MiM'IBtW'll. «>'i !iiiiiiniiiniiiiiiiiiiiiiunHiiiTnniiniiiiiiiiiiiiiT]T iiuimiiiux iuiiim-m ijJiiMiiiiiiiiniiiiiiiiiiiinL ■^^a >' fJ^'TL ^i- ^'^'(^ ■-■ ^^> 7.1 ^■■/J^Z-/^^-^ Digitized by tine Internet Archive in 2007 witii funding from IVIicrosoft Corporation littp://www.arcliive.org/details/franciscotosanbaOOjonericli TO SAN FEANCISCO AND BACK. EEV. HAEEY JONES, M.A Prebendary of S(. Paul's. PUBLISHED UNDER THE DIRECTION OF THE COMMITTEE OF GENKRAL LITERATURE AND EDUCATION, APPOINTED BY THE SOCIETY FOR PROMOTINU CHRISTIAN KNOWLEDGE. LONDON : SOCIETY FOR PEOMOTING CHRISTIAN KNOWLEDGE, NORTHUMBEKLAND AVENUE, CHAKING CROSS; Queen Victoria Street; 48, Piccadilly ; 135, North Street, Brighton. New York: E. & J. B. Young, & Co. \^\ Fsqs fhAfii^^^ CONTENTS. Chap. , Paok I.— The Voyage Out 7 II.— First Walk about New York 17 III. — Niagara to Chicago 29 IV. — From Chicago to San Francisco 38 v.— The Great Kaikoad 64 VI.— San Francisco 73 VII.— The Yo Semite Valley 90 VIII.— To the Forest 105 IX.— The Mormon City 118 X.— The Salt Lake City 138 XI. — Eeturn Journey 153 XII. — Pauperism — Negro Labour 161 XIII.— Cincinnati and Philadelphia 166. XIV.— A Short Eun Southward ITS XV.— Eeligion in the United States 196 XVI. — Some account of the Landing and Treatment of Emigrants in New York 211 INTEODUCTION TO THIRD EDITION. The difficulties felt in adapting the original form of these letters to a state of things existing only a few years after they were written might, of course, be considered to be more obvious, as a third edition of them is called for. And yet the main features of the impression originally received by the writer are un- changed. There is a hardly perceptible difference even in many details. The stream of emigrants which overflows upon the bank at Castle Garden is much the same. The accommodation " on board *' the great trains is rather more widely spread by the increased number of railways than altered or improved on any particular line. Phases of social and govern- ment life have undergone no organic change. The army of the United States of America has, it is true, become still smaller, while its navy has nearly dis- appeared ; but the great civic invasion, the process of absorption whereby plains are being populated, and districts moved onwards from the inchoate condi- INTRODUCTION TO THIED EDITION. 6 tion of territory to that of State, still continues ; only, ra^remen are on the inarch, and more land is invaded. Indeed, it is iir tke extension of old conditions that the America of the present day is altered from that of a few years ago. Where one railroad, e.g.^ traversed Colorado, and the traveller who went into the interior had to travel by a " Concord " coach, some dozen have been laid about the region, and the immigrant enters into its corners by a branch line. The aspects of a frontier city have, meanwhile, not been altered, though they have been enormously multiplied and spread. The curiously mixed and insistent human fringe which precedes the rising human tide has only widened itself and moved on- wards. Before it, the plains and mountains are what they were. Behind it, more canvas tents give place to more brick walls, and the plain, instead of being covered with useless coarse grass, bears its precious crop of wheat. It is, indeed, this change which is transforming America, though the trans- formation is really growth. The prospects of central agricultural failure have indeed hardly been conjec- tured, except by some who, knowing little or nothing of the soil, talk of its ultimate exhaustion as if it were coming into sight. It is not the question of failing fertility, however remote in the American continent, but the first use of enormous virgin regions which exercises the immigrant and the 6 INTRODUCTION TO THIRD EDITION. governments of the United States and the British possessions. It is true that the writer of these letters has little to say ahout Canada. He might, however, now remark that much of the energy shown in the development of the States is at present seen across the border, and that the resources of the Dominion are year by year perceived to be much vaster than was realised only a short time ago. Meanwhile, along with the solid though rapid growth seen over the whole northern continent, the same procedure marks the progress of civilization as has marked it ever since railways became a leading factor in the human march. Thus, letters written since the first great line was laid from the Atlantic to the Pacific necessarily notice features which have by no means become obliterated, but are only en- larged and multiplied in the growing family of the new world household. TO SAN FKANCISCO AND BACK, CHAPTER I. THE VOYAGE OUT. Though what forms an agreeable recollection to me revives the memory of wearisome hours to not a few, some of our readers may care to know the impression which an ocean voyage made upon one who had never crossed the Atlantic, or indeed any of the great seas, before. Fortunately for me, I am in one respect a good sailor, and entirely escaped the misery in which the majority of my fellow-passengers passed the first few days of our voyage. By getting to Liverpool betimes, and immediately going on board the " China " in her tender, which happened to be leaving the landing-stage as I reached it, I secured an early chance of a room to myself — a great luxury, for two berths in a cabin of about eight feet square is close work, especially when shared for some nine or ten days. 8 TO SAN FRANCISCO AND BACK. We went on board on a Saturday, in a small steamer, another carrying the luggage. The mail came out afterwards in a separate tender. We had a perfectly smooth sail to Queenstown, where we were delayed eleven hours for the last mail from London via Holy- head. The long ship lay out in Queenstown Harbour, standing as steady as a pier in the flat water, while a fringe of wailing gulls hung round us for scraps, and showed into what clean and graceful shapes even the garbage of a steamboat may be transformed. But we sorely grudged the delay, as it drew heavily upon our chances of fine weather. At last the mail came off in a tender — eighty-four sacks of letters — and, as soon as this vessel was made fast alongside, was run on board by a train of men as fast as they could trot. We began to move while this process was being carried on. Then our pilot stepped on board the small steamer, which left us. We had still one link left to the Old World, in the shape of a shore boat. This clung to us for some time, probably in hopes of picking up a job in the shape of some forgotten mes- sage or parcel. At last the order came from deck, " Let go ! " and though those of our readers who are familiar with the passage to America may smile at my sentiment, it was a touching moment when this last home tie was loosened and the boat fell astern, dancing in the foam of our screw. THE VOYAGE OUT. 9 ** Full speed " was now marked by the indicator on deck. Leaving the last lighthouse on the Irish coast, our head was pointed for New York, and our engines throbbed day and night like a great iron heart which sent its pulse through every beam and plank and spar, till it paused to pick up our pilot on the other side of the Atlantic. Our first experience of the ocean was — so it looked — a boundless midnight plain of molten lead. There was not the faintest whisper of a wind. The red August moon came out and laid a track of gold upon the water, while two bright lines of sapphire light sprang from the ship's bows. We were passing through a highly phosphorescent sea. The sight was most beautiful. Soon, however, the bright fabric of hope that we should carry this weather with us was rudely dis- sipated. The " China " is some 320 feet in length, over all. Her upper deck is flush or unbroken for about 300 feet. Next morning, as I stood by the taff- rail, this long deck rose like a hill in a straight white road, and then, as we topped the crests of the great moving ranges of water, slid down as if the world were sinking. It was our first experience of the Atlantic " swell." At first we saw no ships. Though on the high road between Europe and America, we passed day after day without seeing a single sail. Of course if the ocean were flat, and vessels made the straightest 10 TO SAN FRANCISCO AND BACK. run from point to point, we should have seen many. The world, however, being round, gives a choice of courses from Liverpool to New York about equal in distance. Some captains always take a southern one, while others, when there is not much ice, go far enough north to sight Cape Bace. The loneliness of the ocean is most touching. Morning after morning as I went on deck there was the same round horizon, in which the great waves sometimes showed like islands, and yet not a dot of a sail was to be seen. Mother Carey's chickens kept us company, and now and then a solitary gull visited us in mid-ocean. But our chief external signs of life were whales, of which we saw divers. One morniug early I was standing in the ship's bows, looking westward, when a fine fellow heaved his long brown back up, and spouted, apparently not more than eighty yards before us. He seemed so near that I thought I could have thrown a stone upon him. His alarm, however, at seeing the ** China " under full steam rushing at him at a rate of some fifteen miles an hour, was excusably great. So