Chapter 7

On Sunday morning, the 19th of May, chancing be under the weather, and consequently at home sitting by a window, I saw people flocking past the house and hastening toward the jail. We were then living on Broadway, below Montgomery Street; the jail was on Broadway, a square or two farther up the street; between us was a shoulder of Telegraph Hill not yet cut away, though it had been blasted out of shape and an attempt had been made to tunnel it. The young Californian of that day was keen-scented and lost no opportunity of seeing whatever was to be seen. Forgetting my distemper, I grabbed my cap and joined the expectant throngs. We went over the heights of the hill like a flock of goats: we were used to climbing. On the other edge of the cliff, where we seemed almost to overhang the jail and the street in front of it, we paused and caught our breath. What a sight it was! It seems that on Saturday twenty-four companies of Vigilantis were ordered to meet at their respective armories, in various parts of the city, at nine o'clock on Sunday morning. Orders were given to each captain to take up a certain position near the jail. The jail was surrounded: no one could approach it, no one escape from it, without leave of the commanders of the committee.

The streets glistened with bayonets. It was as if the city were in a state of siege; so indeed it was. The companies marched silently, ominously, without music or murmur, to their respective stations. Citizens--non-combatants but all sympathizers--flocked in and covered the housetops and the heights in the vicinity. A hollow square was formed before the jail; an artillery company with a huge brass cannon halted near it; the cannon was placed directly in front of the jail and trained upon the gates. I remember how impressive the scene was: the grim files of infantry; the gleaming brass of the cannon; one closed carriage within the hollow square; the awful stillness that brooded over all.

Two Vigilance officials went to the door of the jail and informed Sheriff Scannell that they had come to take Casey with them. Resistance was now useless; the door of the jail was thrown open to them and they entered. At their approach Casey begged leave to speak for ten minutes in his own defense,--he evidently expected to be executed on the instant. He was assured that he should have a fair trial, and that his testimony should be deliberately weighed in the balance. This act of an outraged and disgusted people was one of the calmest, coolest, wisest, most deliberate on record. Law, order, and justice were at bay. Casey, under guard, walked quietly to the carriage and entered it. In the jail at the time was Charles Cora, a man who had murdered United States Marshal Richardson. He had been tried once; but then the jury disagreed--as they nearly always agreed to in those barbarous days. Hanging was almost out of the question. Cora was invited to enter the carriage with Casey, and the two were driven under military escort to Fort Gunny Bags.

On the day following, Monday, James King of William died. On Tuesday Casey was tried by the executive committee. John S. Hittell, the historian of San Francisco, says:

"No person was present at the trial save the accused, the members of the Vigilance Committee, and witnesses. The testimony was given under oath, though there was no lawful authority for its administration. Hearsay testimony was excluded; the general rules of evidence observed in the courts were adopted: the accused heard all the witnesses, cross-examined those against him, summoned such as he wanted in his favor, had an attorney to assist him, and was permitted to make an argument by himself or his attorney, in his own defence."

Casey and Cora were both convicted: their guilt was beyond the shadow of a doubt.

On Wednesday James King of William was laid to rest at Lone Mountain. The whole city was draped in mourning; all business was suspended; the citizens lined the streets through which the feral cortége proceeded, or followed it until it seemed interminable.

As that procession passed up Montgomery Street and crossed Sacramento Street, those who were walking or driving in it looked down the latter street and saw, two squares below, the lifeless bodies of James P. Casey and Charles Cora dangling by the neck from two second-story windows of the headquarters of the Vigilance Committee. Justice was enthroned at last.

"The Vigilance Committees of San Francisco in 1851 and 1856," as Hittell says, "were in many important respects unlike any other extra-judicial movement to administer justice. They were not common mobs: they were organized for weeks or months of labor, deliberate in their movements, careful to keep records of their proceedings, strictly attentive to the rules of evidence and the penalties for crime accepted by civilized nations; confident of their power, and of their justification by public opinion; and not afraid of taking the public responsibility of their acts."

