Part 9

It is well to make all one’s plans in advance, so as to be able to reserve a good return seat on the stage as soon as you arrive at the Stoneman. The stage leaves early in the morning, and returns as far as the Wawona Hotel, where we arrive in time for lunch. After lunch uncovered stages drive up to the hotel, and everybody gets aboard for a visit to the Big Trees in the Mariposa Grove. The round trip covers seventeen miles only, thus leaving plenty of time to see the arboreal giants at leisure. The road takes us more deeply into the virgin forest than we have penetrated yet, and there are many superb trees which attract the attention long before the Mariposa Grove is reached. Some of the passengers begin to comment on a few big sugar pines, and even express a desire to stop and measure them; but the driver scornfully refuses to waste any time on such pigmies. So on and up we go, and at last come to a few scattered specimens which the driver admits belong to the real Big Tree family; but he does not stop till we reach the world-renowned Grizzly Giant, the thickest, though not the highest, of all the Sequoias. With the exception of some specimens of the African Baobab, this is the thickest tree in the world, so far as known, though by no means the highest. In one of the other nine Big Tree groves found in California (and only in California)—the Calaveras—there is a tree fifty-three feet higher than any one in the Mariposa Grove, and Professor Whitney refers to an Australian eucalyptus four hundred and eighty feet in height, overtopping the tallest Sequoia by one hundred and fifty-five feet. But for height and thickness combined, the Sequoia excels all other trees; and as the Mariposa Grove contains the thickest trees, it is the most impressive of all, since in the height of a three-hundred foot tree a difference of ten or twenty feet is hardly noticeable, while in the circumference every foot tells.

Ten of our party clasped hands to encircle the Grizzly Giant, but the endmen could not begin to even see each other on the other side. I walked around it and counted fifty-three steps. The exact, measurement is ninety-three feet seven inches, without allowing for that portion of the bark which has been destroyed by fire. The best idea of its enormous girth is conveyed by one of Taber’s excellent photographs, in which a horse stands alongside of the tree, at full length, while a dozen men are scattered at intervals along the bark, without nearly filling up so much of the tree as is included in the view. Though blackened and cruelly hollowed out by fire, the Grizzly Giant is still alive, but its upper part is as dilapidated and time-worn as the lower; and no wonder, for it must have first stuck its roots into Sierra soil perhaps three or four centuries after the advent of Christ, by the most conservative estimate. The lowest branch of this tree is fully six feet in diameter—large enough to set up as a Big Tree by itself,—“as large as the trunks of the largest elms of the Connecticut valley.”

Most of the tourists cut off little slices of the bark, which in this case is hardly a reprehensible practice, for it would take decades of such petty vandalism to make any impression on this monster. Yet there are other mementos that might as well be taken, such as the mosses clinging to it and the cones found under it. These cones are surprisingly small,—only about two inches in length,—especially when compared with other cones found in this region and offered for sale at the hotels, put up in wooden frames and covered with moss—some of them a foot and a half or more in length. But the Grizzly Giant must not detain us too long; for there are several hundred more Sequoias to be seen, and, as a punster suggested, a Big-treatise might be written on the Mariposa Grove alone.

As we pass from the Lower to the Upper Grove, these trees become more and more numerous among the pines and firs, until at last we come to a genuine grove of _Sequoia giganteas_,—a real forest cathedral. There is a flutter of excitement as we approach the Tunnel Tree, or Wawona (which is Indian for big tree), through which the stage drives as it stands, with horses, passengers, and all. The diameter of this tree at the ground is twenty-seven feet, or three feet less than the Grizzly Giant; the “tunnel” by which we go through it is ten feet high and from six to ten feet wide. Just as we drive into it, a poetic youth exclaims to his fair companion, “Now look out for spiders!” and others of the same class must have passed through before, for names are written on the inside, and even visiting-cards tacked on. The wood chopped out here was of course made into relics and sold years ago, yet paper knives and other things made of it are still to be had in the grove in quantities to suit.

At a little log cabin, occupied by the guardians of the grove, the stage stops again, and the venturesome climb up the prostrate trunk of a fallen monarch, on a rickety ladder. The upper part of the trunk is rotten, and resembles the hull of a wrecked ocean steamer. It once took five men three weeks to fell one of these giants; and even after the connection of the trunk with the stump had been severed, it took three days of wedge-driving before the tree could be made to fall. Imagine, therefore, the force of wind required to throw over such a tree, and the nerve of Andrew Jackson Smith, who once remained in the hollow of one of them, known as Smith’s Cabin (in the South Grove), during a Sierra storm which threw down “Old Goliath”!

