John sometimes manages to pick up a fair knowledge of English, but
one word he cannot get into his brain, and that is the word “get.”
Tell him to “go and get the milk” and he will have no idea what you
want. “Catchee” is the word for him; and if you say “John, go catchee
him milk,” he will go at once and get it. His logic also is sometimes
peculiar; and if you make a bargain with him at so much a month, he
will work exactly one Chinese month, or four times seven days, and then
refuse to do anything on the two or three remaining days of the month
unless he gets extra pay. Nash, in his “Two Years in Oregon,” relates
a funny story of a Chinaman who accompanied him on a trip through the
country. On arriving at a steep hill, he got off the wagon and made
John get off too, much against his will, apparently; for presently, on
looking around, he noticed that John had crawled up again from behind.
On being remonstrated with, John exclaimed, “Never mind; horsee no see
me get in; they know no better.”
The same writer tells of a Chinaman who stole the picture of a pretty
girl from an album and concealed it in his room. And an Oregon lady
related to me an incident which gives further proof that John has a
sense of beauty. She has two daughters, one a very pretty brunette of
eleven, the other a blonde with irregular features and freckles. Lee
had one day promised a handkerchief to the blonde, but on looking at
the two he decided to give it to the other one. He often spoke of her
beautiful black eyes, “just like a China girl’s,” and said he would
take her along to China. “How much will you give me for her?” asked the
mother. “Hundred dollars,” was the answer. “And how much for the other
one?” “Two bits” (twenty-five cents). Lee used to tease these children
by running away towards his cabin with their favorite cat, pretending
that he was going to cook her for dinner. One day he was left alone in
the house, and when the family returned late in the evening, they found
he had attended to everything, even to winding up the clock. But at
one o’clock they were awakened by a most infernal noise; Lee, with the
thoroughness of his race, had wound up everything he could find—alarm
clock and all!
Lee always gave the children Christmas presents of preserved ginger,
candy, or silk handkerchiefs, and occasionally ten cents “to go to the
theatre”; but after a time he became lazy and unmanageable, and was
finally chased away because he impudently gave notice that he would not
work the next day: “To-mollow I’ll be sick.”
One of the greatest advantages of Portland as a place of residence
is that one can stay here all the year round, as there are very few
days in summer when the thermometer rises high enough to make one
uncomfortable; while the winter climate is similar to that of Virginia.
When a few successive warm days do come, however, the Portlanders have
an unusual variety of excursions to choose from. Picnic boats go up
the Columbia River every day, to visit the Cascades or the Multuomah
or Latourelle Falls. Others go down the river to Astoria and the sea.
Mt. Hood can be reached in a few hours, and a hotel has been built
near the great glacier, where fans are never in demand. Portland is
a hundred miles from the sea, yet it has three seaside resorts,
accessible by rail or boat, which are much frequented in July and
August, less because the city is considered uncomfortable, than because
all residents on the Pacific Coast seem to have a passion for camping
out a few weeks each year.
In selecting a seaside resort on the North Pacific Coast, the most
important consideration, next to a good beach, is protection from the
cold winds which often make even the summer months chilly. In this
respect the most southerly of Portland’s summer resorts, at Yaquina
Bay, is well favored. It is situated about a hundred miles south
of the Columbia River bar; and expects to be some day an important
commercial place, owing to the facilities for transportation of wheat
and fruit to San Francisco, the distance being two hundred miles less
than from Portland. At present a steamer leaves every two weeks for the
Golden Gate. Newport, on this bay, is a place of about five hundred
inhabitants, who claim that their town will never need a fire company
because the salt spray from the ocean renders the houses fire-proof—an
assertion which they probably expect to be taken _cum grano salis_.
Yaquina Bay formed part of a large Indian reservation until 1865, and
up to that time the San Franciscans who found it profitable to fish for
oysters in their bay had to pay the Indians a shilling a bushel for
this privilege.