The committee of 1856 was never formally dissolved. The reformation it had accomplished rendered it inactive. Some of the worst criminals in California had been officials. A thousand homicides had been committed in the city between 1849 and 1856, and there were but seven executions in seven years.

Richard Henry Dana, Jr., the author of "Two Years before the Mast," who spent the greater portion of two years--1834-35--on the coast of California, and who revisited the Pacific coast in 1859, observes:

"And now the most quiet and well-governed city in the United States is San Francisco. But it has been through its seasons of heaven-defying crime and violence and blood; from which it was rescued and handed back to soberness and morality and good government by that peculiar invention of Anglo-Saxon republican America--the solemn, awe-inspiring Vigilance Committee of the most grave and respectable citizens; the last resort of the thinking and the good, taken only when vice, fraud, and ruffianism had entrenched themselves behind the forms of law, suffrage, and ballot."

San Francisco was undoubtedly the most disreputable city in the Union. It is now one of the most reputable. As I think of it to-day there is no shudder in the thought. And yet I saw James King of William shot; I saw Casey and Cora transferred from the jail to the headquarters of the Vigilance Committee; and I saw them hanging as the body of James King of William was being borne by a whole city, bowed in grief, to his last resting-place. And my venerated father was a member of that never-to-be-forgotten Vigilance Committee of San Francisco in the year of Our Lord eighteen hundred and fifty-six.

XII.

THE SURVIVOR'S STORY

It is not much of a story. It is only the mild adventure of a boy at sea; and of a small, sad boy at that. This boy had an elder brother who was ill; and the physicians in consultation had decided that a long sea-voyage was his only hope, and that even in this case the hope was a very faint one.

There was a ship at anchor in the harbor of San Francisco,--a very famous clipper, one of those sailors of the sea known as Ocean Greyhounds. She was built for speed, and her record was a brilliant one; under the guidance of her daring captain, she had again and again proved herself worthy of her name. She was called the _Flying Cloud_. Her cabins were luxuriously furnished; for in those days seafarers were oftener blown about the world by the four winds of heaven than propelled by steam. Yet when the _Flying Cloud_, one January day, tripped anchor and set sail, there were but three strangers on the quarter-deck--a middle-aged gentleman in search of health, the invalid brother, in his eighteenth year, and the small, sad boy.

The captain's wife, a lady of Salem who had followed him from sea to sea for many a year, was the joy and salvation of that forlorn little company. How forlorn it was only the survivor knows, and he knows well enough. Forty years have scarcely dimmed the memory of it. Through all the wear and tear of time the remembrance of that voyage has at intervals haunted him: the length of it, the weariness of it, and the almost unbroken monotony stretching through the ninety odd days that dawned and darkened between San Francisco and New York; the solitary sail that was blown on and on, and becalmed and buffeted between the blue waste of waters and the blue waste of sky; the lonesomeness of it all--no land, no lights flashing across the sea in glad assurance; no passing ships to hail us with faint-voiced "Ahoy!"--only the ever-tossing waves, the trailing sea-gardens, the tireless birds of the air and the monsters of the deep.

Ah, well-a-day! There was a solemn and hushed circle listening to family prayers that morning,--the morning of the 4th of January. The father's voice trembled as he opened the Bible and read from that beautiful psalm:

"They that go down to the sea in ships, that do business in great waters, these see the works of the Lord and His wonders in the deep. For He commandeth and raiseth the stormy wind, which lifteth up the waves thereof. They mount up to the heaven; they go down again to the depths; their soul is melted because of trouble. They reel to and fro and stagger like a drunken man, and are at their wit's end. Then they cry unto the Lord in their trouble, and He bringeth them out of their distresses. He maketh the storm a calm, so that the waves thereof are still. Then are they glad because they be quiet; so He bringeth them unto their desired haven. Oh, that men would praise the Lord for His goodness and for His wonderful works to the children of men!"

