occasionally, and there is a general belief among geologists that rich
deposits of them may yet be discovered. Some authorities estimate
the diamond-producing area of New South Wales at five hundred square
miles. By the same estimate the coal fields are placed at 24,000
square miles, iron at 1,400, gold at 13,000, tin at 6,000, and copper
at 3,000. Mineral lands are now leased at five shillings annual rental
per acre.
[Sidenote: RESOURCES OF NEW ZEALAND.]
From an American point of view, Australia and New Zealand are
associated, although they are distinct colonies, and are a long
distance apart. New Zealand, discovered and named in 1642, by a Dutch
navigator, TASMAN, who also discovered and named Tasmania in the same
year, consists of two large and one very small island, lying 1,200
miles south-eastward of Australia, between 34° and 48° south latitude,
being about antipodal to Great Britain. Its length of coast line
is 3,000 miles, its shape being long and narrow; its area is about
that of the State of Oregon. It is of volcanic origin, ribbed with
mountains, and is better watered than Australia in respect to both
lakes and rivers. Its temperature is lower than that of corresponding
latitudes in Europe, and higher than that of corresponding latitudes
in America, but the climate is more salubrious than in Great Britain,
although very changeful in temperature and moisture.
In minerals, it is nearly as rich as any of the colonies, the gold
yield having been $9,937,125 in 1873, and the total exported to July
1, 1875, $151,407,045. Copper, silver, tin, iron, and coal have also
been found. Nearly everything grown in Great Britain flourishes
there, together with the fern in tree form thirty feet high, a wild
flax, nearly equal to manila for rope-making, an excellent variety of
valuable building and ship-building woods, and an abundance of the
fruits of both semi-tropical and temperate countries. The population
has risen thus from 26,707 by the original census of 1851: 1858,
59,413; 1861, 99,022; 1864, 172,518; 1867, 218,668; 1871, 256,260;
1874, 299,514; and of 1875, 375,876; all these figures exclusive
of aborigines and Chinese, it thus appearing to be equaled only by
Victoria and New South Wales, of the Australian colonies.
In respect to emigration, it compares favorably with Victoria, its
excess of immigrants over emigrants having been 38,106 and 25,270 in
1874 and 1875 respectively, against 3,367 and 2,698 for Victoria in
those years. It has 550 miles of railroad, and 7,065 of telegraph
wire; Victoria has 586 and 4,981 miles respectively; New South Wales,
437 and 8,014. Its number of sheep was 11,704,853 in 1874, having
multiplied about two and a half times in ten years. The land under
cultivation two years ago was 1,788,797 acres—an increase of 285,445
during the previous twelve months. Small as this total is—less than
three per cent. of the whole—the proportion of cultivated land in
New South Wales was less than one and one-half per cent., and in all
Australia less than one-fourth per cent. at the same time. Taking as
the assumed habitable portion the strip 250 miles wide along three
sides of the Australian coast, 758,000 square miles in extent, that
piece, nearly equaling in size the twenty-six States of this Union
lying east of the Mississippi, would contain, if the island population
were distributed over it, about three persons to the square mile,
against three and one-half in New Zealand, eighty-three in New York,
one hundred and fifty-eight in Massachusetts, three hundred and
seventy-two in England, and four hundred and ten in Belgium. But
the reader should remember that as these colonies are all pastoral,
the area tilled is a very different matter from the area occupied.
The principal endowment of Australia at present, besides mineral
resources, being the vast areas of rich native grasses and the
peculiar fitness of soil and climate which “make bad fleeces good and
good better,” the colonist has become a herdsman.
It does not appear that New Zealand is behind her larger neighbors,
a thousand miles distant, in any material respect. The colonies all
invite immigration, and some of them have latterly taken energetic
measures to secure it. They offer bounties to settlers, reduced
passage rates, and other inducements, and have been quite successful
both in England and America.
[Sidenote: RICH MINERAL DEPOSITS.]
The mineral resources of New Zealand are quite as varied as those
of Australia. The rocks contain copper, iron, silver, gold, tin,
and other metals, and there are extensive beds of coal of excellent
quality. The processes employed in working the mines are almost
identically the same as in Australia, so that an extended description
is unnecessary. The great majority of the miners in New Zealand came
originally from Australia, and their proportion of good and bad luck
has been much like that in the latter country.
LIV.
UNDERGROUND IN SAN FRANCISCO.