The guardians of the grove have for sale packages of seeds of the Big Trees, though they frankly tell purchasers that not one in a hundred will grow. They have a nursery near the cabin, and often send young trees away. The _Sequoia gigantea_, although found nowhere except in the Sierra Nevada of California, grows readily elsewhere, and vast numbers have been planted in this country and abroad. The climate of England is said to be specially favorable to it, and from seeds planted there in 1853 have grown trees which are already over sixty feet in height and ten in girth. A thousand years hence England will have her Big Tree Groves, and they will be more beautiful than those of California, because better guarded against forest fires. But they will lack the majestic mountain surroundings.

It would almost seem as if the existence of these giant trees in the Sierra Nevada were intended by nature as a striking artistic contrast and compensation for the utter absence of forests in Southern California,—a contrast heightened by the numerous other fine species of evergreen trees, especially the famous redwood groves, which Professor Whitney has described so poetically. Outside of Ceylon and other tropical countries there is, perhaps, no region which has so fine and varied an assortment of valuable woods as the Yosemite neighborhood. No visitor should fail to see the admirable collection of ornamental objects prepared by J. Starke, some of them inlaid with several dozen kinds of Sierra woods, making a mosaic as elegant as mother-of-pearl. And I must once more refer to another thing in which the Yosemite region is unexcelled,—the flowers.

After seeing the unrivalled Valley, in which Nature, as in a final operatic chorus, has grouped in an overwhelming _ensemble_ all her motives—snow-peaks, domes, spires, precipices, lakes, rivers, and water-falls—all in the small compass of six or seven miles, the scenery on the way back to the San Joaquin Valley, fine as it is, and seemed on coming, cannot but have the effect of an anticlimax. Not so with the flowers, which have only gained in beauty, variety, and abundance during our week’s stay in the Valley. Once I got off the stage, while it was climbing a hill, and in the space of half a mile gathered twenty-two kinds, which excited many “ohs” and “ahs” from the other passengers. California poppy patches, nestling under trees, formed such indescribably lovely groups that sometimes every hand in the stage was pointed at them by a unanimous impulse. In some places the flowers stand so dense that a botanist, in measuring off a square yard, found over three thousand plants on it. Here a flower-painter might spend his life making perfect pictures which he need only copy from nature; and he could not fail of at least one of the attributes of genius,—he need never repeat himself.

VIII.

SAN FRANCISCO AND CHINATOWN.

MOUNTAINOUS CHARACTER OF THE PACIFIC COAST—THE HILLS OF SAN FRANCISCO—CABLE-CAR TOBOGGANING—THE GOLDEN GATE AND CLIFF HOUSE—SCENES IN THE CHINESE QUARTER—JOHN’S TABLE DELICACIES—LUNCH IN A CHINESE RESTAURANT—AN HONEST BOOKSELLER—CHINESE WOMEN—OPIUM DENS—BEHIND THE SCENES IN A CHINESE THEATRE—THE ASIATIC TRADE—CALIFORNIA HOTELS, RESTAURANTS, AND WINES—BERKELEY AND THE UNIVERSITY—THE CLIMATE OF SAN FRANCISCO.

A glance at a relief map of the United States shows a most striking contrast between the Atlantic and the Pacific slopes, especially within a few hundred miles of the coast. In the east, the mountains are few and low; whereas in the whole of California, Oregon, and Washington there is hardly a spot whence the view does not include a mountain range with a few snow-peaks. And this hilly structure characterizes also the three leading cities of the coast, and many of the smaller ones. Los Angeles, near one end, has recently built cable-cars to climb the hills which shut it in; Portland, near the other end, is beginning to build hers; and San Francisco, in the centre, has long had the most complete cable-car system in the world. Rome may have been built on seven hills, but San Francisco, as its inhabitants love to claim, is a city of a hundred hills. There is Californian exaggeration in this; for the greater part of the present city stands on about a dozen hills, with the intervening valleys and the level lots created by digging twenty million cubic yards of earth out of the hill-sides, and filling up the hollows; but beyond these there are scores of suburban hills, so to speak, waiting to be annexed; and when the city shall have grown to the size of London,—which, of course, is only a question of time,—it will probably cover a hundred hills: _q.e.d._

