Chapter XVIII: The Grand Cañon of the Colorado (4)

Too much for one afternoon are all these scenes and speculations, and we reach the hotel thoroughly exhausted and hungry. The bill of fare at the Stoneman House is a considerable improvement on that of the original inhabitants of the Yosemite, who used to live on acorns, scorched wild oats and grass seeds, dried caterpillars, roasted grasshoppers, and similar delicacies; but in other respects the arrangements are somewhat primitive, and the lady who missed the lace curtains at the Wawona Hotel probably was equally disappointed at the Stoneman House, where the guests have to sleep with blue spectacles on unless they wish the sun to wake them at six, by shining straight into their faces through the bare windows. However, there is good reason for getting up early; for Mirror Lake must be visited before the breeze, which is apt to blow soon after sunrise, has had time to disturb the surface of the “Sleeping Water,” as the Indians used to call this shallow little lake situated a few miles up the Tenaya cañon.

Mirror Lake deserves attention, not only because in it are reflected some of the finest mountain forms in America, but because it indirectly helped to give the Valley its present name. The Indian name for it was Ahwahnee. One morning, according to the Indian legend, a chief went to the Sleeping Water, where he ran across a monstrous grizzly bear. After a terrific combat, in which his only weapon was the limb of a tree, he despatched him, and henceforth his followers called him Yo Semite, or Big Grizzly, which name was handed down to his children, and ultimately to the whole tribe; and at the first white men’s camp-fire in the Valley it was thus named at the suggestion of Dr. L. H. Bunnell.

Mirror Lake is small, and not especially impressive as a body of water, but its grand surroundings and the absolute stillness of its surface make it perhaps the most perfect aqueous mirror in the world. The bunches of grass in the middle of the lake, the trees lining its borders, and the bold mountains in the background are reflected so clearly and so vividly that in a photograph it is difficult to tell which is the real picture or which the image, the water itself appearing like a thin sheet separating the two antipodal views. It is under the guidance of Mr. Galen Clark, the superintendent of the Valley, that the lake is seen to best advantage, as he knows all the best points of view, and is armed with a slightly concave looking-glass which makes the scene doubly a mirror-lake. No painting could equal in beauty the miniature views of subaquatic landscape shown in this glass, in all the natural colors—the blue sky resting on the gray and white rocks, and the dark green trees showing every branch and every needle with perfect distinctness. The climax comes when the sun begins to peep from behind the mountain summits, which here hide it an hour longer than in the lower Valley. In Mr. Clark’s mirror it looks like a large electric light whose dazzle throws the mirrored views of sky, mountain, and forest into a gloomy shade, making the scene like a dream of the lower world. We had to keep on the move constantly to keep the sun in view, yet not too high, and I never before realized how quickly the sun does travel, or how the conformation of the mountain ridges can make it seemingly go now to the left, and now to the right. When it had climbed too high to be looked at comfortably even in a mirror, a breeze suddenly arose and obliterated the scenery painted on the lake’s surface. Just at that moment two wagon-loads of tourists arrived from the hotel. They had known as well as we that Mirror Lake after sunrise is nothing but an ordinary pond, but had lingered too long over their breakfast or between their sheets. Such is the average tourist—travelling hundreds of miles, and enduring the fatigues of staging to see a world-famous scene, and then missing all for the sake of a few more bites of tough beefsteak!

