Part 1

“_Familiar in their Mouths as HOUSEHOLD WORDS._”—SHAKESPEARE.

HOUSEHOLD WORDS. A WEEKLY JOURNAL.

CONDUCTED BY CHARLES DICKENS.

N^{o.} 14.] SATURDAY, JUNE 29, 1850. [PRICE 2_d._

THE GOLDEN CITY.

“The fitful flame of Young Romance,” fed by the Arabian Nights’ Entertainments, Fairy tales and Heathen Mythologies; the wonderful fables of Genii and Magicians; stories of towns springing up, ready-built, out of deserts; tales of cities paved with gold; the Happy Valley of Rasselas; the territories of Oberon and Titania, Robert Owen’s New Harmony, and the land of Cockaigne; Gulliver’s Travels, the Adventures of Peter Wilkins, legends of beggars made kings, and mendicants millionaires; Sinbad the Sailor, Baron Munchausen, Law of Laurieston, Major Longbow, Colonel Crocket, the Poyais loan; illimitable exaggeration; undaunted lying; the most rampant schemes of the most rabid speculators; the wildest visions of the maddest poet; the airiest castle of the most Utopian lunatic—any one of these, and all of them put together, do not exceed the wondrous web of realities that is being daily woven around both hemispheres of the globe. Not to mention conversations carried on thousands of miles apart, by means of electricity, and a hundred other marvels that Science has converted into commonplaces, we would now confine ourselves to the latest “wonderful wonder that has ever been wondered at”—the gold region of California; but more especially to its capital, San Francisco.

The story of the magic growth of this city would have defied belief, had it not rapidly grown up literally under the “eyes of Europe.” When the returns were made to the United States’ authorities in 1831, it contained three hundred and seventy-one individuals, and very few more resided in it up to the discovery of gold at Sutter’s Mill, in the Sacramento River. Even in April, 1849, we learn from a credible eye-witness, that there were only from thirty to forty houses in San Francisco; and that the population was so small, that so many as twenty-five persons could never be seen out of doors at one time. There now lie before us two prints; one of San Francisco, taken in November, 1848, soon after the discovery was made, and another exactly a year afterwards. In the first, we are able to count twenty-six huts and other dwellings dotted about at uneven distances, and four small ships in the harbour. In the second, the habitations are countless. The hollow, upon which the city partly stands, presents a bird’s-eye view of roofs, packed so closely together, that the houses they cover are innumerable; while the sides of the surrounding hills are thickly strewed with tents and temporary dwellings. On every side are buildings of all kinds, begun or half-finished, but the greater part of them mere canvas sheds, open in front, and displaying all sorts of signs, in all languages. Great quantities of goods are piled up in the open air, for want of a place to store them. The streets are full of people, hurrying to and fro, and of as diverse and bizarre a character as the houses: Yankees of every possible variety, native Californians in _sarapes_ and sombreros, Chilians, Sonorians, Kanakas from Hawaii, Chinese with long tails, Malays and others in whose embrowned and bearded visages it is impossible to recognise any especial nationality. In the midst is the plaza, now dignified by the name of Portsmouth Square. It lies on the slope of the hill; and, from a high pole in front of a long one-story adobe building used as the Custom House, the American flag is flying. On the lower side is the Parker House Hotel. The Bay of San Francisco is black with the hulls of ships, and a thick forest of masts intercepts the landscapes of the opposite coast and the islet of Yerba Buena. Flags of all nations flutter in the breeze, and the smoke of three steamers is borne away on its wings in dense wreaths.—The first picture is one of stagnation and poverty, the other presents activity and wealth in glowing colours.

“Verily,” says the correspondent of a Boston Paper, “the place was in itself a marvel. To say that it was daily enlarged by from twenty to thirty houses may not sound very remarkable after all the stories that have been told; yet this, for a country which imported both lumber and houses, and where labour was then ten dollars a day, is an extraordinary growth. The rapidity with which a ready-made house is put up and inhabited, strikes the stranger in San Francisco as little short of magic. He walks over an open lot in his before-breakfast stroll—the next morning, a house complete, with a family inside, blocks up his way. He goes down to the bay and looks out on the shipping—two or three days afterward a row of storehouses, staring him in the face, intercepts the view.”