he dived faster than he rose, and I have no doubt has made a most exaggerated yarn out of the fright he got among the whales of his society. On board these fine Cunard ships everything is carried on with the greatest regularity. The meals provided for such passengers as can eat them are numerous and excellent. Breakfast at half-past eight, THE VOYAGE OUT. 11 lunch at twelve, dinner at four, tea at seven, and supper at nine are a mockery to some, but those who do not suffer find the sea air wonderfully appetising. The ship's company, all told, consisted of 120 men, of whom 30 or 40 were stokers. There are seven engineers, and the captain has four officers and a purser and a surgeon under him. We found these gentlemen very obliging. I expected to be called upon to say the service on Sundays ; but owing to some misunderstanding a rule had recently, so I was told, been made or followed, that the captain or surgeon should read the service. The crew attended, but as there was no singing, and the noise of the throbbing screw nearly drowned the reader's voice, it was but a dreary act of worship. The temperature of the air well out on the Atlantic remains nearly the same, about 48° or 50*^, summer and winter. " We know no seasons here," said the first officer to me one day; "they are made for the land. Whether I leave New York half frozen, or with the thermometer at 120°, it is all the same. When we get 400 or 500 miles out the mercury stands at about 50°." The winds are most capricious. They veer about and shift from soft to strong, and back again, contin- ually. The fact is that the sudden changes experi- enced here often arise not so much from the wind falling or rising as from the ship's passage from one 12 TO SAN FRANCISCO AND BACK. " belt " of weather to another. One morning we would be tearing through the water under sail and steam, with heavy plunging, but a dry deck. Then we would pass into lumpy, windless water, " like a boiling pot," as the mate said, and soon afterwards have to face a head sea which sent waves tumbling in over the ship's bows and rushing along the main deck nearly to the stern. One carried off in its passage great store of the cook's apparatus, and made a sudden wreck of pans and potatoes. The chief, indeed the ever seriously recognised dangers, arise from fog, during which, in some seasons of the year and in some places, the ship runs the risk of encountering icebergs, especially on the banks of Newfoundland, and, when shore is being reached, ships. But when fog comes, they still drive on " full speed." That brings the ship out of it sooner, and enables it to answer the helm better if occasion should arise. In fog a horrible whistle, if it may be called a whistle, is kept going. But it sounds more like the scream of a mad bull with a sore throat. We had experience of this ; and there is something awful in the sensation while you stand in the ship's bows, seeing nothing, but rushing onwards with a speed and force that would smash up the whole con- cern if an iceberg were struck, or make a collision with another vessel horrible. At last we cleared the fog. When about 400 miles THE VOYAGE OUT. 13 from port there came dancing up from the horizon a yacht-like schooner with large white sails. This held our pilot. The mainsail of his boat had an enormous black 1 marked upon it. The deciphering of the num- ber of the pilot-boat was a matter of anxiety to twenty- four of our passengers, who had made a sweepstake of IZ. each, and drawn their numbers betimes. Curiously enough two acquaintances of mine, fellow-travellers, had drawn respectively Nos. 1 and 17. The one who drew No. 17 bought an interest in No. 2, to be, as he said, near his friend. The first pilot-boat was No. 1 : it supplied us with a pilot. The next two numbers we saw were 2 and 17. The chances against this coincidence are almost incalculable. However, we got our pilot betimes. He was a little man, in a lands- man's dress, with a wide-awake hat, and one small gray eye. As the first who comes is taken, the New- Yorkers push out far for a chance. I was told that the pilot got 150 dollars, or about 30Z., for bringing us in. The first sign of land was the Fire Island Light- house ; then came the low hills of Long Island ; and at about four o'clock on Tuesday, August 31, we steamed into the grand harbour of New York, alive with great white steam ferries, whose engines worked above deck. The surgeon from the Quarantine, in a white straw hat, boarded us, and brought news that Oxford had 14 TO SAN FRANCISCO AND BACK. won the boat-race. Every one seemed wholly pos- sessed and penetrated with this event. The Custom- house officer began talking about it directly he got on deck ; the driver of the coach to the hotel brimmed with the subject; and the waiters at supper found time to have their say upon the matter. I ought to mention how we mainly spent our time on board. There were men of divers nations, but most were Americans. Among the passengers were a few of some distinction. We had a parcel of eager Yankee children who incessantly played "sea quoits'* — in which the quoit is a small ring of rope pitched at a wooden peg, and not counted unless it is a ringer. And as if the plunging of the ship were not enough, they must needs have swings. But the quoits and swings were in no request for the first three or four days. Many of the passengers played at *' shovel- board." But pleasant conversation with fresh and agreeable acquaintances was the business of the day. It must do any man good, if not a settled misanthrope, to be thus thrown into the company of utter strangers. He is sure to meet some who look at facts from another point of view than that to which he is accus- tomed, and who put forward their opinions with in- telligence. We had a world of talk, and nothing could make an approach to America more wholesome than the kindly sentiments of the Americans whom an Englishman is sure to meet in his voyage to their THE YOYAGE OUT. 15 country. We English had a good deal of pleasant joking with our cousins at a very peremptory notice stuck up in the ship that we should write our ages, occupation, last legal residence, proposed domicile, &c., on the back of our tickets, by order of the Government of the United States. We told them it reminded us of an entrance into Austria, whereas we thought we had been going to a land of freedom. But the Americans are an eminently law^- loving people, and very fond of regulations. In my bedroom at the Fifth Avenue Hotel, I found nailed inside the door not only a card with the usual directions con- cerning the conduct of the house, but extracts from Acts of Congress respecting the liabilities of inn- keepers and hotel-keepers, and sections of an ''Act to prevent fraud or fraudulent practices upon or by '* them. At the Custom-house, too, we had each to enter in a printed form the number, nature, and contents of our "pieces" of luggage, and sign it before they were examined. All was most orderly and precise. There were, on that occasion at least, no screaming "touters" and hackney-coach drivers. We went quietly enough to our vehicle, and the luggage was put upon its roof by civil attendants of the hotel without any hint of a "tip." The only fuss was a little squeezing from some of the friends of the pas- sengers who wanted to get to them in the Custom- house. I happened to go back for a parcel, and the 16 TO SAN FRANCISCO AND BACK. way in which the officer at the gate said, *' Passenger, pass him in," showed the quickness with which those who had just arrived were noticed. At this hotel all went on with the regularity of clockwork. It is an immense estahlishment, and eminently American. Everything was beautifully clean, and I found the attendants very civil. It holds 1,100 guests, and appears to be quite full. Four of us English arrived there together. When we sat down to dinner, an official came with a request from the managers that we would accept from them a bottle of excellent champagne, as a compliment to us on our arrival. We seemed to be almost the only Englishmen in tbe hotel. 