The other two seaside resorts of Portlanders are due west,—Clatsop
being a few miles south of the Columbia River bar, and Ilwaco, or
Long Beach, a few miles north of it. Of these two, by far the most
frequented to-day is Long Beach, because it is accessible by boat
and rail, while Clatsop has hitherto involved a dusty stage ride of
eighteen miles from Tansy Point. Ilwaco is opposite Astoria, on the
Washington side of the Columbia estuary, and lies at the southern
extremity of the long, sandy peninsula which separates Shoalwater Bay
from the Pacific. A few years ago a primitive sort of railway was built
on this peninsula for the accommodation of visitors to the seaside, and
now hotels and camps are scattered along its whole length. There are
two hotels, but they are expensive and not very good, and most of the
Portlanders prefer to bring their tents along and rough it. A site for
the tent may be purchased for two dollars and a half a season, and hay
for the beds is supplied by the neighboring farmers to those who are
too fastidious to use the fragrant fern which is an omnipresent and
irrepressible weed in Washington and Oregon. Fern has its advantages,
not only because it costs nothing, but because it offers no temptation
to the cows which have the freedom of the camp in the early morning
hours. It is hardly conducive to comfortable rest to know that at any
moment after daylight a cow may poke her head under your tent and chew
up the substratum of your bedding. The owners of these cows provide for
a plentiful supply of milk and vegetables, while meat is daily brought
from Portland or Astoria, and is offered for sale, together with canned
goods, at booths which are more numerous than they need to be. One can
hardly blame these vendors for asking somewhat high prices for their
supplies, but the person to guard against is the thrifty farmer’s wife
who buys “store” butter and eggs at Ilwaco and then peddles them around
as “fresh farm products” at double prices.
Shoalwater Bay is a famous oyster-ground, and the bivalves, together
with mud-clams and razor-clams, are daily brought over to the camp.
These oysters are small and inferior in flavor to Eastern oysters.
Crabs and fish in great variety are also to be had for a trifle, but
the popular way at Long Beach is to catch them yourself. When the
tide recedes, some crabs (occasionally weighing four or five pounds)
are always left in the hollows on the beach, where they can be easily
caught. But once every month there are several mornings when the tide
recedes about half a mile, and then the sport becomes lively. Everybody
is out with poles and large sacks, in which the crabs are packed and
afterwards gathered in by wagons. Another kind of sport peculiar to
this region is gathering in the large hake (two to five pounders),
which in their eager pursuit of sardines are occasionally caught by the
breakers and cast ashore, where they can be gathered in by the hundred.
Larger fish, too, are often cast ashore, among them ten-foot sturgeon,
and large salmon with a big hole in the side. The seals which abound
in this region have a destructive and abominable habit of taking some
favorite tidbit out of the salmon and then leaving them to die. These
dead fish on the beach have to be carefully covered with sand, or else
they become a malodorous nuisance.
In the evening the scene along the beach is rendered brilliant by
numerous bonfires, fed with the logs that are scattered along the beach
in countless numbers. These logs are brought down the Columbia during
the high-water season, and deposited along the beach for miles each
way. Some of them, in fact, have been carried to distant islands in
the Pacific. They supply the campers with plentiful fuel, and no one
objects to the wasteful bonfires, because the stock is replenished
every year. During storms this driftwood adds a unique element of
grandeur to the scene, the huge logs being tossed about like straws
by the angry waves, now lifted up straight as trees, and again dashed
against each other with a thud which is heard above the roar of the
breakers.