An intelligent traveller from the United States, has recorded his impressions of this marvellous spot, as he saw it in August, 1849:—

“The restless, feverish tide of life in that little spot, and the thought that what I then saw and was yet to see will hereafter fill one of the most marvellous pages of all history, rendered it singularly impressive. The feeling was not decreased on talking that evening with some of the old residents, (that is of six months’ standing,) and hearing their several experiences. Every new comer in San Francisco is overtaken with a sense of complete bewilderment. The mind, however it may be prepared for an astonishing condition of affairs, cannot immediately push aside its old instincts of value and ideas of business, letting all past experiences go for nought and casting all its faculties for action, intercourse with its fellows, or advancement in any path of ambition, into shapes which it never before imagined. As in the turn of the dissolving views, there is a period when it wears neither the old nor the new phase, but the vanishing images of the one and the growing perceptions of the other are blended in painful and misty confusion. One knows not whether he is awake or in some wonderful dream. Never have I had so much difficulty in establishing, satisfactorily to my own senses, the reality of what I saw and heard.”[1]

Footnote 1:

“Eldorado,” by Bayard Taylor, correspondent to the “Tribune” newspaper.

The same gentleman, after an absence in the interior of four months, gives a notion of the rapidity with which the city grew, in the following terms:—

“Of all the marvellous phases of the history of the Present, the growth of San Francisco is the one which will most tax the belief of the Future. Its parallel was never known, and shall never be beheld again. I speak only of what I saw with my own eyes. When I landed there, a little more than four months before, I found a scattering town of tents and canvas houses, with a show of frame buildings on one or two streets, and a population of about six thousand. Now, on my last visit, I saw around me an actual metropolis, displaying street after street of well-built edifices, filled with an active and enterprising people and exhibiting every mark of permanent commercial prosperity. Then, the town was limited to the curve of the Bay fronting the anchorage and bottoms of the hills. Now, it stretched to the topmost heights, followed the shore around point after point, and sending back a long arm through a gap in the hills, took hold of the Golden Gate and was building its warehouses on the open strait and almost fronting the blue horizon of the Pacific. Then the gold-seeking sojourner lodged in muslin rooms and canvas garrets, with a philosophic lack of furniture, and ate his simple though substantial fare from pine boards. Now, lofty hotels, gaudy with verandas and balconies, were met with in all quarters, furnished with home luxury, and aristocratic restaurants presented daily their long bills of fare, rich with the choicest technicalities of the Parisian cuisine. Then, vessels were coming in day after day, to lie deserted and useless at their anchorage. Now scarce a day passed, but some cluster of sails, bound _outward_ through the Golden Gate, took their way to all the corners of the Pacific. Like the magic seed of the Indian juggler, which grew, blossomed, and bore fruit before the eyes of his spectators, San Francisco seemed to have accomplished in a day the growth of half a century.”

In San Francisco, everything is reversed. The operations of trade are exactly opposite to those of older communities. There the rule is scarcity of money and abundance of labour, produce, and manufactures; here cash overflows out of every pocket, and the necessaries of existence will not pour in fast enough. Mr. Taylor tells us, that “a curious result of the extraordinary abundance of gold and the facility with which fortunes were acquired, struck me at the first glance. All business was transacted on so extensive a scale that the ordinary habits of solicitation and compliance on the one hand, and stubborn cheapening on the other, seemed to be entirely forgotten. You enter a shop to buy something; the owner eyes you with perfect indifference, waiting for you to state your want: if you object to the price, you are at liberty to leave, for you need not expect to get it cheaper; he evidently cares little whether you buy it or not. One who has been some time in the country will lay down the money, without wasting words. The only exception I found to this rule was that of a sharp-faced Down-Easter just opening his stock, who was much distressed when his clerk charged me seventy-five cents for a coil of rope, instead of one dollar. This disregard for all the petty arts of money-making was really a refreshing feature of society. Another equally agreeable trait was the punctuality with which debts were paid, and the general confidence which men were obliged to place, perforce, in each other’s honesty. Perhaps this latter fact was owing, in part, to the impossibility of protecting wealth, and consequent dependence on an honourable regard for the rights of others.”

While this gentleman was in San Francisco, an instance of the fairy-like manner in which fortunes are accumulated, came under his observation. A citizen of San Francisco died insolvent to the amount of forty-one thousand dollars the previous autumn. His administrators were delayed in settling his affairs, and his real estate advanced so rapidly in value meantime, that after his debts were paid, his heirs derived a yearly income from it of forty thousand dollars!

The fable of a city paved with gold is realised in San Francisco. Mr. Taylor reports:—“Walking through the town, I was quite amazed to find a dozen persons busily employed in the street before the United States Hotel, digging up the earth with knives and crumbling it in their hands. They were actual gold-hunters, who obtained in this way about five dollars a day. After blowing the fine dirt carefully in their hands, a few specks of gold were left, which they placed in a piece of white paper. A number of children were engaged in the same business, picking out the fine grains by applying to them the head of a pin, moistened in their mouths. I was told of a small boy having taken home fourteen dollars as the result of one day’s labour. On climbing the hill to the Post Office I observed in places, where the wind had swept away the sand, several glittering dots of the real metal, but, like the Irishman who kicked the dollar out of his way, concluded to wait till I should reach the heap. The presence of gold in the streets was probably occasioned by the leakings from the miners’ bags and the sweepings of stores; though it may also be, to a slight extent, native in the earth, particles having been found in the clay thrown up from a deep well.”