17 CHAPTER II. FIRST WALK ABOUT NEW YORK. Let me try to give you some of my impressions of New York with the bloom on them. In visiting a new country there are many surface details to which the tourist soon becomes accustomed, but which at first strike him with all the interesting freshness of contrast. I do not pretend to provide statistics of population and commerce, or to furnish grave political intelligence, but simply to say what caught my eye in two days' prowling about New York. I hoped to re- turn to it on my way back from the West, and, using introductions, to see something of its religious and educational institutions. At first I merely prowled, with curiosity alive to those little features of outside life which it presented to one who had just landed in America for the first time, and a pleasant sense of the facility with which the English traveller is able to take in at once by eye and ear foreign impressions made in his own tongue. Thus I simply jot down the impressions which come uppermost as I recall them. 2 18 TO SAN FRANCISCO AND BACK. The city struck me as having a Parisian air. The bright sk}', the trees in the streets, the abundance of green shutters, the panes of bad ghiss in many of the shop windows, the roomy white-painted saloons or cafes, the white straw hats with black ribbons worn by many of the men, the large-lettered, many-coloured advertisements and notices, the loose harnessing of the horses, had a French appearance. The next thing which I found myself noticing was the slowness of the pace at which the vehicles moved. Contrary to my expectation, there was not that strife and bustle which marks the outside of London life. The omnibuses, here called stages, and all painted white, do little more than creep. They have no con- ductors, and no seats outside. You know the sharp- ness with which in London you are invited to go to the "Bank" or ''Royal Oak," and the peremptory smack, stamp, or ring with which the conductor stops or starts the 'bus. Here the driver makes no sign, but crawls along as if he had no interest in a fare. You hail him, get in behind, pay him through a hole in the roof with a bank-note for 10 cents, or 5d, (the fixed fare for all courses), when you enter the vehicle. Then you rumble and bump over, I should think, the worst paving-stones in the world till you want to alight, giving a signal for the purpose by pulling a bell inside. There are no cabs, but, beside the " stages," a large number of street cars, seating FIRST WALK ABOUT NEW YORK. 19 about twenty-five persons inside and none out. These run on tramways in the chief streets, and move some- what faster than the 'buses. The fares of hackney- coaches, mostly with two horses, are absurdly high, and the drivers are the most extortionate rascals in the world. I did not employ them ; but every one, none more than Americans themselves, speaks ill of the race. A Hansom cab company is being established in New York. The police wear blue cloth sacks, with a metal badge on the breast, and, in summer, wide-brimmed white straw hats. They are all thin, and seem chosen for their inches, which are many. There are — at least I saw — no street beggars, wandering organ-grinders, or Punches. Everybody seems bent upon an errand, though he does not bustle. I missed at once the tattered men who loaf about London ; also the blear-eyed, sodden groups outside public houses, and the street Arabs. There is, no doubt, plenty of vice and debauchery in New York, but in strolling by night about its streets I can only say that I did not detect that class which pollutes the great arteries of London. This sui prised me, for some of the papers in the hotel reading-room contain many advertisements which a respectable English journal would not publish. But I must say what I saw. With regard to other street features, I was much 20 TO SAN FRANCISCO AND BACK. struck with the condition of the upper part of Broad- way, which is the chief thoroughfare of the city, nearly parallel to the Fifth Avenue. This latter is full of grand, mostly chocolate-coloured and detached, private residences. In starting from my hotel in the morning towards the " Central Park " — the Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens of the place — I walked tip Broadway, which is traversed by numbers of omnibuses, and in this part by cars. I soon noticed grass growing in the gutters and between the stones of the pavement. The patches of this became larger, till at last I came to three geese, a cow, and a calf, contentedly grazing in the Oxford Street of this great city. The houses die down to wretched whitewashed wooden cabins, set anyhow, and inhabited by L-ish, before the most fashionable resort of the citizens is reached. The park itself — not " central " as yet, though called such — is admirably laid out with walks, drives, shrubberies, and ornamental pieces of water ; but the city is not built up to it. At the other end of Broadway, **down town," every inch of ground seems precious; but the "West-end," as it were, be- fore you get to the park, is strikingly incomplete. The New-Yorkers are, I suppose, too busy to smarten it up till they want it in earnest. Thus a portion is left to an irregular settlement of hovels and their poor tenants. Yet, as I said, the poorest people have all apparently work to do. Some of the cars are driven Of FIRST WALK ABOUT NEW YORK. 21 by as uncombed Irish as you may see in the Seven Dials ; and when later in the day I crossed the ferry to Jersey City to recover a rather cumbrous article left on board the *' China," which lay there, I had to carry it myself through the streets to a parcels' de- livery office, that it might be sent to my hotel. Not one of the **' poor " people in the streets applied for the job. I saw plenty passing by, but there was not a soul '^hanging about." In London, by the wharves, I should have found too many idlers glad to earn a sixpence. Here I could not get a spare hand, though I looked and asked for one. Everything is dear, as well as labour. Wages are high, but so are prices. I paid at a little shop 5d, for a box of matches I should have given Id. for in London. A gentleman with me had a ** soda and brandy " at the bar of our hotel, for which we found he had to pay 2s. The common necessaries of life are dear, as well as its small luxuries. I am afraid to say what my companion paid for an ordinary chimney-pot hat. Locomotion is cheap, but living is terribly expensive. The shops are not showy, but large and good when you get inside them. The people in the streets are generally thin — many are tall. The men are better- looking than the women. Few wear full beards, most shaving off all but the moustache. New York, as our readers know, is an island, with 22 TO SAN FRANCISCO AND BACK. a population about one-fourth that of London. Par- allel avenues traverse it lengthways ; these are cut at right angles by streets. The traffic between the city and its suburbs — Jersey City and Brooklyn — is carried on by immense and numerous white ferry-boats, which can take some fifteen or twenty vehicles, horses and all, under cover, besides a large number of foot- passengers, for whom covered accommodation is found in another part of the boat. The fare by them for foot-passengers is 3 cents, or l^d. Their engines work aboveboard, and they move with as much steadi- ness as if they were sliding on ice. Besides these there are many river steamers. Their size and equipment are amazing. Let me try to de- scribe the " St. John," which plies on the Hudson. It is 417 feet long, 80 feet wide, and has three decks. Thus it is as large as any ocean-going steamship. Its saloons are furnished as sumptuously as any drawing-room, having prints, expensive photographs, sterescopes, &c., on the tables. It has bedroom accommodation for 600 persons, and will carry, they say, 3,000. One saloon, surrounded with cabins, that I looked into, was about 150 feet long, 20 feet high, and lit with magnificent clustered gas chan- deliers. The dining-rooms are elaborately provided with everything seen in a first-class hotel. Crowds of civil negroes, in spotless white jackets, w^ait at the tables, which are ornamented with artificial flowers. FIRST WALK ABOUT NEW YORK. 23 There are, of course, extensive kitchens, cellars, and ice-houses. Ornamental fountains or taps of iced water are dispersed through the ship. There are bars where you can order any kind of drink you please, hair-dressers' shops, bookstalls, &c., in these vessels. Large mirrors, soft-piled carpets, the most exquisite cleanliness (even the door of the stoke-hole was of white panel, with white china handles, and quite clean), entirely remove the idea of your being on board a river steamer. Other appliances for comfort and convenience are perfect. The washing apparatus is as good as that in a London club-house. Smoking is strictly prohibited, except in certain portions of the ship. The arrangements for tickets, baggage, &c., are admirable. There is no noise or bustle. I ascended the Hudson to Albany in one of these floating hotels. The pace at which they move through the water is prodigious. With the tide, the one I was in would go twenty-five miles an hour. I fancy that some of your readers will think I am exaggerating in this account of the New York river boats, but I am not. Americans are justly proud of them ; and although I had heard they were excellent, they took me entirely by surprise. The whole of these monster ships are painted white, even to the decks. Altogether the fares are very reasonable. First, second, and third classes are supposed to be unknown here, though in fact on some of the railways 24 TO SAN FBANCISCO AKD BACK. there are tickets marked " first class," and if you use a sleeping-car you pay a little more. On board the steamers the poorest people fight shy of the luxurious saloons. But there seemed to be no poor passengers on board the boat I travelled in from New York to Albany. Where, I asked myself, are the ill-dressed, ill-mannered people one might expect to meet where hundreds share the same journey ? I looked for them in vain. There is, indeed, one notorious American habit which is recognised on board the steamer by an abundant supply of white china spittoons. Fewer, much fewer, indulged in this habit than I expected. I am bound to say, however, that an American who does spit "whips creation." For inexhaustible fer- tility of juiciness commend me to an American spitter. The scenery on the Hudson is very beautiful. Villas and mansions stud its banks. We stopped a few hours at Albany, the metropolis of New York State. Here was the same bad pavement, the same complete occupation