Long Beach is a place where even a victim of insomnia will sleep ten
hours every night, and still yawn all day. But as a bathing-place it
has its disadvantages. Bathing on the North Pacific is a different
thing from bathing on the New Jersey coast. The waves are so
rough—positively rude, one might say—and the undertow so strong,
that there is only one hour each day when bathing becomes safe and
enjoyable. This hour varies of course daily with the tide, and a bell
is rung to announce it. Immediately hundreds of campers, who have put
on their bathing-suits in their tents, rush into the waves; but few of
them stay in more than twenty minutes, as the water, even on summer
afternoons, is rarely warm enough to invite a longer stay. That it
is perilous to go into the water at any other than the official hour
announced by the bell is proved by the sad case of a young lady, a
well-known heiress, who lost her life here a few years ago. She was
engaged to a young man, whom she asked one day to accompany her into
the water when the tide was going out. Of course he flatly refused,
whereupon she was piqued and invited another young man, who foolishly
complied with her request. They entered the breakers, when suddenly
the young lady disappeared under the waves and was never seen again.
Although a large sum was offered for the recovery of her body, it was
never found, and it is possible that it was devoured by sharks; for
these fish are occasionally seen here, though there is no danger near
shore, and the noise made by the bathers is said to frighten them away.
The greatest objection to Long Beach is the cold winds which almost
constantly sweep along the coast, very often accompanied by dense fogs.
During three weeks in July and August, 1889, that I spent there, the
sun shone only on five days. On account of these disadvantages it is
probable that before long Clatsop Beach will become the favorite summer
resort of Portlanders, because it is protected against wind and fogs
by Tillamook Head on one side, and forests on another. A railroad has
just been built to Clatsop, and it is probable that this summer the
Portlanders will desert their favorite Long Beach and establish their
summer quarters at Clatsop, which has the additional merit, from their
own patriotic point of view, of being in Oregon, while Long Beach is in
Washington.
From Clatsop a very interesting excursion can be made on foot to
Tillamook Head, where a much-needed lighthouse was built ten years ago
in a most exposed and romantic situation. It stands on an isolated
rock, about a mile from the shore, and twenty miles south of the
Columbia River bar. The foreman of the party that built the lighthouse
was swept away by the waves and drowned, when he first put foot on the
rock, and the workmen were repeatedly in great danger while building
the lighthouse, being once cut off from all supplies for over two weeks
by a storm. The almost incredible fury of the “Pacific” Ocean when it
gets roused may be inferred from the fact that during a recent winter
storm the wild waves broke over this tower, the summit of which is one
hundred and thirty-six feet above sea-level, leaving fish and rocks
scattered on the roof. One of these rocks weighed sixty-two pounds, and
is now on exhibition in Portland.
Sea-lions are abundant in this neighborhood, and it is interesting
to watch them fishing for salmon, or quietly basking in the sunshine
on the rugged rocks, regardless of the cacophonous roaring of the
monstrous sentinels. The Indians have a tradition that pearl-oysters
used to be obtained a few miles off shore; but at present the less
ornamental but more useful rock-oyster only is to be found, together
with mussels and razor-clams, which have their habitat on the sandy
shore, and on being disturbed dig their way down so rapidly, that
it requires some skill to catch them with a little spade. In some
places along the beach the curious phenomenon of “singing sands” is
encountered, the sand on being trod on giving out a peculiar sound.
The Elk Creek region, through which this part of the coast is
approached, is a veritable hunter’s and botanist’s paradise. Here
bears and deer abound, and more dangerous game, like timber wolves
and cougars, may be encountered, as well as otter and beaver. In the
south fork of Elk Creek there is good trout-fishing. But it requires a
decided talent for “roughing it” to enjoy all these things; for here we
are in a forest truly primeval, where paths are few and far between,
and where the sunlight rarely penetrates through the dense groups of
firs and spruce to impede the growth of the moisture-loving ferns and
mosses which carpet the ground everywhere. Trees of over two hundred
feet in height and straight as masts abound, some of them up to ten
feet in diameter, and therefore too large to tempt the lumbermen to
destroy them.