For purposes of drainage and other sanitary reasons, this hilly structure of the city is a decided advantage, and that it adds greatly to the picturesqueness of the impression which it makes on visitors is obvious. Approaching it at night on an Oakland or Saucelito ferry-boat, or viewing it from an elevated point, it does not present to the eye such a limitless area of countless lights as does New York seen from Union Hill, Hoboken; but the grouping of the lights is more fascinating, some of them leading in straight, double lines up the hills; while others are arranged in semicircles along the amphitheatric valleys. To get a bird’s-eye view of San Francisco in the daytime, one need not climb arduous towers, as in Eastern and European cities; but has only to take a front seat on a cable-car,—with an outlook unimpeded by driver or horses,—to see the city from half-a-dozen high hills, and as many different points of view. No city in the world can be seen so easily, so quickly, and so delightfully, as San Francisco, from these cable-cars, which, in the long run, make perhaps as good time as the New York elevated trains. It is a constant up and down, and the sensation of rapidly ascending a hill through rows of handsome residences and flower gardens, without having to pity the poor, puffing horses, is as agreeable as the sudden plunges downward, so fast, and often so precipitous, that by shutting the eyes one can easily imagine himself to be out tobogganing. The feeling is similar to that experienced at Mauch Chunk, Pennsylvania, on descending the hill for twenty minutes on a car whose only motor is gravitation.

The most enjoyable of the cable-car excursions is the one in the direction of the Golden Gate and Cliff House, connecting in the suburbs with a new steam-dummy road only completed a short time ago, and not yet mentioned in the guide-books. This excursion is really one of the finest in California, and should be missed by no tourist; for it gives him superb views of the city from several hills, and of the bay studded with pretty islands, and finally takes him to the very edge of the Golden Gate, where he can see the ships and steamers entering or departing for China, Japan, Australia, and every port of Europe and America. The road continuously skirts the shore, being dug or blasted out of the precipitous hill-sides; and directly below us are the Pacific breakers blindly dashing themselves into foam and spray on the rocks. The terminus is the Cliff House, with its “seal rocks,” densely inhabited by the sea-lions, which have been too often described to call for more than mention. There are countless seal rocks between San Diego and Sitka, but none so near a large city as these, which may be looked on as a free aquarium and an addition to the Golden Gate Park. They would have long since been depopulated were they not protected by law. The fishermen clamor for a repeal of this law, because the seals kill so many salmon bound for the Sacramento River at the other end of the bay; but the gain of a few hundred fishermen would be the loss of three hundred and fifty thousand San Franciscans. As well let the city fathers turn over the Golden Gate Park to the vegetable gardeners. It takes up many acres which might be planted with useful cabbages and onions,—enough to enrich quite a number of gardeners; for it is three miles long and half a mile wide, containing one hundred and fifty acres more than the Central Park in New York. Besides, it contains poison-oak, and is so “unimproved” in part, that only a few years ago a wildcat was killed in it. Therefore, down with the Park! let it be exterminated, together with the useless, harshly barking, salmon-eating seals!

No doubt more people have had their first glimpse of the illimitable Pacific at the Cliff House than from all other places on the Californian Coast; and it is a most delightful spot to spend a few hours, although at any time of the year a light overcoat is desirable. When we are ready to return we have the choice of several roads, none of which, however, is as attractive as the one we came on. So we once more connect with the cable-cars and have another five cents’ worth of tobogganing—without snow or danger of broken limbs. I should think that cable-car tobogganing parties ought to be among the most popular amusements in San Francisco. I am sure if I lived there I should ride to the Cliff House every day in the year. The return trip takes us through different streets from those we saw before, and on arriving at the corner of Jones and Washington Streets, a most magnificent prospect opens before us. We have risen to the crest of a hill, which seems to be the end of the world, when suddenly the whole city lies far down below us, and the car makes an almost perpendicular plunge a few hundred yards, as if determined to lose no time in getting there. You must hold on tightly, but there is no cause for alarm, as the frequent accidents on these roads do not happen in such places, but in the crowded streets below. Presently a still greater surprise awaits us. The car turns a corner, and without a moment’s warning we are in China, which we had imagined five thousand miles away. In other parts of the city we see an occasional Chinese laundry and a few Chinamen mingled with the throng of Americans; but here the proportions are more than reversed,—Chinese men, women, and children, Chinese shops and signs, Chinese conversation, and Chinese smells monopolize the attention.