The small, sad boy looked smaller and sadder than ever as he stood on the deck of the _Flying Cloud_ and waved his last farewell. He tried his best to be manly and to swallow the heart that was leaping in his throat, and at the earliest possible moment he flew to his journal and made his first entry there. He was going to keep a journal because his brother kept one, and because it was the proper thing to keep a journal at sea--no ship is complete without its log, you know; and, moreover, I think it was a custom in that family to keep a journal; for it was, more or less, a journalistic family.

Now we are nearing the anniversary of that boy's journal: it runs through January, February and March; it is more than forty years old this minute. And because it is a boy's journal, and the boy was small and sad, I'm going to peep into it and fish out a line or two. With an effort he made this entry:

"CLIPPER SHIP, FLYING CLOUD, "January 4, 1857.

"I watched them till we were out of sight of them, and then began to look about to see what I could see. It begins to get rough. I tried to see home, but I could not. The pilot says he will take a letter ashore for us. Now I will go to bed."

Then he cried unto the Lord in his trouble with a heart as heavy as lead.

"JAN. 5.--The day rather rough, with little squalls of rain. We are passing the Farallone Islands, but I feel too bad to sketch them. I get homesick when I think of the dear ones I left behind me. I hope I may see them all in this world again."

That was the gray beginning of a voyage that had very little color in it. The coast-line sank apace; the gray rocks--the Farallones, the haunt of the crying gull--dissolved in the gray mist. The hours were all alike: all dismal and slow-footed.

"I don't feel very well to-day," said the small, sad boy, quite plaintively. On the 6th he brightens and begins to take notice. History would have less to fasten on were there not some such entries as this:

"A list of our live-stock: 17 pigs; 12 dozen hens and roosters; 3 turkeys; 1 gobbler; a cockatoo and a wild-cat. We have a fair breeze, and carry 26 sails.

"JAN. 7.--The day is calm. I began to read 'Uncle Tom's Cabin.' I like it. The captain's wife was going to train the wild-cat when it bit her--but not very hard.

"8.--There was not much wind to-day. We fished for sea-gulls and caught four. I caught one and let it go again. Two hens flew overboard. The sailors in a boat got one of them; the gulls killed one.

"9.--The day has been rather gloomy. I caught another sea-gull but let him go again. On deck nearly all day.

"10.--The cockatoo sits on deck and talks and talks.

"11.--It makes me feel bad when I think of home. I want to be there."

The long, long weary days dragged on. It is thought worth while to note that there were fresh eggs for breakfast, fresh pork for dinner, fresh chicken for supper; that a porpoise had been captured, and that his carcass yielded "three gallons of oil as good as sperm oil"; that no ship had been seen--"no sail from day to day"; that they were in the latitude of Panama; that it was squally or not squally, as the case might be; that on one occasion they captured "four barrels of oil," the flotsam of some ill-fated whaler, and that it all proved "very exciting"; that a dolphin was captured, and that he died in splendor, passing through the whole gamut of the rainbow--that the words of tradition might be fulfilled; that the hens had suffered no sea-change, but had contributed from a dozen to two dozen eggs per day. Still stretched the immeasurable waste of waters to the horizon line on every hand. Day by day the small boy made his entries; but he seemed to be running down, like a clock, and needed winding up. This is how his record dwindled:

"JAN. 20.--The day is very pleasant, with some wind. We crossed the equator. I sat up in one of the boats a long time. I wish my little brothers were here to play with me.

"21.--The day is very pleasant, with a good breeze. We are going ten or eleven knots an hour.

"22.--The day is very pleasant. A nine-knot breeze. Nothing new happened to-day.

"23.--The day is pleasant. Six-knot breeze."

It came to pass that the small, sad boy, wearying of "Uncle Tom" and his "cabin," was driven to extremes; and, having obtained leave of the captain--who was autocrat of all his part of the world,--he climbed into one of the ship's boats, as it hung in the davits over the side of the vessel. It was an airy voyage he took there, sailing between sea and sky, soaring up and down with the rolling vessel, like a bird upon the wing.