of the people. I saw no roughs, loafers, or Arabs. Once, turning a corner, I came on a pair of bare dirty legs, the body which belonged to them being concealed in a doorway. Here is an Arab, thought I. But he was sitting down reading a newspaper. To go back to the steamer for a minute. We had negro melodists on board, with the banjo and familiar tunes — but the real thing, with wonderful mouths FIRST WALK ABOUT NEW YORK. 25 and teeth. I must tell you, too, of the negro barbers in the hairdresser's shop in the ship. I had my hair cut by one, and it was a new sensation. You are laid back in a chair with your legs on a high stool. Sambo is curiously deliberate. He cruises about you with little flips and touches before he begins. Then he scratches your head lazily with his own fingers and slow sympathetic sleepiness. Time is no object to him. He pauses to look out of the window. When he has scratched your head, he brings a dish of rose- water and washes your face, eyes, neck, and ears, with the gentlest and most searching touch possible. He stops to smile on you, and fetch some other bottle of scent. This washing, by the way, is a most exquisite refreshment at a railway station, where Sambo is sure to appear. Then he completes the process with the same smiling gravity, as if you were the last he should ever have the chance of operating on after the manner that he loves. At some places you may have your shoes blacked at the same time that your head is dressed. At Albany, we, in American phrase, *' went on board the train " for Niagara Falls. The train started at 11 P.M. There was a sleeping-car attached to it, with regular beds, pillows, sheets, washing-basins, shoe- blacking, and all the rest of it. I was too sleepy to go to bed, and went off soundly at once, directly I had taken my place in the first seat, till the next morning. 26 TO SAN FRANCISCO AND BACK. I woke at a quarter to five, to find myself in a compart- ment fifty feet long and nine feet high, fitted with velvet-padded seats, most roomy and comfortable. A AMERICAN LOCOilOTn'E. cord hung along the roof for any passengers to call the guard. A street, as it were, runs the entire length of the train, so that you may walk from one end to the FIRST WALK ABOUT NEW YORK. 27 other. I had heard a great deal of the jolting in the American *' cars," but I was able to write and read easily. At Syracuse, by five o'clock in the morning, boys boarded the train with the newspapers. I bought one, and found extracts from the leaders in the Times and other London papers of the day before, furnished by the Atlantic Cable ; also the Berlin news of the same date. Yet Syracuse, of which I dare say many of our readers never heard before, is only a provincial town. Before six the train was traversed four times by boys selling familiar English novels, periodicals, maps, prints, eatables, &c., &c. They gave you the novel or periodical to read for a few minutes, and then took it away without a word if you did not choose to buy it. There was no pressing to purchase anything. All was done in silence. A man in the next seat to mine opened several packets of prints, looked them over, and laid them down. The boy carried them away without a remark. A carpenter, with trousers patched at the knees, came and sat by me. We had a good deal of conversation. He said that numbers of New England farmers were breaking up their homes to go South, where land was to be bought at a small fractional part of the price it cost there. He was polite, full of information, and tobacco. At Rochester we stopped to breakfast, elaborately, and found Sambo with the irrepressible rose-water and smiles. The country through which we passed was undulatory, and 28 TO SAN FRANCISCO AND BACK. studded with farms. The farmiDg was coarse, but apparently successful. The cows and sheep w^ere English, the former of Devonshire breed, the latter black-faced. The horses are inferior animals, ewe- necked and leggy. There are no gates or road-keepers at crossings, but a notice in large letters says : ** Railway crossing. Look out for the cars." The trains ran naked through part of the town of Rochester, a big bell like a church bell, on the engine, being tolled as we rushed down the streets. At 12.30 we reached the Niagara Falls. I was quite prepared to be disappointed, but was not. The way in which the river turns slowly over the precipice, like a great green wheel of water, before it thunders down on the rocks below, is almost overwhelming. I cannot describe the Falls, or the play of rainbows in the mist, or the gravity of the plunge. There is little noise, but a fulness of sound which you notice in a few minutes. Cataract is too pert a word to use. As a gentleman said to me, the scene was oceanic. After dinner we were rowed across the river in the face of the Falls, and, in oilskin suits, went to the farthest accessible spot, not far, under them. We had to bellow into one another's ears to be heard, and were blinded and drenched for our pains. 29 CHAPTER III. NIAGARA TO CHICAGO. I TRAVELLED through part of Canada on my way, and experienced the sensation of seeing settlements in the state of formation in my route. The settler, his log hut, and heavy labour with the axe, have been so long familiar to my mind's eye, that it was with a sort of anxious curiosity I looked for him in the body. Ay, there it was, when I woke up in the train where I slept, and the morning sun showed a new world going into the crucible of industry. There was the primaeval forest right and left, so like an ordinary English wood with coarse grass and undergrowth, that I had to ask myself, ** Is this the untouched wild where timber is a * drug ? ' " Presently we came to an opening. Yes ! there was the log hut, and the settler, axe in hand, was making a clearing. Some trees were down, some were doomed, with the fatal ring cut in their bark about two or three feet from the ground. This soon became a familiar sight. I saw villages where the log hut had passed into a framed house, and the framed house was being superseded by the brick building. 30 TO SAN FRANCISCO AND BACK. Then came a town, or '' city," a straggling set of tenements through which the train rushed tolling its bell, and sometimes tooting shai-ply with its whistle (only the whistles here are trumpets) to scare some children off the line, which ran as bare as a path across a field. Thus we rushed for some eighteen hours, passing into Michigan at Detroit. The country was flat and productive. The crops were mainly of maize. I saw seed clover and abundance of apple-trees. The wheat and other corn had been housed. The fields were studded with the stumps of trees ; the fences zigzag — what they call " snake " or ** worm " fences here. It struck me that Michigan showed a more advanced civilisation than the part of Canada I had traversed. There were very few log houses, the towns and villages looked more prosperous, and the farming was better. Still it was nature not j-et subdued. As the time-table indicated that we must be drawing near to it, I began to look out for Chicago, lately a settlement in the Far West, now a thriving city. I got out on the platform of the **car" and gazed eagerly westward. A black cloud hung over the flat land ahead. *' That must be the place," I thought. My expectations were far exceeded when, after a close view of Lake Michigan, with its sea-like horizon, studded with sails and streaked with steamer-smoke, I plunged into a city with great stone and brick-built NIAGARA TO CHICAGO. 31 houses, six storeys high, roaring streets as hroad as Pall Mall, brimful of strong life, crowded with grand plate-glass- windowed shops, and a tide of men pouring along their sides like the endless processions on the pavements in Cheapside. Thirty years ago there were few better buildings than a log house in Chicago, but they tell me this is the growth of some ten or twelve years. When Lord Palmerston was an elderly man there were some twenty houses, and between 100 and 200 people, in the place. It is now not only a thriving mercantile city, but possesses all the luxuries of civilisation, down to the little nicknacks of artificial ease which you find in Oxford Street. I was long wandering about, bewildered at this miracle of growth. The railway termini astonished me, and the number of rails which enter them. At one, I forget which, I counted the iron rails I stepped over : there were fifty-two. I really cannot tell you how many termini there are. My map says eleven. These pour in grain from a district of prodigious fertility. The produce is not all of grain, though. The stock-yards are a marvel of the place. Pigs are a great item in the trade. They are killed by machinery. One estab- lishment, when in full work, kills and " packs " 2,500 hogs a- day. Piggy is made into pork before he has time to begin squeaking. Peaches, too, are abun- dant. Some streets were lined with baskets of them, brought from the other side of Lake Michigan, and 32 TO SAN FRANCISCO AND BACK. about to be sent away. I counted several squares of baskets, and tried to calculate the number which were being packed, but gave it up, and in the course of the evening asked a gentleman to whom I was intro- duced what the exportation of peaches was. He said that they had sent off about twenty thousand half- bushels in the course of the day. But this is only one small phase of the trade of Chicago. I was struck with the preponderance of men in the streets, and I hardly saw an old man among them. These Westerners, moreover, are a tall, fine-grown race. Every one is busy, and the people walk faster than in New York. Everything seems being done orderly. There were policemen at the corners with stout sticks in their hands, who made openings in the procession of vehicles for foot-passengers to cross. Much of the city is paved with wood, and more of this pavement is being laid down. They have a curious custom of anchoring the horses here. No one has time to stand at a horse's head, so the driver carries a lump of iron, like a squat four-stone weight, which is fastened by a thong to the bridle. When he stops to load or unload he flings this out, and the horse is what they call " hitched " at once. But I should not have time to describe the details which strike a stranger. Even the shoe-blacks, though they are behind ours in not working with two brushes at once, seem possessed with an excep- NIAGARA TO CHICAGO. 