CHINESE OPIUM DENS.—PISCO.—EXPERIMENTS IN LIQUORS.—SATURDAY
NIGHT AMONG THE CHINESE.—COCOMONGO.—MURDERER’S ALLEY.—CHINESE
MUSIC.—THE THEATRE.—BETEL AND ITS USE.—THE BARBARY COAST.—CHEAP
LODGING-HOUSES.—A DYING VICTIM.—A DEN OF THIEVES.—“THE
SHRIMP.”—UNDER THE STREET.—A REPULSIVE SPECTACLE.—OPIUM
SMOKING.—ITS EFFECTS.—SAMSHOO.—ITS PREPARATION AND
QUALITIES.—INTRODUCTION TO AN OPIUM DEN.—THE OCCUPANTS.—EXPERIMENT
ON A SMOKER.—HOW TO SMOKE.—TRYING THE DRUG.—MESCAL.—GOING
HOME.—TRYING A SEWER.—A COUNTRYMAN’S DRINK.
Underground life, of a peculiar and picturesque character, can be seen
in San Francisco, in the parts of the city where the Chinese most
do congregate. Soon after my arrival there, two of my friends, whom
I will call the Doctor and the Colonel, invited me to a nocturnal
visit to the Celestials. I accepted with alacrity, and, dressed in my
poorest and oldest clothes, met my friends at the appointed hour in
the _Alta_ office. Macrellish and Woodward gave us their benediction,
and we set out on our journey.
“The best thing we can do,” said the doctor, “is to lay in a stock
of some powerful disinfectant, or neutralizer, before we start;
the stench in some of those underground China kennels is something
frightful.” I suggested carbolic acid. “Not strong enough!” said the
doctor, shaking his head, doubtfully. The colonel forced two long
streams of smoke from his cigarito through his nostrils, stroked his
long mustache thoughtfully, and suggested,—
“Pisco?”
“What is Pisco?” I demanded.
“That settles it, my friend; you have a new experience before you, and
we will fall back on Pisco!” said the colonel.
[Illustration: DRINKING “PISCO” (PERUVIAN BRANDY) IN A SAN FRANCISCO
SALOON.]
[Sidenote: EXPERIENCE WITH PISCO.]
“You will be in luck if you don’t fall back on the sidewalk after you
have drank it!” growled the doctor.
The colonel took my arm, and as we went down towards Montgomery
Street, proceeded, in a confidential manner, to enlighten me on the
subject of Pisco. It is really pure, unadulterated brandy, distilled
in Peru, from the grape known as Italia, or La Rosa del Peru, and
takes its name from the port of Pisco in which it is shipped. It is
perfectly colorless, quite fragrant, very seductive, terribly strong,
and has a flavor somewhat resembling that of Scotch whiskey, but
much more delicate, with a marked fruity taste. It comes in earthen
jars, broad at the top, and tapering down to a point, holding about
five gallons each. We had some hot, with a bit of lemon and a dash
of nutmeg in it, at a marble-paved and splendidly-decorated saloon,
near the corner of California and Montgomery Streets. The first glass
satisfied me that San Francisco was, and is, a nice place to visit,
and that the doctor and the colonel were good fellows to travel
with. The second glass was sufficient, and I felt that I could face
small-pox, all the fevers known to the faculty, and the Asiatic
Cholera, combined, if need be.
The colonel rolled me a cigarito, and insisted on my smoking it.
I did my best, choked myself with the fine tobacco, let the paper
wrapper unroll, burned my fingers, and failed ignominiously. I was
glad to see that, while he pitied me, he did not wholly despise me.
These Californians have an appreciably large share of liberality in
their composition, and will pardon your ignorance on almost any given
specialty of their state, provided you don’t claim that you have
something very nearly as good “at the East.” That assumption they
cannot, and will not, tolerate on the part of anybody, and I don’t so
much blame them, after all.
It was Saturday evening, and the streets were crowded, Montgomery
and Kearney Streets swarming, as you may say, with people, well
dressed, sociable, orderly, and satisfied with themselves and the
rest of mankind. Suddenly the colonel remembered that the wine called
Cocomongo, from the vineyard of that name, near San Bernardino,
Southern California, was one of the specialties of a saloon which we
were passing at the moment, and we went in and had some.
[Sidenote: COCOMONGO.]