The whole day still lies before us, and it is part of the regular programme to spend it in seeing the Vernal and Nevada Falls. The carriage takes us across a bridge, where saddle-horses are in waiting for those who dread the climb. Make the driver stop a few minutes on the middle of the bridge, because thence you get one of the finest views of one of those unique mountain formations of the Sierra Nevada,—the North Dome, as true to its name and as absolutely symmetrical and regular as any capitol or religious edifice ever constructed. The falls we have seen so far are formed by creeks which fall over the Yosemite walls and then join the river below; but those we are to see now are formed by the Merced itself, and therefore promise to be more imposing in volume, even if inferior in height. A wide bridle-path leads up the steep gorge, perfectly safe for the most nervous, though much blasting was necessary to make it so. Superb views of the Valley beneath, of the precipitous cliffs on all sides, and from them a water-fall or two which would make the reputation of any ordinary mountain region, but which here are hardly noticed amid the abundance of first-class cataracts. A deserted log cabin near the foot of the Vernal Fall marks the place where we can either follow the horses up to the top of the fall or climb up by a steep footpath by the side of the fall. By all means this path should be taken, either going or descending, the latter being preferable not only as being much easier, but because our descending from the top to the base of the fall makes it seem higher, grander, and louder every moment.

The Vernal Fall is about four hundred feet high and eighty feet wide—considerably lower than those in the Valley, but much wider and more voluminous, and therefore stands midway between the kind of falls which impose through their massiveness, of which Niagara is the type, and those whose principal charm lies in their height and eternal variation of aspect, as is the case with the Yellowstone, Bridal Veil, and Yosemite Falls. Few hear of the Vernal Fall before coming to the Yosemite; yet if it were situated amid the mountains of Switzerland, it would be surrounded by a dozen hotels and seen by a hundred thousand visitors every summer. Approaching it by the footpath, we are soon enveloped in a drenching spray, the haunt of a superb rainbow, which at first forms a complete circle, but as we get up higher is gradually reduced to the semi-circular form of ordinary rainbows (another reason for taking this path on returning, since a scenic _crescendo_ is preferable to a _decrescendo_). The last part of the ascent is made on a series of stairs, dizzy but safe, built through a sort of cavern in the rock, where we can get a peep right into the home of rare ferns and mosses, kept green by the spray, and fortunately just out of reach of amateur botanists. At the summit, the guide steps out on the smooth granite to the edge of the fall, and holds out his hand for those who wish to approach and see its foot. The upper part can be seen by leaning over a curious granite parapet, about three feet high, looking, as Professor Whitney remarks, “as if made on purpose to afford the visitor a secure position from which to enjoy the scene.” It is only a foot or two wide, and looks as if it were rent off the rest of the rock to some distance below, and as if it might be easily kicked over; but this feeling of insecurity, where you know you are perfectly safe, only adds to the grandeur of the scene.

It would be impossible to find a more romantic and commanding spot than this. At your feet is the Vernal Fall and the turbulent Merced tumbling down the mammoth gorge; in the other direction, less than a mile upwards, is another water-fall, world famed,—the Nevada,—and between these two falls are endless combinations of wild rocks and shooting waters. Only a few yards above the Vernal is an eddying hollow known as the Emerald Pool; and immediately above this is “the flume, where the stream glides noiselessly but with lightning speed over its polished granite bed, making a preparatory run for its plunge over the Vernal Fall,” as the first white man who ever saw this spot, J. H. Lawrence, happily described it. The guide here tells the story of an Englishman who wanted to “take a bawth, don’t you know,” in this flume, and who was carried down by the swift and powerful current into the Emerald Pool, where he caught on to a bush just in time to avoid being swept over the falls.

In low water the thin layer of swiftly moving water gives the flume a silvery appearance, whence it has received the name of Silver Apron; but if the Indians had any name for it, it must have been the more poetic designation of Arrow Water, or something similar. It is not safe to go near its edge; for it is sometimes suddenly widened by one of those curious irregular pulsations and reinforcements noticed in many cascades. We now cross a bridge over the raging torrent, and stop at the Casa Nevada, where Mr. Snow and his wife always are ready to provide a bountiful lunch at short notice. I believe that the principal reason why this lunch is so bountiful is because Mrs. Snow wants to get off her favorite joke at least once a day. Some one is sure to ask where she gets all these victuals, whereupon she replies, “We raise them,” adding, after a pause and a look at the incredulous faces, “on mules.” Mr. Snow is known as Perpetual Snow, from having lived here almost twenty years, and he sometimes facetiously offers to show summer visitors “six feet of Snow” right in his house. He has albums for sale containing fine collections of Yosemite ferns—thirty-six different kinds; and shows with pride his old registers in which many famous visitors have signed their names.