83 tional vigour. They are not content with the familiar importunity of the invitation to '' Shine your boots, sir." One morning I was standing at the door of my hotel — the Sherman House — somewhat dust- footed. Blackey, of course, assailed me. I moved on, not wanting him. He ran along on all-fours by my side with flying sweeps and shots at my boots, challenging the verdict of opinion like a true Yankee, and crying, " Won't charge a cent, sir, if you don't like 'em." I will now, once for all, go back to the railroad and describe the way in which travelling arrangements are made here. I started from Niagara Suspension Bridge at night. I had, following a national custom, pre- viously taken my ticket through to Chicago at an office adjoining the hotel. On reaching the station I was asked if I wanted a sleeping-berth. *' Yes," said I, and bought one for the lower tier. Then I handed my luggage to the porter, who hung a brass label to it, giving me a corresponding one. Next I was civilly informed that the sleeping-car would be ready before the train started, so that any one who wanted to go to bed before the car was coupled on might do so. I entered the car, which was about 50 feet long, with two tiers of beds and a pathway between them. They were bona fide beds, with pillows, sheets, &c., &c. Mine was about three feet wide and six feet long. It had two double windows looking out of the train, with a 84 TO SAN FRANCISCO AND BACK. a handsomely-framed mirror between them. The berth was of dark wood, carved, fitted with electro- plated metal, and had thick-patterned woollen curtains to secure privacy. A number of ladies and gentlemen were my companions in the car, which had a separate washing-place and divers other conveniences at one end. The party of travellers soon melted off into the beds, putting their boots and shoes outside their re- spective berths. I did not " turn in " at once, but travelled some time on the platform at the end of the car in conver- sation with an agreeable American gentleman. Next morning, after we had all got up, I went on the platform again for the view and fresh air. When I re-entered the car, the beds had all disappeared, as if by magic, being replaced by a number of most com- fortable sofas, the top tier having been turned back to the roof, and the sheets, &c., all stowed away by the negro in attendance. American railway tickets are of paper, not card. When in the train my ticket was taken from me, and a card, with the names of the stations and their distances from our starting-place printed upon it, given me instead. Then a notice was hung up stating where we stopped for dinner. At dinner we had some of the ordinary American dishes, with coffee or w^eak tea. No one took wine or beer. The meal cost 75 cents. As we neared Chicago the conductor furnished a ticket for the omnibus to the NIAGARA TO CHICAGO. 35 hotel, and took down the destination of my carpet-hag, which in due time made its appearance in my bed- room. There was no asking for ** tips," but when I reached the terminus, being freed from all concern about my luggage, I was directed to the first stage or *bus for the Sherman House, where ready attendants carried in my traps. Thus you see the traveller is well looked after here. A word as to the defects in American railway travel- ling. The conductor and guard seemed too indifferent to the breaks. They walked about the train, or sat down to read the paper, though we were running at extra speed to make up for lost time ; and I did not see how, if there had been sudden need for them, the breaks could have been applied. When I got into the hotel a smiling negro came at once into my bedroom to brush American and Cana- dian dust off my clothes, and suggest a visit to the hairdresser's shop in the hotel, before dinner. At dinner a list of fifty-seven dishes, all ready, and printed for that day's meal, was popped before me, and I sat down at one of sixteen tables, each holding fourteen gentlemen, all of whom appeared to drink only iced water, followed by a cup of coffee. This is surely a temperate country in the matter of drink. I have sauntered about by night and day in all manner of places, but I have not seen a drunken person, nor have I heard a brawl, though there are 36 TO SAN FRANCISCO AND BACK. hundreds of Lager-beer saloons in the town. These are mainly used by Germans, who sit there often with their families, and listen to music while they smoke, and sip a moderate cup. Of course there is drunken- ness here ; but in comparing this city of the West, with its young, eager life, to London, the gin-shops of the latter, and their fringe of sots, sorely humbled me. Near Niagara I had a long talk with a blacksmith who sat by me on a bench, and asked him about the amount of drinking which prevailed. " Sir," said he, " if the foreman knew that one of the men in our shop had got drunk on the Sunday, he would be turned out on Monday morning." On the other hand, a policeman here told me there were divers places where rioting and stabbing went on. That I should have supposed ; but, having a tolerably quick eye for rough London life, and wandering late about the streets which were fullest of *' saloons," all I can say is, that I saw nothing of any intemperance or disorder. The arrangements for notice of fire here are ex- cellent. The city is divided into numbered wards, in each of which there are divers means of communication with the City Hall. There men sit day and night by a big bell. When a signal of fire comes, this big bell tolls the number of the ward, so that all the inhabi- tants know at once where the fire is. Suppose the NIAGARA TO CHICAGO. 37 number of ward in which the fire has broken out is 27, the bell tolls twice for 2, and seven times for 7. If the fire is a large one, this signal is repeated several times. My hotel was close to the City Hall, and the fire signal sounded while I was there. I looked out of my window, an upper one, and saw a number of people get out of their trap-doors on their flat roofs and gaze in the same direction, at once. A man working at a window opposite mine laid down his tools, apparently to count the strokes on the big bell, which were peremptorily repeated. Then his head came up through the roof, and he looked out westward directly ; but as the fire seemed to make no show, he went down again to his work. I must reserve for another chapter what I have seen and learnt of the working of the Church here. The Bishop of Illinois was very kind, favouring me with a long interview and asking me to take part in the services of the cathedral one Sunday, when he had both an Ordination and a Confirmation. I shortly afterwards set off for California, by the new Atlantic and Pacific Kailway. ^^ OP THE , «v-f-><^l'V-%# 38 CHAPTER lY. FROM CHICAGO TO SAN FRANCISCO. As the train from Chicago did not reach Omaha till five hours after time, we had our long railway journey relieved by one night's stoppage in this latter place. This delay was mainly caused by our having in the rear of our train an unfinished, but superlatively deco- rated drawing-room Pullman's car, to be exhibited at San Francisco, and for the privilege of riding in which a private party paid a special price. "We had not gone far before all the wheel-boxes grew so hot that we pulled up to doctor them. This stoppage was re- peated so often that we soon lost some hours and much patience. At last our conductor said, " Guess it will cool itself running ; " and we ran. At about 11 o'clock P.M. a man put his head into my car, which was next to the splendid defaulter, and cried out, ** The train is on fire ! " Then he screwed up the breaks, which anj-body can get at, rang the bell, and jumped clean ofi" into the night. I went out on the platform at the end of the car, and found one of the wheel- boxes in full blaze, and the conductor loosening FROM CHICAGO TO SAN FKANCISCO. 