It was a warm, fruity wine, of a dark-amber hue, very strong, and
withal palatable, which I did not find to be the case with _all_
the California wines that I tasted. We went up Washington Street to
Murderer’s Alley, and turned down it, towards Jackson Street. “There
is where the French woman was murdered in the night, within ten feet
of where hundreds of people were coming and going all the time; and
her murderer, after robbing the place, coolly washed his hands and
face of the blood, and walked away. He was never discovered. Here,
right where we stand, is where the Chinaman cut his runaway mistress
open with a sword. I saw him hanged for it. And there is where the
police shot—” I thanked my kind friend for this cheerful information,
but suggested that it might be well to keep a little of it back for
another time. It was not well to exhaust all the pleasant things of
life at one sitting. The subject was obligingly changed.
I am satisfied that the name of the alley is well deserved and
appropriate. Swarms of Chinese women, with almond eyes, baby faces,
painted red and white in the most lavish manner, lips touched with
vermilion, hair black and glossy, with a purplish tinge, like the wing
of a raven, and clad in blue satin coats and pants, trotted along
the alley, their curious wooden-soled, silk and bullion-embroidered
shoes rattling like the hoofs of a flock of sheep as they went.
Others tapped upon the window panes, to attract our attention as
we passed. Before one house we saw “joss-sticks” burning, and the
white cloth festooned over the door, and hanging down on either
side, told that death was there. We heard the beating of gongs, the
squeaking of one-stringed Chinese fiddles, the sharp notes of the
kettle-drum and other discordant instruments, making music inside,
and, as we passed, a woman, clad in blue and white, threw a bunch of
lighted fire-crackers upon the doorstep, where they went off like a
running fire of musketry, much to the edification of a gang of little
pig-tailed, almond eyed boys,—“demi-Johns,” I think the doctor called
them,—who were gathered around, chattering like so many magpies all
the time, in their, to me, uncouth jargon. The Chinese is an ancient
language, beyond a doubt; and I don’t see why it has not worn smoother
by use in the hundred centuries or more since the “Central Flowery
Empire” became “known and feared among the nations.”
[Sidenote: A CHINESE THEATRE.—BETEL NUT.]
On Jackson Street we stopped a few moments in front of the Chinese
Theatre, listening to the unearthly din of gongs, which from time
to time announced the change of scene, in a never-ending historical
drama, and looking about for a special policeman to take us into an
opium den. While we stood there, the colonel called our attention to
one of the specialties of the fruit stall, at the entrance of the
theatre. Among the dozen nameless prepared delicacies calculated to
tickle the Celestial palate, and catch the Mongolian eye, was a row of
little conical packages, of about one ounce weight each. These were
composed of an outer wrapper of some kind of a queer leaf—I could
not make out its exact character, but it was apparently that of a
tree not native to America—enclosing two or three narrow slices of
fresh cocoa-nut, a few thin slices of some fruit or nut resembling in
appearance a fresh nutmeg, and about a teaspoonful of a pink-colored
paste. A small bowl, filled with this pink paste, stood beside the
packages, ready for use, and some of the nuts ready sliced, but not
done up in packages, lay near it. The doctor explained that these
packages were chewed by the Chinamen as some Caucasians chew tobacco.
The chewing produces a lavish flow of saliva, and the chewer has the
appearance of having his mouth full of blood, as if from bronchial
hemorrhage.
The small nut was the famous “_betel_” (pronounced be-_tel_), and
the principal ingredient of the paste was quick-lime. The betel is
now raised in California. The colonel said he had always made it a
rule to drink the peculiar drinks, and eat the peculiar delicacies,
of every country he visited, and he had tried chewing the betel. It
only made his gums sore, loosened his teeth a little, and gave him
the heartburn. He could conscientiously recommend it as an experiment
eminently worthy to be made by anybody in the interest of science,
and thought I should try it by all means. I asked him if he had ever
attacked a ready-made sausage in a cheap restaurant. He was forced
to admit that his faith in human nature, broad and liberal as it is,
had never made him equal to the attempt. I told him that in that case
he was only a dabbler in the wide field of science, and until he had
entered deeper, he was unfit to give advice to others on the subject.
I declined the prepared betel, lime, cocoa-nut and leaf, but took
a bit of the sliced betel plain, and chewed it. It had a slightly
astringent effect on the mouth, and though without any very strongly
perceptible flavor, soon produced a slight choking sensation in the
throat, and a rather strongly marked palpitation of the heart. I
don’t think I like betel. It is evidently an “acquired taste,” as
the Englishman remarked about wild turkey, when a party of western
practical jokers played off buzzard on him for the noblest bird of the
American forest.