San Francisco has more than twenty thousand Chinese, hence it may be imagined that Chinatown is not a village. Anti-Mongolians like to compare it to a cancer which is eating its way through the vitals of the city, constantly enlarging at the edges. Blocks upon blocks in some of the best streets are given over to the Asiatic invaders; and while the large buildings formerly occupied by Americans have been left standing, they have undergone such a thorough metamorphosis that if the Chinese should ever be driven from the city (as they were from Tacoma), the simplest way to Americanize these streets again, would be to blow them up with dynamite and rebuild them—which would also perhaps be the best way for sanitary reasons. But while the main buildings and streets have been left as originally laid out, a number of side streets and narrow alleys—exact copies of those in China—have been created to connect them, and fill up every vacant yard and corner; for a Chinaman is not happy unless crowded as closely as salmon in an Alaskan creek. What adds to this effect of crowding is that all life and activity seems to be concentrated on the ground floor, no business being apparently carried on in the upper floors, which look uninhabited and empty, without window curtains, or shutters, or signboards, or other signs of habitation, excepting in the restaurants, whose outsides, from base to roof, are gayly and gaudily decorated, and illuminated at night with Chinese paper lanterns. The old stores with their large rooms have been subdivided into many smaller ones—some of them only fifteen to twenty feet wide or even less. The place of signboards is taken by the well-known wide scrolls of red paper with Chinese characters printed on them, and pasted vertically on the street side, while smaller ones are pasted on the windows. Some of the narrowest alleys have no stores, but only cheap eating-houses, gambling-places, and rows of barred windows, behind which wretched female slaves solicit passers-by. Among them are some rather pretty faces, but others are hideously marked by disease. In the gambling-dens domino-playing seems to be the favorite game. It is different from ours, though the blocks are similar, and some of the players are as expert in mixing and placing them, and as excited and flushed as the poker-players who monopolize the smoking-room on transatlantic steamers.

The principal impression given by Chinatown is that these Mongolians chiefly live to eat, though on looking at their provisions, one often wonders that they can eat and live. About two-thirds of all the stores are meat, fruit, or grocery stalls. The fruits and vegetables exposed for sale are mainly American varieties, though among them are some strange to our eyes. The bundles of long sticks tied together, seen everywhere, are sugarcane from the Sandwich Islands, of which the Johns—and demijohns, as the boys are called—seem to be especially fond. Of watermelons, John seems to be as inordinately enamored as a negro. The butcher-shops have the largest collections of curiosities. Pork and poultry are the favorite meats of Chinamen, but they must of course do everything differently from our way. We smoke our pork and eat our poultry fresh; they eat their pork fresh and smoke their poultry. Smoked ducks, chickens, and geese are suspended everywhere as a bait to passing epicures. Dried and smoked fish, some from China, fill up large barrels, and some are eaten fresh. Poultry also is sometimes eaten fresh—at least certain parts, for in one heap on the counter you will see the entrails of chickens; in another, the combs and beards of roosters; and in a third, the heads and claws! Nothing is wasted. A frequent sight is a large tub filled to the brim with cold boiled rice. I bought a cake in a baker’s shop, below the pavement, marked with neat Chinese letters. When I opened it, subsequently, I found that behind the inoffensive-looking crust it harbored rice and another finer grain, watermelon seeds, little pieces of bacon, several hazel-nuts, and some other mysterious ingredients. Obviously I had come across a sort of Chinese mince-pie. I didn’t eat it. In another store I bought an album containing a collection of Japanese girls, some of them real beauties (the Chinese, I was informed, do not allow their women to be photographed), some very cheap silk handkerchiefs embroidered on both sides; and for seventy cents an elegantly carved bamboo, shaped like a large dude’s cane and containing inside a telescoped fishing-rod, which I subsequently found useful in trouting in the brooks near Lake Tahoe.

An old man with a bookstall on the street, of whom I bought an illustrated volume, altogether upset my notions of Chinese morality. I asked him how much it was, and understood him to say “four bits”; so I gave him fifty cents and walked off with the book. But he ran after me, and saying “_two_ bits,” gave me back a quarter. His countrymen seemed to be pleased to see me walking along with a Chinese book under my arm, and several of them smiled and greeted me, which they had not done before. The majority of the Chinese in San Francisco belong, of course, to the lowest classes of their race; but there are among them some of refined and educated appearance, though I could not make out whether those wearing goggles as large as butter-plates thereby intended to convey the impression that their eyes had been greatly injured by excessive study. Women are frequently seen wobbling along the street, dressed in blue or black blouses and baggy trousers, almost like those of the men, though much wider. Their deformed feet are placed on solid wooden soles with embroidered silk above, and their faces are almost as greatly deformed as their feet by the hideous Chinese custom of combing the hair tightly back from the forehead. More numerous than the women are children of both sexes, dressed in the most gaudy green, blue, and other costumes and caps. Their round cherubic faces, sparkling eyes, and fresh, healthy complexion present a cheerful contrast to the sallow complexion, sunken cheeks, and hollow eyes of the adults, victims of opium-smoking and other forms of dissipation.