39 the breaks. He had no notion of stopping then. The man who had given the alarm was a would-be " stowaway," who had caught and climbed up into our train in the dark, and then becoming, or pretend- ing to be, frightened, had acted as I have described. " Confound him ! " said our attendant (only he used very much stronger language), " he has nearly stopped the train ! " ** What has become of him ? " said I, looking down into the road, strewn apparently with logs, into which he had leapt. " Guess he ain't hurt," said the man. " But how about the wheel- box ? " I inquired. ** Guess we'll put it out at " I forgot the name of the station. So we blazed on. Next morning, on awaking at 6, I said to the negro attendant in our car, *' How is the box ? " ** Guess it's burnt itself out now," said he. But we were obliged to drop it astern shortly before we reached " Council Bluffs," the station on the east side of the Missouri, Omaha being on the west. We were detained, however, not only by fire ; heavy rain had fallen, and laid part of the road under water.. Now, as the rails are nailed to sleepers placed simply on prairie soil, which when wet turns to black mud, we had to go very cautiously for a considerable dis- tance. The rails were covered with water, but we^ churned up the mud on either side with such effect,, the car next to mine following with foam at its bows- like a barge, that every minute we expected to stick 40 TO SAN FRANCISCO AND BACK. fast. But we crept through, getting to Council Bluffs five hours behind our time. Then, after being ferried across the Missouri, we ploughed up to this place in a stage, which at last stood still in a hole, the gentle- men passengers being all obliged to alight. However, with four horses, and men at the wheels, we got out. We were fairly in the west then. The country from Chicago to Omaha not long ago was simple prairie. Much of it is settled, and we passed many villages of white wooden houses and scattered farms. But in Iowa there is still a large tract of land unoccu- pied. The soil throughout is deep and black, with apparently not a stone in it. There are, however, occasional mounds of gravelly sand, which seem as if they had been shed or tilted upon it (is this done by ice ?), and many small trees, which seem to have grown since the original prairie was reclaimed. These trees, except by the sides of watercourses, almost ceased as farms became rarer towards Omaha. The country is not so flat as it seems to be from a dis- tance, but has gentle undulations. We had crossed the Mississippi by a very long wooden bridge. It was my first sight of that famous river. I looked out of the window and saw it suddenly. A coffee-coloured, smooth- surfaced river, with low banks. A large, high-backed white steamboat was ascending it, like a dirty swan without a neck. In the train was a party of emigrants ; and I found FROM CHICAGO TO SAN FRANCISCO. 41 that there are three classes on American railways as well as on our own. My ticket w^as marked "First Class." This, however, became practically second, as I paid something extra for a seat in a Pullman's Palace car. Besides these, there was a car for emi- grants. I walked the whole length of the train, and came upon dozens of them, men, women, and children, lying fast asleep on the floor of the carriage. They were near to their new home. We put down some at a little station with a few wooden houses by it. As we pulled up I saw a fine "Western boy," in broad-brimmed hat and high boots, staring with all his eyes at the car. There tumbled out a woman and three children. "Ah, Bill ! " she cried, as she caught sight of the bearded giant ; and he hugged and kissed her then and there with en- thusiasm. It was a husband who had gone out first to provide a home ; — and, for farmers, what a home it is ! The first thing they do is to mow the prairie. We saw many stacks of rough hay thus provided. Then comes the plough, turning up the black soil with a cut as clean as that of a knife through butter. We crossed many streams or rivers, all black, and passed shallow lakes with black rims, and wild-fowl scared by our train. Many herds of cattle, mostly red, grazed knee-deep in the prairie grass. Birds were scarce. I saw swallows, several hawks, two flocks of what seemed to be starlings, but they were 42 TO SAN FRANCISCO AND BACK. not, and some birds like oyster catchers, flying low and following the course of the streams. Our company was American, with the exception of an artillery officer from Toronto, whom we presently dropped at Fort Kearney, to shoot buffaloes and elks. He was a very agreeable companion, and I wish he had gone on to San Francisco with me. We talked ** Indians " and ** buffaloes " late into the evening with an American, in a spare saloon, which we con- verted into a smoking-carriage. The Indians were, they said, out on the war-path then ; lately, they had crossed the line and cut the telegraph wires ; but I doubt whether they have tools heavy enough to take up any of the rails. The Pullman's Palace cars are very comfortable. I had a sofa to myself, with a table and lamp. The sofas are widened and made into beds at night. My berth was three feet three inches wide, and six feet three inches long. It had two windows looking out of the train, a handsome mirror, and was well fur- nished with bedding and curtains. Some of the passengers went to bed with great orthodoxy. I do not believe that hotel cars are run every day for ordinary passengers on the Pacific Railway. Sometimes a party charters one, but they are really little better than the ordinary Palace cars. As there are plenty of stations where food is procured, the train stops for breakfast, dinner, and supper. It is FKOM CHICAGO TO SAN FRANCISCO. 43 well, however, to be furnished with some additional provisions, as, from the specimens we have already had, the punctuality of the stoppages is not to be altogether depended upon. The Missouri is yellow, with many shifting sand- banks. Its waters were very low, in spite of the rain. I was told that we should reach dry regions as the road rose towards the Rocky Mountains. We were soon to enter on the great plains of Nebraska, and a gentleman who had lately traversed the whole route said that the track was much better westward than we had found it as yet. Omaha was then the muddiest place I ever saw, and the number of dirty boots with legs inside them tilted up round the stove in the office below — where the clerk, too, had his heels on his desk when I fetched my oil lamp to go to bed by — was enough to gladden the heart of the yawning negro who acts as shoeblack, for he charged 15 cents a pair. They say, however, that mud is rare in Omaha. The roads are generally deep with dust. The men, ap- parently far outnumbering the women, are mostly tall, strapping fellows with broad-brimmed hats, and blue trousers stuck into their boots. The houses, as a rule, are of wood, painted white. The main street was, when I saw it, a slough, navigated by one car on rails, which plied perpetually up and down. The horses were excellent, and splashed to their ears. At Omaha we took the train for San Francisco 41 TO SAN FRANCISCO AND BACK. direct, and, with the exception of an occasional stop- page for a few minutes, and two hours at Promontory, travelled day and night for nearly five days, or 110 hours. Before very long we found ourselves in the prairie ; and as the freshest impressions are some- times the best, I will here copy a letter which I wrote home from the train, at one of the convenient little tables with which the car was furnished : — " I now date from the train, and you can see by my writing that we travel with considerable steadiness. We are passing through the prairie. On my right hand as I look out of the window I see an ocean of coarse hay-grass ; this is broken to my left by a few scattered trees which mark the course of the North Platte Eiver, which we have followed for a long dis- tance. Beyond the river the grass appears again and stretches to the horizon, unbroken by any tree, but undulating like the Atlantic with a heavy ground- swell. The prairie is much like what I expected to see, though the grass is shorter than I thought it was ; but the continual progress through a boundless plain without a hedge or mark of any sort produces an impression it is hard to describe. You almost think the train must be standing still, and that you are looking at the small section of a hayfield which could be seen through a window. But the talk in the train is that the buffaloes are coming north for this short, sweet grass, and the Indians after them. In in Is '^ ■ill' 'A ''iiiiiiii 46 TO SAN FRANCISCO AND BACK. writing this last sentence I am appropriately reminded that the view from my car is laid in no long-civilised park, for I look up and see a bona fide Indian, in paint and Indian dress, who has alighted from his horse by the roadside, and is staring at the train and smoking a pipe. I have laid down my pen for a few minutes, and take it up again to remark that the view over the prairie from the right hand window of my car has become more striking. The horizon is per- fectly flat, and the most distant portion of the plain exactly resembles the sea. Several of my companions, who, like me, have never seen this sight before, are now looking out of the car and talking of the perfect resemblance of the prairie horizon to that of water. The waving of the grass under the wind adds to the deception. We have just passed a herd of antelopes." At the risk of a certain amount of repetition, I will reserve for the next chapter a more consecutive account of our journey. Now I will give you merely general impressions. We reached San Francisco safely in five days. The whole of the railroad to this city was really not quite finished, but from Omaha to Sacra- mento was in excellent order. True, the wooden bridges over the canons (pronounced canyons) were temporary, and looked from a distance as if they were built of lucifer matches. The trains creep slowly over them, and they creak terribly ; but on the solid ground the road-bed is firm, the track smooth, the time FROM CHICAGO TO SAN FRANCISCO. 