The prices paid for labour were at that time equally _romantic_. The carman of one firm (Messrs. Mellus, Howard, and Co.) drew a salary of twelve hundred a year; and it was no uncommon thing for such persons to be paid from fifteen to twenty dollars, or between three and four pounds sterling per day. Servants were paid from forty to eighty pounds per month. Since this time (August, 1849), however, wages had fallen; the labourers for the rougher kinds of work could—poor fellows—get no more than something above the pay of a Lieutenant-Colonel in the British army, or about four hundred per annum. The scarcity of labour is best illustrated by the cost of washing, which was one pound twelve shillings per dozen. It was therefore found cheaper to put out washing to the antipodes; and to this day, San Francisco shirts are washed and “got up” in China and the Sandwich Islands. So many hundred dozens of dirty, and so many hundred dozens of washed linen form the part of every outward and inward cargo to and from the Golden City.

The profits upon merchandise about the time we are writing of, may be judged of by one little transaction recorded by Mr. Taylor:—“Many passengers,” he writes, “began speculation at the moment of landing. The most ingenious and successful operation was made by a gentleman of New York, who took out fifteen hundred copies of ‘The Tribune’ and other papers, which he disposed of in two hours, at one dollar a-piece! Hearing of this I bethought me of about a dozen papers which I had used to fill up crevices in packing my valise. There was a newspaper merchant at the corner of the City Hotel, and to him I proposed the sale of them, asking him to name a price. ‘I shall want to make a good profit on the retail price,’ said he, ‘and can’t give more than ten dollars for the lot.’ I was satisfied with the wholesale price, which was a gain of just four thousand per cent.”

The prices of food are enormous, and, unhappily, so are the appetites; “for two months after my arrival,” says a respectable authority, “my sensations were like those of a famished wolf;” yet the first glance at the tariff of a San Francisco bill of fare is calculated to turn the keenest European stomach. “Where shall we dine to-day?” asked Mr. Taylor, during his visit. “The restaurants display their signs invitingly on all sides; we have choice of the United States, Tortoni’s, the Alhambra, and many other equally classic resorts, but Delmonico’s, like its distinguished original in New York, has the highest prices and the greatest variety of dishes. We go down Kearney Street to a two-story wooden house on the corner of Jackson. The lower story is a market; the walls are garnished with quarters of beef and mutton; a huge pile of Sandwich Island squashes fills one corner, and several cabbage-heads, valued at two dollars each, show themselves in the window. We enter a little door at the end of the building, ascend a dark, narrow flight of steps and find ourselves in a long, low room, with ceiling and walls of white muslin and a floor covered with oil-cloth. There are about twenty tables disposed in two rows, all of them so well filled that we have some difficulty in finding places. Taking up the written bill of fare, we find such items as the following:—

SOUPS. Dol. Cents. Mock Turtle 0 75 St. Julien 1 00

FISH. Boiled Salmon Trout, Anchovy Sauce 1 75

BOILED. Leg of Mutton, Caper Sauce 1 00 Corned Beef, Cabbage 1 00 Ham and Tongues 0 75

ENTRÉES. Fillet of Beef, Mushroom sauce 1 75 Veal Cutlets, breaded 1 00 Mutton Chop 1 00 Lobster Salad 2 00 Sirloin of Venison 1 50 Baked Maccaroni 0 75 Beef Tongue, Sauce piquante 1 00

So that, with but a moderate appetite, the dinner will cost us five dollars, if we are at all epicurean in our tastes. There are cries of ‘steward!’ from all parts of the room—the word ‘waiter’ is not considered sufficiently respectful, seeing that the waiter may have been a lawyer or a merchant’s clerk a few months before. The dishes look very small as they are placed on the table, but they are skilfully cooked and are very palatable to men that have ridden in from the diggings.”

Lodging was equally extravagant. A bedroom in an hotel, 50_l._ per month, and a sleeping berth or “bunk”—one of fifty in the same apartment—1_l._ 4_s._ per week. Social intercourse is almost unknown. There are no females, and men have no better resource than gambling, which is carried on to an extent, and with a desperate energy, hardly conceivable. “Gambling,” says a private correspondent, whose letter, dated April 20, 1850, now lies before us, “is carried on here with a bold and open front, so as to alarm and astonish one. Thousands and thousands change hands nightly. Go in, for instance, to a place called ‘Parker House,’ which is a splendid mansion, fitted up as well as any hotel in England; step into the front room, and you see five or six Monte, Roulette, and other gaming-tables, each having a bank of nearly half a bushel of gold and silver, piled up in the centre. That the excitement shall not be wholly devoid of diversion, the Muses lend their aid, and a band plays constantly to crowded rooms! Step into the next building, called ‘El Dorado,’ and there a similar scene is presented, and which is repeated, on a smaller scale, all over the town. The gamblers seem to control the town, but of course their days must be numbered. Fortunes are made or lost daily. People gamble with a freedom and recklessness which you can never dream of. Young men who come here must at all times resist gaming, or it must eventually end in their ruin: the same with drinking, as there is much of it here.”