[Sidenote: “THE BARBARY COAST.”]
They said that the officers had all gone over upon the “Barbary
Coast”—another of San Francisco specialties—as there had been a
shooting scrape over there. We went on through Dupont Street, to
that part of Pacific Street known as the Barbary Coast. The locality
is the favorite resort of the dregs of the population of the Golden
City—thieves, robbers, prostitutes, and loafers of the very lowest
class, and of every color and nationality represented on the earth,
Africa, Asia, all Spanish America, the West Indies, the islands of the
Pacific, all Europe and North America, having each contributed its
quota to make up the mass of vice, crime, and utter rottenness which
surges up and down that horrible “coast.” It well deserves its name.
We met the officers coming back with their prisoner, a drunken loafer
from Australia, who was making night hideous with his yells as they
hustled him along towards the calaboose, followed by a motley crowd,
whose aimless curiosity led them to rush along pell-mell in their
wake.
One of the specials, whom my companion familiarly addressed
as “Shrimp,”—probably on account of his elephantine
proportions,—consented to come back and pilot us to our destination
as soon as the party reached the calaboose. Meantime we went into a
Spanish cigar shop, bearing the high-sounding and pœtical name “_La
Flor de la Mariposa_,” literally “The Flower of the Butterfly,” and
bought some villanous cigars, the colonel and the proprietor becoming
involved in an animated dispute in Spanish over the revolt against the
Juarez government in Mexico.
Out on the street once more, the colonel wanted us to go through the
dens on the “coast.” He would take us to the “Bull Run,” the “Cock of
the Walk,” the “Roaring Gimlet,” “Hell’s Kitchen,” and a few similar
resorts, and convince me that we had nothing like them in New York.
Rather than make the visit, I conceded all he claimed as to the
superior and in fact unapproachable depravity of this part of San
Francisco; and we retraced our steps to Jackson Street, where, in the
heart of the Chinese quarter of the town, we found our officer, and
set about the work of investigation, for which we had started out in
the early part of the evening.
[Sidenote: A DANGEROUS LOCALITY.]
“Better go down and see how some of these people live, before you go
to see how they die,” said the officer, leading the way into a dark
passage running from the streets into the centre of the block. We
stumbled along the passage for some fifty feet or more, and came to
a rickety, dirty stairway, which we descended, feeling our way along
step by step, until we stood in a court-yard surrounded with high
brick buildings on all sides. We could see nothing round us for the
moment; but the stench was almost overpowering, and the chattering,
which was going on in all directions, convinced us that we were in a
locality literally swarming with the lowest class of the Mongolian
population. The officer struck a match against the wall, and with it
lighted a piece of candle, which he drew from his pocket. Immediately
curious faces peeped out at us from behind old gunny-sacks, which took
the place of windows and doors in the low basement walls, and a dozen
or two dirty, dilapidated, demoralized looking Celestials came out
from different corners, and stood with their hands in their pockets,
regarding us with evident suspicion as unauthorized intruders.
[Sidenote: A DEN OF THIEVES.]
“This is a regular den of thieves. Not a single one of these fellows
works at any honest trade for a living. They are the bummers and
outcasts of Chinadom,” said the officer. “Here, Sam Yap, you dirty
rascal, have you robbed anybody’s hen-roost yet to-night?—I suppose
not, though; they don’t generally get out at that kind of business
until along just before morning, when the streets are almost deserted,
and they can move about without much danger of being overhauled and
searched. All these fellows are on it, but this one is the worst in
the deck. I have had him up at least twenty times, and the next time I
am going to vag him. Yes, I am, you bloody old chicken murderer!” said
he, holding the candle up to his face that we might all get a good
look at him. It must be admitted that it was not a prepossessing face.
He then went to one of the openings in the wall, and pulling back
the screen of old bagging, showed us a party of ten or a dozen such
fellows gathered around a low table of rough boards, playing dominoes
for “copper cash,” as the brass coin of China, the value of which is
one tenth of a cent of our money, is commonly designated. They stopped
a moment, and looked up suspiciously at us, and then at a sign from
the officer, whom they appeared to recognize, went on with the game.