47 fairly kept, the attendance good, and the provision at the stopping-places on the line excellent, considering the difficulties which must he met in supplying it. We ran through more than 1,000 miles from Omaha to Promontory, a place so called because it juts out into the Great Salt Lake. Then we entered the cars of the Central Paciific, which we did not quit till we reached Sacramento. This latter portion of the line is made by Chinese. "We passed scores of these " navvies," in Chinese suits, long pigtails, and hats like crushed beehives. When we reached Sacramento we were shifted to the new line, 134 miles long, between that place and San Francisco. It was not yet completed, since we had to take the ferry across the bay for half-an-hour. Indeed, part of that which we passed over was not made when we reached it. The sleepers were flung upon the ground ; the rails, however, were not only not fastened down, but not even laid in their places. As the train stopped I looked out of a window, and became aware of a mixed party of Irishmen and Chinese hammering, digging, shouting, cackling (Chinese cackle), in advance of us. I stepped out and walked on, to find the line in the state I have described. Lighting my cigar and sitting down on the trunk of a tree by the road-side, I saw it finished in an hour, at high pressure. A quarter of a mile, at the very least, including a portion over a long bridge, was laid 48 TO SAN FEANCISCO AND BACK. as fast as ever tlie rails could be steadied on the sleepers, with the greatest economy of nails. At last a chief Paddy laid down the hammer which he had been wielding with the precision and force of a small steam- engine, and shouted out, "Come along wid ye ! " And we came, a train of ten cars. Then the engine-driver said, *' Is it all right further on ?" " All right," said Paddy ; and away we went, 25 miles an hour, presently, under a fall moon so bright that on stopping at one of the stations I was enabled to read a book by it. But the road was decidedly rough. " Eough ! " said one of my Yankee companions ; " cussed if I think there is any track at all ; it goes like a scared bullock." I am bound, however, to say that this is the only portion of the great Atlantic and Pacific line to which such language could be applied. This will soon be put into good order, and the rest is as smooth and firm as could be wished. Indeed, it showed a very marked contrast to the Chicago and North-Western, by which I travelled to Omaha. A word about the cars before I proceed to attempt some detailed de- scription of this wonderful route. Those on the first part from Omaha to Promontory are decidedly the best. The Pullman hotel cars were not then running on the line for ordinary passengers, but were expected to do so in about a fortnight. We brought the inflam- mable Drawing-room Palace car with us after all. It heated two or three times west of Omaha, but had to FBOM CHICAGO TO SAN FRANCISCO. 43 succumb to the exigencies of its position, and ran well the rest of the way. For a time, though, we thought it would mar our journey, for we had to make up the time spent in doctoring it, and special speed is not pleasant. But all went right, and a very agreeable gentleman, who is connected with the Company and travelled in it, met our murmuring with much good temper. I came in a " Pullman's Palace sleeping car." It held twelve bottom and twelve upper berths, the former of which were converted into sofas during the day. There was a washing place, &c., at one end, and the berths were more roomy than in the " Silver Palace cars " of the Central Pacific. The track, Iiowever, on both portions of the line is equally good, wrhich is commendable, considering the pace at which it was made. Indeed, for some hundred miles in the middle of the Great Kocky Mountain desert the lines were pushed on with such a speed that they overshot -each other. The object of each rival company was to .get as many rails laid as possible. They were each to enjoy the Government grant up to the spot where they met in working order. Thus the lines were graded — i.e., prepared for the sleepers and rails — as far on in advance of their actual completion as they •could be ; and, as I said, when we got into the cars of the Central Pacific we passed some 100 miles, it may be more or less, of the Atlantic and Pacific, which could not be covered with sleepers and rails before the 4 50 TO SAN FRANCISCO AND BACK. line was met, witli an engine upon it. The lines run in some places -^itbin a few 3'ards of each other, and imagination must be left to picture the comments of the Irish navvies on the Chinese as they worked in rivalry almost side by side. There is no good feeling between these classes of labourers. We came in one place to the charred remains of some railway works, and on inquiring the cause of them I was told that they were burnt because they had been built by Chinese. But the " children of the sun " are content to work hard if they can earn money, and I suppose do not feel the degradation of a kick. Certainly, nothing could be more cheerful than their manner when they crowded, as they did in one or two places, to exchange many signs and a few English words with the passengers in the train. The greeting from the cars was, ** John ! build railway ? " " Tchess," says John, nodding and grinning. "Good,'* says Uncle Sam ; and that was about all they had to say to each other. The company ** on board " our train was almost en- tirely American. I have mentioned that we carried an English artillery officer to a small station about six miles from Fort Kearney, where he was turned out with his rifle in his hand, a fur coat, a bag, and good store of Cavendish tobacco, to shoot buffaloes and elks on the prairie. He was quite alone, but counted on making the acquaintance of some United FROM CHICAGO TO SAN FRANCISCO. 51 States officers at the fort. It was ratlier touching, though, leaving him there as we did in the dark, es- pecially as we heard that a tribe of Indians, out for mischief, had crossed the line a night or two before and taken the direction which he intended to pursue. Six companies, with some friendly Pawnees, were reported to have left in pursuit of them that day. ** Ever been out in the plains, sir ? " said a passenger to this gentleman. " No," replied he, quietly. I was glad to find, when I got out of the train to shake hands with him as he departed on his errand, that he had already made friends with an American officer who, with six soldiers, was guarding the station. "We saw no other Englishmen till we reached Pro- montory, where three came on board from Salt Lake, but left us before we had crossed the Sierra. The rest of our passengers, including divers ladies and children, were very agreeable. A week's journey in the same train makes many friends. Eailway travel- ling in America is much less tedious than in England. You can walk about, stand on the platform at either end of the cars, and make visits to other parts of the train. The engine even is accessible, though I sus- pect this is rather a stretch. Descending the Sierra Nevada, however, where the sharpest curves occur, and the train, steam being shut off, runs by its own weight down 6,000 feet into the Sacramento Valley, I made friends with the driver, and got a seat by his 52 TO SAN FRANCISCO AND BACK. side. The line is perhaps most interesting here, and I much enjoyed the descent, my intelligent new friend pointing out the various surface gold mines as vre passed, and other features of the road. As for the rest, time was wiled away by cards, con- Tersation, and reading. We had an abundant supply of books and newspapers. A boy frequently traversed the train with a good store of novels, mostly English, periodicals, &c. Even at Chyenne, a place seemingly built half of canvas on the prairie, at the foot of the Rocky Mountains, and exhibiting a dangerous-looking population of miners, &c., in big boots, broad-brimmed hats, and revolvers, the Chyenne Leader of that morn- . ing, which I bought, and which now lies open before me, had an extract from a leader in the Times on the (Ecumenical Council at Rome, dated the day before, and news that heavy storms had prevailed throughout England. The way in which the Atlantic Cable is used by the American Press in the most unlikely places, goes to show one phase of the hunger for read- ing which affects our brethren on this side of the Atlantic ; but English books and mere extracts from English newspapers are not the only signs of English literature one meets with here. The first publication I saw on the first bookstall I met with in San Fran- cisco was Punch. I must make use of the jottings and consecutive wayside notes of my route and journey in another FEOM CHICAGO TO SAN FEANCISCO. 