Only a few steps from the house, the Nevada Fall comes thundering down its six hundred feet or more, according to the season. To the left is Liberty Cap, almost as precipitous as El Capitan, yet often ascended. A path leads up to the summit of the Nevada Fall, which, however, cannot be approached near enough to get a downward glimpse; but this is compensated for by the fine side views one gets of it coming up. Further on is the mountain called Cloud’s Rest, from which superb views of the valley and surroundings, as well as the high Sierras, are obtainable, but which can rarely be visited with comfort before the middle of May, on account of the deep snow-patches under which the path is buried. There is also a trail leading from the Casa Nevada over to one of the most famous parts of the Yosemite walls,—Glacier Point; but there is so much to see there that one ought to devote a whole day to it. Therefore we return to the Valley the same way we came, and the next morning are again in the saddle, bound for Glacier Point, directly over the hotel. Everybody has seen pictures of Glacier Point, and the huge boulder which projects at one place several feet over the edge of the wall. On this boulder many persons have had their photographs taken, with nothing between them and the bottom of the Valley, more than half a mile beneath, than a bit of projecting rock, and nothing to hold on by. On the ledge to the right, however, an iron railing has been securely fastened, so that the most timorous can now look down with perfect safety.

At this point a flag is floating, and in the evening it is customary to build a fire, and afterwards throw the brands and coals over the brink. To the hotel guests directly below, who have been watching for them, these brands present the appearance of a golden water-fall, thus adding one more to the Yosemite’s incomparable collection.

Looking up from this Valley, shut in on all sides by perpendicular walls, and lofty peaks from twenty-five hundred to seven thousand feet in height, it seems impossible that a way to the summit should have been found except by climbing up the cañon as we did yesterday; but there is a more direct path straight up the wall, to which the guide conducts us, after passing the village and the seldom-used, solitary chapel. The ascent is very steep in some places, and hard on man and beast; but so well planned as to be without risk or danger, even though the horse does occasionally poke his nose over a yawning abyss. Fortunately for the nervous, the most “ticklish” places are concealed by the dense brush clinging to the rocks, else the stubborn habit of the animals, of always walking as near the brink of the precipice as possible, would cause many a heart to stop beating momentarily. The air is wonderfully exhilarating and clear, and nothing could be finer than the aspect of the receding Valley, and the triple Yosemite Falls directly opposite, which are almost always in sight.

Half-way up, on our side, is the Agassiz Rock,—a huge boulder, in a state, apparently, of dangerously unstable equilibrium, and looking like some of the fantastic pinnacles of the Yellowstone cañon, as if it might be kicked over with one foot; but appearances are deceptive. There is a good hotel at the summit, where the horses are left with the guide, while we proceed a few hundred yards farther, to Glacier Point. Imagine how the Valley would look from a balloon, and you have some conception of the gruesome charms of Glacier Point, whence the outlook or downward look into the Valley is more perpendicular and awe-inspiring than from Inspiration Point, which affords the more picturesque view of the whole length of the Valley, its depth being a subordinate feature. But the advantage of Glacier Point lies in this, that by walking a few steps to the right, an entirely different scene is commanded,—a scene which includes both the Vernal and Nevada Falls, and beyond them an imposing array of snow-clad Sierra summits. It is here that every visitor must feel the impotence and barrenness of words to paint the images treasured in his memory; and were every word a photograph, a description would convey but a faint impression of the original. But we are to go up higher yet, where a still wider circle of mountains, cliffs, domes, cañons, and snow-fields will come within the field of vision. The Sentinel Dome is our goal now, although the guide is not quite certain whether the path is sufficiently free from snow for the horses: we do come upon many large snow-patches, a foot or two deep, but we always manage to get through or around them. Fresh snow of this depth sometimes falls as late as the end of May, even in the Valley below.

