Chapter XIX

THE FIREMEN OF SAN FRANCISCO--“WE STRIVE TO SAVE”--A BARBER’S
SALOON--OYSTERS--PLACES OF AMUSEMENT--A PICKLED HEAD--SHOOTING ON
SIGHT.

_Christmas, 1851._

The machinery was at length in its place, and we got the steam up for a trial; our engineer was one of the same school as he of the Stockton boat, and considered that engines were “bound to go,” whether on sea or land; and when I remarked to him that ninety pounds of steam was about double the pressure the boiler ought to bear, he asked very naturally “of what use was an eight horse power engine if you couldn’t make her work up to a _twelve_?”

Having started the machinery, we awaited in a great state of excitement the result; this came soon enough, for in a few minutes the crusher broke down irremediably, and like some unfortunate two-year-old horse, ran its first and last race at the same time.

I returned, therefore, to San Francisco, meditatingly as before, and on my arrival there, I gave my mind to the preparation of machinery that should grind and scrunch with a vigour that nothing could resist, and which should give ample employment to the four extra horses which my engineer managed to extract from the steam engine. The city presented a much improved appearance, the small sand-hills had now nearly all disappeared, and having been thrown into the bay, a level site was being rapidly extended on either side, where before was a shelving sandy beach, the least adapted in the world for building a large and substantial city. It is worthy of remark, that sand thrown into mud has not proved a bad foundation even in a country subject to heavy rains. The first brick building erected on this artificial foundation was the American theatre, this, on the first night it was opened, settled bodily two or three inches, but afterwards remained steady.

I found the people of San Francisco still very nervous about fire; and though the dreadful experience of the past had caused extraordinary precautions to be taken for preventing the recurrence of another general conflagration, still night after night as the warning bell hurriedly announced some fire in the suburbs, the whole population would turn out, and follow the engines “en masse” to the scene of conflagration. Not a night passed but one or more alarms were pealed forth by that dreadful bell, of which the tone was so familiar, and so associated with misfortune, and a shanty or two would generally be consumed in the wooden portion of the city. Sometimes an hotel or hospital would blaze and furnish a famous night’s work for the firemen, but these were so active and vigilant, that the flames were always confined to a small space, and it was evident that the days of general conflagrations were over. The highest praise that I can accord to the San Francisco firemen, is to record the simple truth of them, and say that they are zealous and intrepid, and that their services are gratuitous. The fire department of San Francisco now numbers about fifteen hundred members and twenty engines. It is divided into companies, each of which is formed on a military principle, chooses its own name and uniform, and bears all its own expenses.

The companies are distinguished by such names as the “Monumental,” the “Empire,” the “Washington,” and to see them in their smart dresses, as they tarn out in procession on a gala day, one would not suppose that there was so much real work concealed beneath so much show.

There are also two or three “hook and ladder” companies, who do ample service in blowing up and tearing down buildings when necessary. Many of these young firemen occupy the best positions in San Francisco; and it strikes a stranger as somewhat novel, if when the fire-bell is sounded in the day time, he sees the junior partner in the house of Mivins and Co. rush out of his office with a helmet on his head, and proceed at full speed to his engine house.

Sometimes some poor fellow loses his life in his exertions to perform his self-imposed duty, and then his brother firemen, in unassumed grief, pay him the last tribute of respect by following his body to the cemetery.

I have introduced such a scene in the sketch of San Francisco, and would draw attention simply to the deep significance of the motto on the banner that is lying low, emblematical of him they are burying--“We strive to save.”

There is no boast, no ostentation in these words, no vainglorious confidence in what shall be done, no allusion to victories gained or deeds performed. Look on the motto, “We strive to save;” now look on the coffin that contains all that is mortal of one who under that banner has found a death as worthy of the laurel as any soldier who at once brings pride and sorrow to the nation in whose cause fighting inch by inch he yields up life.

You and I, reader, can sleep comfortably in our

beds, and have no cause each night to be drenched by water and scorched by heat, no bell summons us to duty, nor need we risk life or limb when the glare ascends from a blazing manufactory, but turning comfortably over, we can again court sleep with the intention of reading of the fire over our breakfast table.

But you will agree with me, perhaps, that be we where we will, be our powers what they may, if we look around us we shall find no better standard to rally round and be faithful to than that which bears the fireman’s motto, “We strive to _save_.”

* * * * *

Gorgeous decoration is characteristic of San Francisco; the people pay high prices for the necessaries of life, so velvet and gilt work is thrown into the bargain. In the “shaving-saloons” this system of internal decoration is carried out in great force, and the accommodation these establishments afford is indispensable to a Californian public.

Let me suppose myself to have arrived at San Francisco from the mines early one morning. Having travelled down on the Old Soldier, I have no carpet bag of course, and I enter a shaving-saloon. At a counter I purchase any quantity of linen I may require for the moment, and with this I proceed to the bath-room; when I return from my ablutions, I am asked if I would like my head “shampoo-ed.” With a reckless feeling in respect of shampooing, the result of an intimate acquaintance with Turkish baths, I submit to this operation.

