The Gold Hunters. J.D. Borthwick
to keep him sweet.
After a wretchedly long passage, during which we experienced nothing but calms, light winds, and heavy contrary gales, we entered the Golden Gate of San Francisco harbor with the first and only fair wind we were favored with, and came to anchor before the city about eight o’clock in the evening.
CHAPTER III
A CITY IN THE MAKING
T
HE entrance to San Francisco harbor is between precipitous rocky headlands about a mile apart, which have received the name of the Golden Gate. The harbor itself is a large sheet of water, twelve miles across at its widest point, and in length forty or fifty miles, getting gradually narrower till at last it becomes a mere creek.
On the north side of the harbor falls in the Sacramento, a large river, to which all the other rivers of California are tributary, and which is navigable for large vessels as far as Sacramento city, a distance of nearly two hundred miles.
The city of San Francisco lies on the south shore, nearly opposite the mouth of the Sacramento, and four or five miles from the ocean. It is built on a semicircular inlet, about two miles across, at the foot of a succession of bleak sandy hills, covered here and there with scrubby brushwood. Before the discovery of gold in the country, it consisted merely of a few small houses occupied by native Californians, and one or two foreign merchants engaged in the export of hides and horns. The harbor was also a favorite watering-place for whalers and men-of-war cruising in that part of the world.
At the time of our arrival in 1851, hardly a vestige remained of the original village. Everything bore evidence of newness, and the greater part of the city presented a makeshift and temporary appearance, being composed of the most motley collection of edifices, in the way of houses, which can well be conceived. Some were mere tents, with perhaps a wooden front sufficiently strong to support the sign of the occupant; some were composed of sheets of zinc on a wooden framework; there were numerous corrugated iron houses, the most unsightly things possible, and generally painted brown ; there were many imported American houses, all, of course, painted white, with green shutters; also dingy-looking Chinese houses, and occasionally some substantial brick buildings; but the great majority were nondescript, shapeless, patchwork concerns, in the fabrication of which sheet-iron, wood, zinc, and canvas seemed to have been employed indiscriminately; while here and there, in the middle of a row of such houses, appeared the hulk of a ship, which had been hauled up, and now served as a warehouse, the cabins being fitted up as offices, or sometimes converted into a boarding-house.
The hills rose so abruptly from the shore that there was not room for the rapid extension of the city, and as sites were more valuable as they were nearer the shipping, the first growth of the city was out into the bay. Already houses had been built out on piles for nearly half-a-mile beyond the original high-water mark; and it was thus that ships, having been hauled up and built in, came to occupy a position so completely out of their element. The hills are of a very loose sandy soil, and were consequently easily graded sufficiently to admit of being built upon; and what was removed from the hills was used to fill up the space gained from the bay. This has been done to such an extent, that at the present day the whole of the business part of the city of San Francisco stands on solid ground, where a few years ago large ships lay at anchor; and what was then high-water mark is now more than a mile inland.
The principal street of the town was about three-quarters of a mile long, and on it were most of the bankers’ offices, the principal stores, some of the best restaurants, and numerous drinking and gambling saloons.
In the Plaza, a large open square, was the only remaining house of the San Francisco of other days— a small cottage built of sun-dried bricks. Two sides of the Plaza were composed of the most imposing-looking houses in the city, some of which were of brick several stories high; others, though of wood, were large buildings with handsome fronts in imitation of stone, and nearly every one of them was a gambling-house.
Scattered over the hills overhanging the town, apparently at random, but all on specified lots, on streets which as yet were only defined by rude fences, were habitations of various descriptions, handsome wooden houses of three or four stories, neat little cottages, iron houses, and tents innumerable.
Rents were exorbitantly high, and servants were hardly to be had for money; housekeeping was consequently only undertaken by those who did not fear the expense, and who were so fortunate as to have their families with them. The population, however, consisted chiefly of single men, and the usual style of living was to have some sort of room to sleep in, and to board at a restaurant. But even a room to oneself was an expensive luxury, and it was more usual for men to sleep in their stores or offices. As for a bed, no one was particular about that; a shake-down on a table, or on the floor, was as common as anything else, and sheets were a luxury but little thought of. Every man was his own servant, and his own porter besides. It was nothing unusual to see a respectable old gentleman, perhaps some old paterfamilias, who at home would have been horrified at the idea of doing such a thing, open his store in the morning himself, take a broom and sweep it out, and then proceed to blacken his boots.
The boot-blacking trade, however, was one which sprang up and flourished rapidly. It was monopolized by Frenchmen, and was principally conducted in the Plaza, on the long row of steps in front of the gambling saloons. At first the accommodation afforded was not very great. One had to stand upon one foot and place the other on a little box, while a Frenchman, standing a few steps below, operated upon it. Presently arm-chairs were introduced, and, the bootblacks working in partnership, time was economized by both boots being polished simultaneously. It was a curious sight to see thirty or forty men sitting in a row in the most public part of the city having their boots blacked, while as many more stood waiting for their turn. The next improvement was being accommodated with the morning papers while undergoing the operation ; and finally, the bootblacking fraternity, keeping pace with the progressive spirit of the age, opened saloons furnished with rows of easy-chairs on a raised platform, in which the patients sat and read the news, or admired themselves in the mirror on the opposite wall. The regular charge for having one’s boots polished was twenty-five cents, an English shilling—the smallest sum worth mentioning in California.
In 1851, however, things had not attained such a pitch of refinement as to render the appearance of a man’s boots a matter of the slightest consequence.
As far as mere eating and drinking went, living was good enough. The market was well supplied with every description of game—venison, elk, antelope, grizzly bear, and an infinite variety of wildfowl. The harbor abounded with fish, and the Sacramento river was full of splendid salmon, equal in flavor to those of the Scottish rivers, though in appearance not quite such a highly-finished fish, being rather clumsy about the tail.
Vegetables were not so plentiful. Potatoes and onions, as fine as any in the world, were the great stand-by. Other vegetables, though scarce, were produced in equal perfection, and upon a gigantic scale. A beetroot weighing a hundred pounds, and that looked like the trunk of a tree, was not thought a very remarkable specimen.
The wild geese and ducks were extremely numerous all round the shores of the bay, and many men, chiefly English and French, who would have scorned the idea of selling their game at home, here turned their sporting abilities to good account, and made their guns a source of handsome profit. A Frenchman with whom I was acquainted killed fifteen hundred dollars’ worth of game in two weeks.
There were two or three French restaurants nearly equal to some of the best in Paris, where the cheapest dinner one could get cost three dollars; but there were also numbers of excellent French and American houses, at which one could live much more reasonably. Good hotels were not wanting, but they were ridiculously extravagant places ; and though flimsy concerns, built of wood, and not presenting very ostentatious exteriors, they were fitted up with all the lavish display which characterizes the fashionable hotels of New York. In fact, all places of public resort were furnished and decorated in a style of most barbaric splendor, being filled with the costliest French furniture, and a profusion of immense mirrors, gorgeous gilding, magnificent chandeliers, and gold and china ornaments, conveying an idea of luxurious refinement which contrasted strangely with the appearance and occupations of the people by whom they were frequented.