He rigged a tiny mast there--it was a walking-stick that ably served this purpose; the captain's wife provided sails no larger than handkerchiefs. With thread-like ropes and pencil spars he set his sails for dreamland. One day the wind bothered him; he could not trim his canvas, and in desperation he set it dead against the wind, and then the sails were filled almost to bursting. But his navigation was at fault; for he was heading in a direction quite opposite to the _Flying Cloud_.

Then came a facetious sailor and whispered to him: "Do you want ever to get to New York?"--"Yes, I do," said the little captain of the midair craft.--"Well, then, you'd better haul in sail; for you're set dead agin us now." The sails were struck on the instant and never unfurled again.

I wonder why some people are so very inconsiderate when they speak to children, especially to simple or sensitive children? The small, sad boy took it greatly to heart, and was cast down because he feared that he might have delayed the bark that bore him all too slowly toward the far-distant port. This was indeed simplicity of the deepest dye, and something of that simplicity the boy was never to escape unto the end of time. We are as God made us, and we must in all cases put up with ourselves.

What a lonely voyage was that across the vast and vacant sea! Now and then a distant sail glimmered upon the horizon, but disappeared like a vanishing snowflake. The equator was crossed; the air grew colder; storm and calm followed each other; the daily entry now becomes monotonous.

"FEBRUARY 2.--To-day for the first time we saw an albatross.

"7.--Rather rough and cold; I have spent all day in the cabin. It makes me homesick to have such weather.

"14.--I rose at five o'clock and went on deck, and before long saw land. It was Terra del Fuego; it was a beautiful sight. Here lay a pretty island, there a towering precipice, and over yonder a mountain covered with snow. We made the fatal Cape Horn at two o'clock, and passed it at four o'clock. Now we are in the Atlantic Ocean.

"WASHINGTON'S BIRTHDAY.--Rough weather: a sixteen-knot breeze. To-day we got our one thousandth egg, and the hens are doing well. At twelve--eight bells--we saw a sail on our weather-bow: she was going the same way as we were. At two, we overtook and spoke her. She was the whaler _Scotland_ from New Zealand, bound for New Bedford, with thirty-five hundred barrels of oil. We soon passed her. I wish her good luck."

I will no longer stretch the small, sad boy upon the rack of his dull journal. He had a glimpse at Juan Fernandez, but the island of his dreams was so far off that he had to climb to the maintop in order to get a sight of its shadowy outline. When it had faded away like the clouds, the lonely little fellow cried himself to sleep for love of his Robinson Crusoe.

One night the moon--a large, mellow tropical one,--rose from a bank of cloud so like a mountain's chain that the small one clapped his hands in glee and cried: "Land ho!" But, alas! it was only cloud-land; and his eyes, that were starving for a sight of God's green earth, were again bedewed. Indeed he was bound for a distant shore, a voyage of ninety-one days; and during all that voyage he was in sight of land for five days only. It may be said that the port he was bound for, and where he was destined to pass two years at school, four thousand miles from his own people, may be called "The Vale of Tears."

Off the Brazilian coast a head-wind forced the ship to tack repeatedly; she was sometimes so near the land that people could be seen moving, like black dots, along the shore. Native fishermen, mounted upon the high seats of their catamarans--the frailest rafts,--drifted within hailing distance; and over night the brave ship was within almost speaking distance of Pernambuco. The lights of the city were like a bed of glowworms,--but the small, sad boy was blown off into the sea again, for his hour had not yet come.

Here is the last entry I shall weary you with, for I would not abuse your patience:

"APRIL 5, 1857.--I was _awoke_ this morning by the noise the pilot made in getting on board. At ten o'clock the steam-tug Hercules took us in tow. We had beautiful views of the shore [God knows how beautiful they were in his eyes!], and at three o'clock we were at the Astor House, with Captain and Mrs. Cresey, Mr. Connor, and the Stoddard boys--all of the _Flying Cloud_,--where we retired to soft beds to spend the night."

There is a plaintive touch in that reference to _soft beds_ after three months in the straight and narrow bunk of a ship. And there is more pathos in all those childish pages than you wot of; for, alas and alas! I am the sole survivor,--I was that small, sad boy; and I alone am left to tell the tale.