Seating myself on an easy chair of velvet, and placing my legs on an easy stool, also of velvet, I become drowsy under the influence of the fingers and thumbs of the operator, as they are passed over my skull, as if with a view to making a phrenological chart, and which produce a feeling at last as if hundreds of fingers and thumbs were at work, and the whole force of the establishment were scratching my head.

I am conducted to a marble washstand, and a tap of cold water is turned on me. I thought I had washed my head in the bath, but it appears not, judging by the colour of the water. My head is dried by hard labour, then it is wetted again by a shower of eau de Cologne and water, thrown at me when least expected. “Will I be shaved, sir?” Of course I will! “Take a seat.” I sink into the velvet chair, and contemplate my dirty boots, that for days have not known blacking, but have known mud, as they contrast with the crimson pile velvet on which they rest. The back of the chair is raised by means of a screw, until my head is in the proper position for operation. First I have hot water on my chin, and a finger and thumb (generally the property of a coloured gentleman) feels for my beard in a dreamy way with a view to softening the stubble. Then comes the lather, and shave the first, and I am about to get up, when I am stopped by more lather, and shave the second; this is conducted in a slow methodical manner, the finger and thumb wandering about in search of any stray hairs, like gleaners after the harvest.

The operator says not a word to me, San Francisco barbers are not loquacious, but his eyes wander to the open door, and suddenly he leaves me with a rush, and apostrophising some one passing in the street, he says, “Say, how about that sugar?” The reply is inaudible, but I observe that the barber produces a sample of cigars from his pocket, and says, “See here! fifty dollars a thousand for these won’t hurt you;” and so, having failed to make a “trade;” he comes back, and, as he “finishes” me, he observes, in a general way, that “Damn him if that (the gentleman in the street) wasn’t the meanest man in all creation!” I am then released, and this was a San Francisco shaving-saloon in 1852. From the barber’s I proceeded to a boot-blacking saloon kept by Frenchmen. I seat myself on a comfortable fauteuil, two Gauls are at my feet, each Gaul has two brushes, and such a friction is commenced that my feet are being shampooed as much as my head was. The morning paper has been handed to me, and I have scarcely settled to the leading article when “V’la M’sieur,” announces that all is over. What a change! my boots rival that famous effigy of Day and Martin, whose polish is ever exciting the ire of a contemplative cat; I pay the money with pleasure, one shilling, not before I am brushed though. Shall I exchange my battered wide-awake for a beaver hat? Certainly; and now reader I don’t think you would believe, if you saw me, that I had just returned from Tuttle Town, and from a life of leather breeches and self-inflicted horse grooming. It is eight o’clock now, and, in an instinctive search for breakfast, I enter the Jackson House. Here are a hundred small tables nearly all occupied, I secure one and peruse the bill of fare. I could have wished for fresh eggs, but these were marked at two shillings each, and in the then uncertain state of the mine I considered economy a duty. “Fricassée de Lapin,” that sounded well, so I ordered it; I didn’t tell the waiter, when he brought it, that it was not rabbit but grey squirrel, but I knew it from the experience I had had in the anatomy of that sagacious animal. It was very good, however, and if it had been a fat Sacramento rat I daresay that, under the circumstances, I should not have turned my nose up at it; for I have eaten many things in my time that are not found on the “carte” at Verrey’s; and when a man has once dined off monkey soup and has ladled a human-looking head out of the pot and has eaten still, regardless of that piteous parboiled look, he can stomach anything in reason ever after.

But the San Francisco bills of fare present at all seasons great variety, and no one has a right to complain who has but to choose from bear, elk, deer, antelope, turtle, hares, partridges, quails, wild geese, brant, numerous kinds of ducks, snipe, plover, curlew, cranes, salmon, trout, and other fish, and _oysters_.

It is not until you have been a long time without an oyster that you find how indispensable to your complete happiness this bivalve is; so soon as the want of it was generally expressed by the inhabitants of San Francisco, some enterprising individual gave his attention to the subject, and, after an adventurous voyage of discovery along the coast, he found a bed, and returned with a cargo of natives in triumph. This cargo, however, was not to be vinegared and peppered that year, but was transferred to a bed prepared for its reception in the bay; here the oysters were left to fatten on bran and other luxuries, and by next year the young colony had increased sufficiently to supply a small quantity to the restaurateurs. They were very small innocent oysters at first, and tasted like a teaspoon-full of salt water, they also cost sixpence a piece, which was about their weight in silver; but they were oysters; a victory had been gained; an imperious want had been supplied: we thought of this as we swallowed them, and were grateful for them even at the price. Since then the submarine colony has thrived so well that oysters in San Francisco are not only large, but comparatively cheap, so that many of the inhabitants gratuitously supply the city with pavement by throwing the shells out into the street as oyster-venders do in every city in the world where the law permits. And, by the way, it is not inappropriate that the law should wink at hecatombs of obstructive oyster shells, if, as they say, that part of the fish alone falls to the share of the public; and indeed it strikes me that any man who has been unfortunate enough to inherit a chancery suit in this country, should be allowed to pile his oyster shells before his door, for in this way he would denote the number of shells that, figuratively speaking, had been returned to him, and might thus exemplify the _certainty_ of the law of equity in a manner suited to the meanest capacity.