At last we emerge from the forest, tie our horses to the last trees, and clamber up the bald pate of the Dome. Hence the billowy crests of the Sierra Nevada, including peaks of thirteen thousand feet and over, show themselves in something approaching their real height and sublime grandeur. The scene is not unlike that of the Spanish Sierra Nevada, as seen from Granada, thus presenting one of the numerous resemblances between Spain and California. The surface of the Sentinel Dome is full of curious small holes, probably the product of innumerable expansions and contractions of the rock under the influence of alternating heat and cold. The very top is occupied by a stunted, gnarled, and broken pine, presenting the appearance of a veteran warrior and storm wrestler, covered with wounds, upon which it exudes the soothing balm of a remarkably fragrant kind of pitch. Beware of touching it! a second’s contact will ruin a suit. Had Heine ever been in California, we might feel certain that this tree must have suggested to him that fine poem of the pine-tree dreaming amidst its winter snows of the palm-tree bathed in sunshine,—say in the Mojave Desert, but a hundred miles away.

Returning toward the Valley, we soon come to a place known as Washburn Point, where the view of the falls and mountains is similar to that obtained from the Sentinel Dome, and perhaps even more impressive because of its being nearer. From here the scenery of the high Sierras can be seen even by those who are unable to walk or ride on such arduous paths; for there is a good wagon road leading hence to the Wawona Hotel, and striking the road to the Valley some miles above. For pedestrians, by far the best way to see the Valley would be to take this road from the Wawona, spending the night at the Glacier Point Hotel, devoting the next day to this place and the Sentinel Dome, and descending to the Valley on the day following by way of the Nevada and Vernal Falls. Thus the Valley may be visited without any uphill work at all.

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.

Chinatown in the daytime may be freely visited by the “Melican” man and woman. At night it is advisable to take a policeman or a guide, and leave the women at home, unless their nerves are shock-proof. The scene at night differs from that in the daytime; for whereas in the morning Chinatown seems little more than a big market-place, at night it is one vast barber-shop in which half the population seems to be engaged in shaving and mutilating the other half. There are no curtains; and if you stop a minute and look into one of the tiny shops on the ground floor or in the cellar, you will see a tonsorial artist deftly shaving his victim’s head, chin, eyebrows, lashes, nose, clean his ears, etc. Perhaps you are standing this moment over a Chinese dormitory; for space is expensive in so large a city, and John utilizes every inch of it by making his bed under the sidewalks. We follow the guide into subterranean haunts, down several flights of rickety stairs, to get a peep at the opium-dens. It is estimated that there is only one Chinaman out of every five in San Francisco who does not revel in his daily opium debauch, and even that fifth man uses it occasionally as a sedative. Some manage to get drunk on ten cents’ worth a day, while others need as much as a dollar’s worth, of a superior quality. It was the ten-cent variety we saw on this tour. The guide occasionally drops a quarter in certain places, and is in return allowed free access with his protégés. In dingy little rooms, not much larger than a state-room in a steamer, there are several bunks, in each of which lies or sits a Chinaman, in varying stages of stupid intoxication. Some are already asleep, others are just lighting their pipes, and not one of them pays the slightest attention to the intruders, unless spoken to. One helpless old wreck lies on a bundle of rags, which, the guide said, he has not left for five years. His hands and face are mere bones covered with yellow parchment, but he still has strength and brains enough left to obey the guide when commanded to show us the process of opium-smoking by holding a little lump of the drug in the flame of a small lamp, where it burns and is turned round like sealing-wax, and then stuffed into the small pipe and smoked, the fumes being inhaled through the lungs and puffed out through the nose. It is not a pleasant odor, but it doubtless serves to disguise other odors infinitely worse. The only ventilation in these rat-holes is a little slit, six inches by two, above the door: yet here these Asiatics spend the whole night, the lodging being included in the price of the opium. In one place we passed through a kitchen with a closet in the middle of it, but as a general thing we did not find subterranean Chinatown as filthy as it has often been described; certainly not so bad as some of the places visited in New York and London on “slumming” excursions. The fear that Chinatown might become a breeding-place of bacterial epidemics leads the sanitary authorities to look well to their duties; and besides, San Francisco never has any “hot waves,” and its climate is in other respects unfavorable to pestilential diseases, so that Chinatown has not proved such a plague spot as it might become under less favorable conditions.