A BIT OF OLD CHINA

"It is but a step from Confucius to confusion," said I, in a brief discussion of the Chinese question. "Then let us take it by all means," replied the artist, who had been an indulgent listener for at least ten minutes. We were strolling upon the verge of the Chinese Quarter in San Francisco, and, turning aside from one of the chief thoroughfares of the city, we plunged into the busiest portion of Chinatown. From our standpoint--the corner of Kearny and Sacramento Streets--we got the most favorable view of our Mongolian neighbors. Here is a goodly number of merchant gentlemen of wealth and station, comfortably, if not elegantly, housed on two sides of a street that climbs a low hill quite in the manner of a tea-box landscape.

A few of these gentlemen lodge on the upper floors of their business houses, with Chinese wives, and quaint, old-fashioned children gaudily dressed, looking like little idols, chatting glibly with one another, and gracefully gesticulating with hands of exquisite slenderness. Confucius, in his infancy, may have been like one of the least of these. There are white draymen and porters in the employ of these shrewd and civil merchants, and the outward appearance of traffic, as conducted in the immediate vicinity, is rather American than otherwise.

Farther up the hill, on Dupont Street, from California to Pacific Streets, the five blocks are almost monopolized by the Chinese. There is, at first, a sprinkling of small shops in the hands of Jews and Gentiles, and a mingling of Chinese bazaars of the half-caste type, where American and English goods are exposed in the show windows; but as we pass on the Asiatic element increases, and finally every trace of alien produce is withdrawn from the shelves and counters.

Here little China flaunts her scarlet streamers overhead, and flanks her doors with legends in saffron and gold; even its window panes have a foreign look, and within is a glimmering of tinsel, a subdued light, and china lamps flickering before graven images of barbaric hideousness. The air is laden with the fumes of smoking sandal-wood and strange odors of the East; and the streets, swarming with coolies, resound with the echoes of an unknown tongue. There is hardly room for us to pass; we pick our way, and are sometimes curiously regarded by slant-eyed pagans, who bear us no good-will, if that shadow of scorn in the face has been rightly interpreted. China is not more Chinese than this section of our Christian city, nor the heart of Tartary less American.

Turn which way we choose, within two blocks, on either hand we find nothing but the infinitely small and astonishingly numerous forms of traffic on which the hordes around us thrive. No corner is too cramped for the squatting street cobbler; and as for the pipe cleaners, the cigarette rollers, the venders of sweetmeats and conserves, they gather on the curb or crouch under overhanging windows, and await custom with the philosophical resignation of the Oriental.

On Dupont Street, between Clay and Sacramento Streets--a single block,--there are no less than five basement apartments devoted exclusively to barbers. There are hosts of this profession in the quarter. Look down the steep steps leading into the basement and see, at any hour of the day, with what deft fingers the tonsorial operators manipulate the devoted pagan head.

There is no waste space in the quarter. In apartments not more than fifteen feet square three or four different professions are often represented, and these afford employment to ten or a dozen men. Here is a druggist and herb-seller, with huge spectacles on his nose, at the left of the main entrance; a butcher displays his meats in a show-window on the right, serving his customers over the sill; a clothier is in the rear of the shop, while a balcony filled with tailors or cigar-makers hangs half-way to the ceiling.

Close about us there are over one hundred and fifty mercantile establishments and numerous mechanical industries. The seventy-five cigar factories employ eight thousand coolies, and these are huddled into the closest quarters. In a single room, measuring twenty feet by thirty feet, sixty men and boys have been discovered industriously rolling _real_ Havanas.

The traffic which itinerant fish and vegetable venders drive in every part of the city must be great, being as it is an extreme convenience for lazy or thrifty housewives. A few of these basket men cultivate gardens in the suburbs, but the majority seek their supplies in the city markets. Wash-houses have been established in every part of the city, and are supplied with two sets of laborers, who spend watch and watch on duty, so that the establishment is never closed.