Places of amusement were springing up rapidly in San Francisco, and these were of a better character than would have been supposed. It was pleasant to observe that gambling houses, and those low haunts which in every country minister to degrading appetites, were rapidly being swept away in this young country, and giving place to rational recreations. Theatres, reading rooms, and gymnasiums; these are good sources of amusement, be you where you will; read for the improvement of your mind, exercise the clubs and dumb-bells for the benefit of your body, laugh or cry over a good play, and in a colony you are safe for a cheerful, and perhaps grateful man.

My old schoolmaster, I remember, was wont to characterise the theatre as the house of the devil; if so, this personage is a very temporary lodger, for often when the devil is in a man, the merriment a farce excites, or the moral a drama displays, will drive it out of him; and perhaps before to-day a comedy has done more for a man, in the way of correction, than the best sermon that ever was preached to his inattentive ears. For, when you can interest a man, his feelings and judgment are open to your appeal, and I dare say a great many of my readers have, like myself, felt deeply moved at a drama, the moral of which would have been unheeded in a sermon, as inapplicable to our own cases or positions in life; just as, when children, we can only stomach a powder when it is presented to us in the fascinating shape of jam.

Some representations of poses plastiques that were exhibited about this time found no favour, and were cried down, but the enterprising manager of them, who was really a clever fellow, shifted his ground from the study of the human frame to that of the human head, and gave phrenological disquisitions on the sculls of Jenkins, Stewart, and others, who had been executed by the Vigilance Committee. As the bump of acquisitiveness had probably been the cause of the execution of these men, the lecturer had some difficulty in avoiding personalities, for this bump was largely developed in the craniums of his audience. However, he had an advantage over most lecturers on the same subject, for he could prove two distinct facts: first, that the subjects of his dissertation had been hung, and secondly, that many of his audience had helped to hang them.

Since that date, a famous Mexican robber, Joaquin Carrillo by name, has with much trouble and loss of life been caught and decapitated. When I left San Francisco his head was to be seen by the curious preserved in spirits of wine; and however revolting such a spectacle may be, it is a punishment that one would think would deter the reflective from crime. Fancy one’s features distorted by the convulsive throes of a violent death, staring whitened and ghastly from a glass bottle, turned from with horror by the gaping crowd, and then deposited for all ages, growing more hideous with each year on the shelves of a surgical museum!

To take one’s head as in olden times, and place it on a pole until it became a whitened scull, is a benevolent act as compared with the glass bottle and aqua fortis that hand distorted features down to posterity. For my own part I can contemplate with calmness my bones bleaching, as they may do, perhaps, in a desert, but the mere thought that a diseased liver or brain of mine should ever be labelled and ticketted in the museum of the College of Surgeons, excites a disgust that makes me think burning or drowning preferable to a quiet death-bed and a _post mortem_ examination; for your operative surgeons always find something in their subjects worth pocketing, and if robbing the dead of their valuables is sacrilegious, robbing the dead of their liver and lights is equally so.

But still every scruple must fall before the necessities of science; and I remember exhuming a Malay rajah who had been buried about a week without the slightest compulsion, simply because science required the skeleton of a Malay rajah. I felt it was the duty of every man to aid science, and the only remorse I felt was when I found no jewels in the coffin--not even a ring: it was a shabby burial the rajah had!

The practice of carrying fire-arms in San Francisco was still popular among a large proportion of the citizens; but the arguments by which I have sought to justify this habit in a mountain population are not applicable to the inhabitants of the city, for life and property were safe, and a proper police force had been instituted. Cases of shooting therefore were still very common, and duelling in particular became quite the rage. Taking up the newspaper one day, I observed a conspicuous advertisement, in which one gentleman gave notice to the public that another gentleman “was a scoundrel, liar, villain, and poltroon,” and signed his name to the announcement. The next day it was understood that the gentleman with the unenviable titles intended to shoot his traducer “on sight,”--that is to say, as soon as he could see him, without any of the preliminary formula of a hostile meeting. When I reached the Plaza, I found a large concourse of people already assembled to see the sport; and it was such a novel and delicious excitement to stand in a circle and see two men inside of you exchange six shots a-piece, that had the matter been more generally known, I do not think there would have been room for them to fight! I declined waiting to stand and be shot at; but it appeared afterwards that the two gentlemen, attended by their friends, soon made their appearance on opposite sides of the square, and that then they commenced walking about the square as if they did not know each other, and when within shot, one said to the other, “Draw and defend yourself!” which the latter did by sending a bullet through the assailant’s arm. The fire then became warm; six shots were exchanged in rapid succession, and both combatants were taken wounded from the field--not mortally, however, for they recovered, and arranged a regular meeting, where after exchanging half-a-dozen shots one was seriously wounded; since when, I believe, no more powder has been burnt in the cause.