Many tourists who are anxious to see the opium-dens feel inclined to draw the line at the restaurants, at least so far as eating there is concerned. But there are Chinese restaurants in San Francisco which vie in elegance of furnishing and fine gilded carvings with the most famous Parisian cafés. A good cup of tea can here be obtained, and there can be no harm in tasting the half-dozen kinds of preserves and cake served with it—all for twenty-five cents. There is preserved ginger, and small oranges, and pickled melon, China nuts and other delicacies, and a sort of oyster-fork to eat them with. In one of the rooms you will probably see several Chinamen eating a sort of ragout out of a large bowl, with chopsticks—every mouthful being first dipped into a kind of sauce. The bowl is held close to the mouth, to make the chopsticks less elusive substitutes for spoons. Eating with chopsticks is exciting and somewhat like fishing: you never know when you will get the next bite.

The thing to visit next is one of the temples, or Joss Houses, of which there are dozens in the city, some belonging to trade associations. Visitors are allowed to go behind the altars as close to the hideous idols as they please, the keepers themselves seeming to look upon their charge as a sort of dime museum; and as the admission is free, they try to earn an honest penny by selling little bundles of incense tapers to visitors.

It is getting late, and they are ready to lock the door after we are out; but the theatre is still a-going, and to that we now repair. As the floor is crowded, we walk right on to the stage, through a side gate, and sit down near the actors. Our presence does not jar with the scenery, as there is none of that commodity visible, unless it be the band, which occupies the centre of the stage and fills the air with Mongolian noise and dissonance. The instruments may be described as a gong or cymbals, a stick struck rapidly on a noisy board, and an embryonic banjo and violin which sounds like a hysterical oboe. Yet there is melody and harmony occasionally in these last two instruments, which almost incessantly accompany the actors’ words, as in a modern music-drama, leaving their noisy neighbors to emphasize the murders and other striking episodes. The actors sometimes stand on the stage floor, sometimes on a chair or table. Their declamation is a sing-song in a high falsetto voice. There are no women, but the best actor is an impersonator of female rôles, and has his face painted and his hair combed back in the most “stylish” way. The faces of these actors are utterly void of expression. Having heard enough of their play, we went into the green-room, where one of the actors explained to us his costumes and their prices in China. In a corner there was tea on tap, to which every one seemed to resort at intervals of five minutes. We went out by the other stage door, and stood in the very centre of the stage, watching the musicians; yet our presence there did not seem in the least to disconcert the spectators, who, with hats on, were attending to the play with open-mouthed interest, though they never applauded or laughed or gave any other signs of approval or disapproval. Sometimes, however, they do throw cigar-ends and other objects at actors who offend them by their art or sentiments.