As for these Oregon mosses and ferns, one would have to seek in moist
tropical regions for anything to match them in variety, beauty, and
verdant luxuriance. Not only is the ground covered so deeply that
one could walk noiselessly, were it not for the dead twigs, but every
tree, standing or prostrate, has its green mossy cover. Rotten logs
are adorned with ferns waving gracefully over the lovely mosses amidst
which they have gained foothold; and even the rocks, which are so bare
and bleak in California, are here covered with a mosaic of mosses and
lichens—green, gray, red, and yellow. Of the ferns the loveliest is,
of course, the black-stemmed maiden-hair, which attains a height of
several feet along the banks of shaded brooks, and looks so graceful
as it waves about in the gentle breezes that it seems fully to deserve
its poetic name. Less graceful and poetic is the common Oregon fern,
which sometimes grows as high as California wild mustard, so that
hunters may lose their way in it, and which is, from an æsthetic point
of view, one of the most charming features of Oregon, since it covers
up the unattractive gray of the soil everywhere with a delicate pale
green garb which contrasts delightfully with the darker green of the
fir-trees. But the farmers look on this species of fern as a dreadful
nuisance, because it is the most irrepressible of all weeds, whose
roots have more lives than cats. Oregon, it must be admitted, is almost
as weed-ridden as California. Besides the fern, the most troublesome
weeds are sorrel, dog-fennel, wild carrots, and oats, thistles, and
the beautiful corn-flowers in every imaginable color. The most curious
thing about these Oregon weeds is the tendency they have to supplant
each other every three years, as if there were fashions among weeds.
But whereas thistles and wild carrots and corn-flowers may come and go,
the fern always remains, unless it is ploughed down persistently, and
a _harrowing_ war is waged against the last inch of root remaining in
the soil.
It goes without saying that a soil which is so favorable to the
growth of weeds also extends a generous welcome to flowers. This is
most strikingly shown on deserted farms where _annual_ garden flowers
continue to seed themselves year after year, without any care. I have
seen half-a-dozen garden species of flowers growing wild in a place
where they had received no attention for twenty years. Wild flowers
do not grow here in such profusion or variety as in California, but
there are few flowers in California that equal in beauty the pendent
red clusters of the wild Oregon currant, or the trifolium, whose petals
are at first snow-white, and subsequently change to purple. Lilies
of the valley, tiger-lilies, bleeding hearts, lady’s-slippers, iris,
columbines, larkspur, and many other flowers that are carefully reared
in Eastern gardens, grow wild here in great profusion.
In the matter of berries, Oregon is greatly ahead of California.
The delicious wild strawberries on long stems are so abundant in
May and June that they perfume the air along country roads like
clover-fields. Blackberries are even more numerous, and a single
county of Oregon would supply enough for all our Eastern cities. Wild
currants and gooseberries are also abundant, as well as black and red
raspberries and huckleberries. Then there are berries peculiar to
Oregon and Washington, including the yellow salmon-berries, the scarlet
thimble-berries, and the odd salal, a bush which grows everywhere
and is quite ornamental with its glossy leaves and bell-shaped white
flowers which turn into bluish black berries of a rather agreeable
flavor. Usually these berries are small and dry, but in the swampy
regions along the sea-coast they grow as large as gooseberries, and are
very sweet, although care has to be used in eating them, as they are
apt to be inhabited. Bears are very fond of these salal-berries. But
perhaps the most curious berry in the State is the so-called Oregon
“grape,” a small blue berry which makes good wine, but requires plenty
of sugar, as it is perhaps the sourest thing that grows, unless it be
the Oregon crab-apple, a small berry-like fruit growing in clusters,
and of which a jam is made that would give European or Eastern epicures
a new sensation of delight. Speaking of epicures, I claim to be an
amateur in that line myself, and I must acknowledge that I have never
tasted any French château wine with a more agreeable bouquet than that
of Oregon cider made exclusively of the finest apple that grows—white
winter pearmain—and kept in bottles, unfermented.
The wild oranges which grow in Mexico indicate that oranges, lemons,
and limes must be among the most profitable crops grown there; and in
the same way the wild crab-apples, cherries, various sorts of berries,
and wild oats prophetically indicated that the wealth of Oregon lay in
the systematic cultivation of fruit, berries, and grain.