The variety of habits, manners, tastes, and prejudices, occasioned by the confluence in one spot of almost every variety of the human species, is another bar to a speedy deposit of all these floating and opposite elements into a compact and well assimilated community. “Here,” writes the same gentleman, “we see the character and habits of the English, Irish, Scotch, German, Pole, French, Spaniard, and almost every other nation of Europe. Then you have the South American, the Australian, the Chilian; and finally, the force of this golden mania has dissolved the chain that has hitherto bound China in national solitude, and she has now come forth, like an anchorite from his cell, to join this varied mass of golden speculators. Here we see in miniature just what is done in the large cities of other countries; we have some of our luxuries from the United States and the tropics, butter from Oregon, and for the most part California, Upper or Lower, furnishes us with our beef, &c. The streets are all bustle, as you may imagine, in a place now of nearly thirty thousand inhabitants, independent of a small world of floating population.”

Not the smallest wonder, however, presented in this region, is the rapid manner in which social order was shaped out of the human chaos. When a new placer or “gulch” was discovered, the first thing done was to elect officers and extend the area of order. The result was, that in a district five hundred miles long, and inhabited by one hundred thousand people—who had neither government, regular laws, rules, military or civil protection, nor even locks or bolts, and a great part of whom possessed wealth enough to tempt the vicious and depraved,—there was as much security to life and property as in any part of the Union, and as small a proportion of crime. The capacity of a people for self-government was never so triumphantly illustrated. Never, perhaps, was there a community formed of more unpropitious elements; yet from all this seeming chaos grew a harmony beyond what the most sanguine apostle of Progress could have expected. Indeed, there is nothing more remarkable connected with the capital of El Dorado, than the centre point it has become.

The story of Cadmus, who sowed dragons’ teeth, and harvested armed men, who became the builders of cities; the confusion of tongues at the Tower of Babel; and the beautiful allegory of the lion lying down with the lamb; are all types of San Francisco. The first, of its sudden rise; the second, of the varieties of the genus Man it has congregated; and the third, of the extremes of those varieties, which range from the Polynesian savage to the most civilised individuals that Europe can produce. It is a coincidence well worthy of note, that, besides the intense attraction possessed from its gold, Upper or New California is of all other places the best adapted, from its geographical position, to become a rendezvous for all nations of the earth, and that the Bay of San Francisco is one of the best and most convenient for shipping throughout the western margin of the American continent. It is precisely the locality required to make a constant communication across the Pacific Ocean with the coasts of China, Japan, and the Eastern Archipelago commercially practicable. Its situation is that which would have been selected from choice for a concentration of delegates from the uttermost ends of the earth. If the Chinese, the Malay, the Ladrone, or the Sandwich Islander had wished to meet his Saxon or Celtic brother on a matter of mutual business, he would—deciding geographically—have selected California as the spot of assembly. The attractive powers of gold could not, therefore, have struck forth over the world from a better point than in and around San Francisco, both for the interests of commerce and for those of human intercourse.

The practical question respecting the Golden City remains yet to be touched. Does it offer wholesome inducements for emigration? On this subject we can do no more than quote the opinions of the intelligent and enterprising gentleman, to whose private letter we have already referred:—“This, I should say, is the best country in the world for an active, enterprising, steady young man, provided he can keep his health, as the climate, without due precaution, is not a healthy one. In the summer season, the weather is pleasantly warm from morning till noon, then it is windy till evening, and dusty, and then becomes so cold as to require an over-coat. This weather lasts to October, when the wind gets round to the south-west. It is dry, warm, and pleasant now (April). This and the rainy season are the pleasantest and warmest here. Thousands, on arriving, fall victims to the prevailing disease of dysentery. On the latter account, therefore, I should not advise, or be the indirect means of inducing, any one to make the adventure here, because it is impossible to foresee or calculate whether or not he can stand the climate and inconveniences of this country; and, if so, he is sure to be exposed to a miserable and too often neglected sickness, and ending in a miserable death. I have not been ill myself so far, as my general health has been extremely good, and I never looked so well as now. The climate seems to operate injuriously on bilious habits; but to those who can stand it, it is decidedly pleasanter than England. Fires are never necessary. Out of doors, at night, a great-coat is required, but in the house it is always warm. The whole and only question, with a man making up his mind to locate in California, should be in regard to his health. Business of all descriptions is better here than in any other part of the world, and he who perseveres is sure to succeed.