They played it rapidly, with all sorts of exclamations and facial
contortions for accompaniments. The dominoes are the same as ours,
but they play the game quite differently. I don’t know exactly how it
is done, but they seemed to win and lose rapidly. In the centre of
the court there was a small brick building, which seemed to be the
receptacle of all the filth from the neighborhood. It did not seem to
have any connection with the street sewer, or if it had any, it was
choked up, for the planking around was literally floating in the foul
liquid from it, which oozed up between the cracks at every step as
we walked over it, giving off a stench, which, in any other city of
Christendom would breed a pestilence in twenty-four hours.
[Sidenote: IN A CHINESE HOUSE.]
Behind this, near the opposite wall, we stumbled upon a bundle of
filthy rags, which turned partially over as the foot of our guide
came in contact with it. The officer held down his candle, and on
examination we found that within the rags there was a human being,
a man in the last stage of consumption, induced, no doubt, by opium
smoking. He could not or would not answer our questions, and his
glazed vacant eyes showed that death was close at hand to claim
him. He was lying on the wet, dirty boards, without even a blanket
under him, and had undoubtedly been placed there to die, having no
friends, and belonging to neither of the “Six Companies” with which
all prosperous or even partially respectable Chinese in California are
connected. The officer turned his head over, and called our attention
to the fact that his queue had been cut off, which showed that he had
been convicted of theft at some time, and was thenceforward debarred
from respectable Chinese society, doomed to associate only with the
pariahs of his race.
We had seen enough, more than enough, in fact, of this neighborhood,
and our guide led us out to the street by the way we came.
The Shrimp said that there was another place just above, on the same
street, which he wanted us to visit before we went into a first-class
opium house. We went with him to a large four-story building, which
appeared to be divided into apartments of the smallest dimensions,
in which the Chinese swarmed like bees in a hive. He said that there
were over six hundred persons, all of the poorer class, sleeping in
this single building every night. In front of the building was a
narrow opening in the sidewalk, with a stairway just sufficiently
wide to allow one person at a time to descend into the subterranean
regions below. Down this he dived like a rat into his hole, calling
out to us to follow and look sharp for our heads. The caution was not
unnecessary, as I soon found to my cost. At the bottom of the stairs
he lighted his candle again, and passing through a low opening in the
wall, showed us the way under the street.
[Sidenote: A HORRIBLE DEN.]
Here, congregated in total darkness, were some twenty of the poorest
class of Chinese stowed away for the night. Some were lying on piles
of old rags, evidently picked up by the chiffonniers in their daily
rounds, and put aside for this purpose, as having no commercial value,
and of no use otherwise. Some were lying on rude benches knocked
together from pieces of dry goods boxes, and one, who evidently held a
higher position than his fellows, probably a man who had at some time
drawn a twenty dollar prize in a lottery, or had a run of luck at the
game of “Tan,” was stowed away in a bunk in a kind of alcove formed by
an arch in the wall, before which was hanging an old tattered chintz
curtain. He had an old blanket over him, and was doubtless looked upon
with envy and hatred as a “bloated aristocrat” by his less fortunate
fellow-citizens. We could hear the ceaseless tramp of the crowd on the
sidewalk, and from time to time the rattling of the carriage wheels
over the rough cobbles above our heads.
The atmosphere was that of a charnel-house, thick with noisome
exhalations from the foul and rotting rags, and the fouler persons, of
the denizens of this worse than Black Hole of Calcutta. Water dripped
from the roof constantly, and the walls were covered with mould and
great patches of thick, oozy slime. What a place for a human being to
sleep in and die in! In the five minutes we were there our clothes
became clammy from the foul moisture. What must be the condition,
physical and mental, of that poor wretch stretched in the rags in
yonder muddy corner?
[Sidenote: AMONG THE OPIUM SMOKERS.]
“And the wheels go over my head,
And my bones are shaken with pain,
For into a shallow grave they are thrust,
Only a yard beneath the street;
And the hoofs of the horses beat, beat,
Beat into my scalp and my brain,
With never an end to the stream of passing feet.
* * * * *
“O, me! why have they not buried me deep enough?
Is it kind to have made me a grave so rough,
Me, that was never a quiet sleeper?
May be still I am but half dead;
Then I cannot be wholly dumb;
I will cry to the steps above my head,
And somebody, surely, some kind heart, will come,
To bury me, bury me,
Deeper, ever so little deeper.”
I wonder if there was ever a Tennyson of Celestial literature, and
if he ever read anything like the above, and recalled it to mind, as
he lay cowering and grovelling through the long hours of the dreary
night, in the depths of this living tomb!