The Gold Hunters. J.D. Borthwick
plentiful as bricks—and a large city might have been built with them.
The appearance of the people, being, as they were, a sort of world’s show of humanity, was extremely curious and diversified. There were Chinamen in all the splendor of sky-blue or purple figured silk jackets, and tight yellow satin continuations, black satin shoes with thick white soles, and white gaiters; a fan in the hand, and a beautifully plaited glossy pigtail hanging down to the heels from under a scarlet skull-cap, with a gold knob on the top of it. These were the swell Chinamen ; the lower orders of Celestials were generally dressed in immensely wide blue calico jackets and bags, for they really could not be called trousers, and on their heads they wore enormous wickerwork extinguishers, which would have made very good family clothes-baskets.
The Mexicans were very numerous, and wore their national costume—the bright-colored sérape thrown gracefully over the left shoulder, with rows of silver buttons down the outside of their trousers, which were generally left open, so as to show the loose white drawers underneath, and the silver-handled bowie-knife in the stamped leather leggins.
Englishmen seemed to adhere to the shooting-coat style of dress, and the down-east Yankees to their eternal black dress-coat, black pantaloons, and black satin waistcoat; while New Yorkers, Southerners, and Frenchmen, came out in the latest Paris fashions.
Those who did not stick to their former style of dress, indulged in all the extravagant license of California costume, which was of every variety that caprice could suggest. No man could make his appearance sufficiently bizarre to attract any attention. The prevailing fashion among the rag-tag and bobtail was a red or blue flannel shirt, wide-awake hats of every conceivable shape and color, and trousers stuffed into a big pair of boots.
Pistols and knives were usually worn in the belt at the back, and to be without either was the exception to the rule.
The few ladies who were already in San Francisco, very naturally avoided appearing in public; but numbers of female toilettes, of the most extravagantly rich and gorgeous materials, swept the muddy streets, and added not a little to the incongruous variety of the scene.
To a cursory visitor, auction-sales and gambling would have appeared two of the principal features of the city.
The gambling-saloons were very numerous, occupying the most prominent positions in the leading thoroughfares, and all of them presenting a more conspicuous appearance than the generality of houses around them. They were thronged day and night, and in each was a very good band of music, the performers being usually German or French.
On entering a first-class gambling-room, one found a large well-proportioned saloon sixty or seventy feet long, brilliantly lighted up by several very fine chandeliers, the walls decorated with ornamental painting and gilding, and hung with large mirrors and showy pictures, while in an elevated projecting orchestra half-a-dozen Germans were playing operatic music. There were a dozen or more tables in the room, each with a compact crowd of eager betters around it, and the whole room was so filled with men that elbowing one’s way between the tables was a matter of difficulty. The atmosphere was quite hazy with the quantity of tobacco smoke, and was strongly impregnated with the fumes of brandy. If one happened to enter while the musicians were taking a rest, the quiet and stillness were remarkable. Nothing was heard but a slight hum of voices, and the constant clinking of money; for it was the fashion, while standing betting at a table, to have a lot of dollars in one’s hands, and to keep shuffling them backwards and forwards like so many cards.
The people composing the crowd were men of every class, from the highest to the lowest, and, though the same as might be seen elsewhere, their extraordinary variety of character and of dress appeared still more curious from their being brought into such close juxtaposition, and apparently placed upon an equality. Seated round the same table might be seen well-dressed, respectable-looking men, and, alongside of them, rough miners fresh from the diggings, with well-filled buckskin purses, dirty old flannel shirts, and shapeless hats; jolly tars half-seas over, not understanding anything about the game, nor apparently taking any interest in it, but having their spree out at the gaming-table because it was the fashion, and good-humoredly losing their pile of five or six hundred or a thousand dollars; Mexicans wrapped up in their blankets smoking cigaritas, and watching the game intently from under their broad-brimmed hats; Frenchmen in their blouses smoking black pipes; and little urchins, or little old scamps rather, ten or twelve years of age, smoking cigars as big as themselves, with the air of men who were quite up to all the hooks and crooks of this wicked world (as indeed they were), and losing their hundred dollars at a pop with all the nonchalance of an old gambler; while crowds of men, some dressed like gentlemen, and mixed with all sorts of nondescript ragamuffins, crowded round, and stretched over those seated at the tables, in order to make their bets.
There were dirty, squalid, villainous-looking scoundrels, who never looked straight out of their eyes, but still were always looking at something, as if they were “making a note of it,” and who could have made their faces their fortunes in some parts of the world, by “sitting” for murderers, or ruffians generally.
Occasionally one saw, jostled about unresistingly by the crowd, and as if the crowd ignored its existence, the live carcass of some wretched, dazed, woebegone man, clad in the worn-out greasy habiliments of quondam gentility; the glassy unintelligent eye looking as if no focus could be found for it, but as if it saw a dim misty vision of everything all at once; the only meaning in the face being about the lips, where still lingered the smack of grateful enjoyment of the last mouthful of whisky, blended with a longing humble sigh for the speedy recurrence of any opportunity of again experiencing such an awakening bliss, and forcibly expressing an unquenchable thirst for strong drinks, together with the total absence of all power to do anything towards relieving it, while the whole appearance of the man spoke of bitter disappointment and reverses, without the force to bear up under them. He was the picture of sottish despair, and the name of his duplicates was legion.
There was in the crowd a large proportion of sleek well-shaven men, in stove-pipe hats and broadcloth; but, however nearly a man might approach in appearance to the conventional idea of a gentleman, it is not to be supposed, on that account, that he either was, or got the credit of being, a bit better than his neighbors. The man standing next him, in the guise of a laboring man, was perhaps his superior in wealth, character, and education. Appearances, at least as far as dress was concerned, went for nothing at all. A man was judged by the amount of money in his purse, and frequently the man to be most courted for his dollars was the most to be despised for his looks.
One element of mixed crowds of people, in the States and in this country, was very poorly represented. There were scarcely any of the lower order of Irish; the cost of emigration to California was at that time too great for the majority of that class, although now the Irish population of San Francisco is nearly equal in proportion to that in the large cities of the Union.
The Spanish game of monte, which was introduced into California by the crowds of Mexicans who came there, was at this time the most popular game, and was dealt almost exclusively by Mexicans. It is played on a table about six feet by four, on each side of which sits a dealer, and between them is the bank of gold and silver coin, to the amount of five or ten thousand dollars, piled up in rows covering a space of a couple of square feet. The game is played with Spanish cards, which are differently figured from the usual playing-cards, and have only forty-eight in the pack, the ten being wanting. At either end of the table two compartments, are marked on the cloth, on each of which the dealer lays out a card. Bets are then made by placing one’s stake on the card betted on; and are decided according to which of those laid out first makes its appearance, as the dealer draws card after card from the top of the pack. It is a game at which the dealer has such advantages, and which, at the same time, gives him such facilities for cheating, that any one who continues to bet at it is sure to be fleeced.
Faro, which was the more favorite game for heavy betting, and was dealt chiefly by Americans, is played on a table the same size as a monte table. Laid out upon it are all the thirteen cards of a suit, on any of which one makes his bets, to be decided according as the same card appears first or second as the dealer draws them two by two off the top of the pack.
Faro was generally played by systematic gamblers, who knew, or thought they knew,