Dime museums, shooting-galleries, dirty little restaurants, cheap drug and clothing stores, and similar places generally mark the transition from Chinatown to San Francisco proper. In one or two streets the transition is of a different sort, leading gradually through more elegant Chinese stores and wholesale houses to the American quarters. San Francisco has many fine streets, in strolling through which one can easily believe the statements that the city has one-third of all the wealth on the Pacific Coast, harbors fifty millionaires, and has exports including treasure to the value of more than a hundred million dollars a year. Such streets as Market, Kearney, Montgomery, and Post would attract attention even in Paris or London, and there is evidence of general prosperity in the numerous elegant residences as well as in the thronged business streets. Of late, an uneasy feeling has betrayed itself over the rivalry of the Canadian Pacific Railway and its harbor town, Vancouver, in attempting to secure the trade with Japan and China, the distance being somewhat in favor of Vancouver. But there is plenty of room for several large cities on the Pacific Coast; and San Francisco, having the only good harbor between San Diego and Puget Sound, need not be afraid of retrograding if the Canadians get some of the tea trade. Even if they should get the whole of the Asiatic trade, which is impossible, the handling and shipping of California wine, fruit, and agricultural products would suffice always to make San Francisco one of the three or four largest cities in America; and the opening of the Nicaragua Canal will give its trade a new and great impetus.

Market Street is the Broadway of San Francisco, but it differs from Broadway in New York in being as crowded in the evening as in the daytime. Yet the evening crowd is not the same as the day crowd, being bent on pleasure merely, like the multitudes which promenade in the alamedas of Spanish cities, late in the afternoon. San Franciscans are too busy to give up the afternoon hours to pleasure, so they have their daily street review and reception between eight and ten o’clock in the evening, during which hours Market Street is as crowded as Fifth Avenue on Sunday afternoons. The throng comes to an abrupt end a block or two above the Palace Hotel, and visitors stepping thence into a comparatively deserted street are apt to be surprised on suddenly finding that they have to elbow their way through a dense, moving mass of men and women. It seems strange that the crowd should not include the Palace Hotel in its promenading line, so as to give the guests in the large bay-windows, which make up the entire front of this immense structure, a chance to review it. San Franciscans are fond of boasting of this as being the largest hotel in the world, and one of the most sumptuously furnished, having cost about seven million dollars. Few cities, indeed, are so well supplied with good hotels as San Francisco, which has four of the first rank besides the Palace. There are accommodations and prices to suit all purses, but I do not believe there is another city in the world where one can get such an elegantly furnished, spacious room, with board, for three dollars a day, as on the upper floors of the Palace, where the air, light, and view are better than on the more expensive lower stories. The fare is generally good in these hotels, as it ought to be in the metropolis of a State which furnishes all the staples and delicacies of the table in abundance and always in season. Butcher’s meat, however, as elsewhere on the coast, is frequently tough, and poultry seems to be exceedingly scarce or expensive, for it is seldom seen on the bill of fare. There are some restaurants, too, where good meals can be obtained; but it makes one indignant to find that even here in the chief city of California, some of the restaurateurs are too idiotic, or dishonest, or both, to furnish California wines under California labels at sensible prices. The California wines are there, of course, but under French labels and at fancy prices, varying from two to five dollars; whereas, if the wine (which is really much better and purer than nine-tenths of all imported French clarets) were honestly labelled, it could be sold at a quarter of those prices. The same humbug flourishes in most Eastern restaurants, but here one would think the mob would rise in its patriotic indignation and State pride, and summarily expel these short-sighted, swindling restaurateurs. Claret is so cheap by the gallon that it ought to be served free with meals, as in Spain, instead of that deadly American drink, ice-water.

There are cheap eating-houses in San Francisco where a poor man can get soup, meat, a dish of vegetables, and a glass of claret or beer,—all for ten cents. There is no exaggeration in Mr. J. S. Hittell’s statement that “the wages of labor are still fifteen to thirty per cent higher than on the other side of the continent, and fifty to one hundred per cent higher than in Europe, while the cost of living is lower than in either.” Notwithstanding Chinese competition (about which a great deal too much fuss is made in California, since the Chinamen are absolutely needed, especially in harvest-time), it is doubtless true that there are few places in the world where the laboring-man fares so well as here, owing to the cheapness of provisions and the ease with which a cheap suburban residence on the back hills or across the bay may be reached.