53 chapter. The country we traversed was even wilder than I had expected. With the exception of the thriving Mormon villages and farms in the Great Salt Lake Valley, we seemed to pass through a desert, that portion of it between Chyenne and the Sierra being in many places most drear}^, and even in a sense awful, with its lifeless alkaline plains. We rushed through these hour after hour, the lips of the passengers in some cases becoming almost sore with the dry soda dust which we whirled up from the white snow-like soil traversed by the train. 54 CHAPTER y. THE GREAT RAILROAD. About two-thirds of the American continent are traversed by the road, which has only one line of rails. The plains that come first rise almost imperceptibly from Omaha to an altitude of 7,040 feet above the sea-level in 516 miles, when Chyenne, at the foot of the Kocky Mountains, is reached. Then the ascent is rapid to Sherman, the highest elevation, which Bancroft's Guide, from which I take my figures, puts at 8,424 feet, 33 miles distant from Chyenne. From Sherman there is high barren table mountain land for about 500 miles farther, when the Great Salt Lake Talley is reached, with an elevation of 4,320 feet. The road rises again from this to a height of between 6,000 and 7,000, and then drops to about 4,000 before it crosses the Sierra, at an elevation of 7,042. From the summit of this range the descent to Sacramento is rapid, the train running down mainly by its own weight to the sea-level in 105 miles, some parts of this road being much steeper than others. Steam is used for about 30 miles of this distance. THE GREAT RAILROAD. 55 With Sacramento level ground is reached ; the length of the combined Atlantic and Pacific and Central Pacific lines being — from Omaha to Sacramento 1,774 miles, and to San Francisco 1,908. 154 stations are marked in my guide-book, many of them being mere tanks for watering the engine, with sometimes only a tent beside them. The express trains do not stop at all of these. Nothing which deserves the name of a town, though some are called cities, is seen between Omaha and Sacramento. Chyenne, the largest, has not emerged from the board and canvas stage, and divers others consist of tents. There are, however, solid erections in several places for the purposes of the railway, and a few of these will in time grow into permanent towns ; but a long portion of the route is 60 hopelessly barren that I doubt if it will ever do more than carry the track. We left Omaha at nine o'clock one Wednesday morning. At first the country showed much the same degree of civilisation seen the other side of the Mis- souri, but in about four hours the farms died away, with the exception of some adventurous dots of houses, which were dropped on the outskirts of the settle- ments. These, however, soon ceased, and we ran in a perfectly straight track, with an interminable row^ of telegraph posts by our side, across the prairie. I have already described its appearance. Its horizon so closely resembled the sea that it was hard to 66 TO SAJf FEA^'CISCO A^"D BACK. believe we were looking oyer a plain -which, in time, will be ploughed and reaped. Here is a prospective cornfield some 500 miles wide and 1,C00 long. It is impossible to forecast the future of Kansas, Nebraska, and the watered regions north and south of them, into which the tide of agricultural emigration is creeping from Europe and the Eastern States. New England finds for itself a yet newer life in these inexhaustibly fertile territories, still mainly occupied by the Indian, the elk, and the buffalo. **A big country, ours," said several of my companions to me over and over again, with an air of satisfaction which could not have been greater if they had made it themselves. But it is not the bigness which makes it precious. The British. possessions to the north of it are as large. Its soil and sun and rivers give it worth and a weight whicli the Union must be trimmed carefully to carry. I do not say that throughout the whole route I came across any serious sentiment of independence, but distant California, with its gold and grain, sneers and swears at greenbacks. "I know nothing," said a prosperous man to me in the train, "of promises to pay : " and wayside fruitsellers, to whom I, having then no specie, ofiered notes for pears, &c., cursed them with a will. But most of the Americans with whom I conversed were apparently united at heart. The sun set over the prairie before our first night in the train, shining last upon a western cloud till it THE GREAT RAILROAD. 57 looked like a firmament of gold. Lamps were lit ; cards, reading, and conversation still went on in the little slice of civilisation which was rushing through the prairie, now stopping at a station — where the soldiers who guarded it came on hoard and hegged for any papers we could spare, and told us how not long ago they had had a hrush with the Indians, and, to use their own words, "taken sixty scalps" — and then scaring antelopes into the safe darkness of distance. At last the attendant came round to con- vert the sofas into heds, and let down the upper herths. It was an odd experience, that going to hed of some thirty ladies, gentlemen, and children, in, practically, one room. For two nights I had a young- married couple sleeping in the berth above mine. The lady turned in first, and presently her gown was hung out over the rail to which her bed curtains were- fastened. But further processes of unrobing were indicated by the agitation of the drapery which con- cealed her nest. As the same curtain served for both berths — hers and mine — the gentleman held her portion together over my head when it was necessary for me to retire. At last all were housed, and some snores rose above the rattle of the train. I did not sleep much the first night, but looked over the moonlit prairie from my pillow. We were then passing through the great buff*alo country. Before the week was spent, however, we had all become as used to the exigencies. ■68 TO SAN FRANCISCO AND BACK. of our position as if we had been born and bred in a Pullman's car. The ladies slid out of their berths in a very tumbled toilet, and, getting out their •combs, toothbrushes, and sponges, did such delibe- rate justice to their charms as circumstances would permit. On Thursday morning I woke early, to see the grass on the plains shorter, and the ground broken by juttings of rock. It was bitterly cold, and I was Tery glad of the red blanket with which my berth was furnished. I looked out of the window and saw a string of antelopes cantering off in the early sunshine. If you have never dressed on your back in a box two feet high, j'ou can, at least, suppose that it is incon- venient to do so. "\Ye breakfasted at Chyenne, and had tea, coffee, antelope, beef, mutton, trout, ham, eggs, &c. This is the current bill of fare on the line. The chops were generally as tough as hanks of whipcord, and the knives as blunt as bricklayers' trowels. One of our hosts told me that he kept three fishermen and two hunters to provide food for the trains. I told Mm I wished he would keep his meat a little, too. No wine or beer was seen till we reached Promontory, when Californian claret made its appearance. We had weak tea with our dinner. I might as well tell you here something about American cookery. It is rather unintelligible. Gumbo 60 TO SAN FRANCISCO AND BACK. soup, hominy, squash pie, sweet potatoes, and corn heads boiled whole, seem to be favourite dishes. The beef is good, the mutton not so well-flavoured as ours. Turkey appears everywhere, and eggs have a hundred forms. The bread is not hearty; the tea is bad. Claret is reasonably cheap, but, with this exception, the price of wines is prodigious. Nobody calls for port or sherry. Most people drink only iced water at meals. Oysters are abundant, and dressed in count- less ways. Clam soup is excellent. Breakfast is made a great meal of in America, and is, correctly, on the eastern side of the continent, finished with huge slices of melon. In California you eat melon before your proper breakfast is brought. There are great stalls of peaches in the streets, but they are not half so good as ours in England. Meals are taken early. Each guest has a separate dish of what he calls for. No extra charge is made for ice-creams, &c. : the waiter puts a whole shape before you, and you may take what you like. The ices are better than ours. Our stopping-place for breakfast was the point of departure for divers of our fellow-passengers to Denver and the mines in Colorado. We took up also several miners for the Sweetwater Gold Mines in Wyoming, the stages for which left the route at Brjan. It was curious to see a rough-booted, broad-brimmed fellow strutting up and down the train with his revolver Of THE GREAT RAILROAD. 61 slung behind him like a short blunt tail. The breaks- man of our train said to me, " Ah, sir, we don't care for Indians : these boys on the line are more dangerous ; you are obliged to be very careful : there is no law liere. I always carry a revolver." But, of course, if you leave them alone they don't meddle with you. They only shoot their friends and acquaintances, as a rule. I was entertained with a conversation between two of them which I happened to overhear one day in my car. The first words I caught were, ** Well, sir, I must say you are a curious individual ; I always pull on my man first." '*You see," replied his companion, ^' it happened thus. I was dining" — he mentioned some place known to them both — " and there were two dogs fighting in the room. Sol kicked them out and sat down again. He " — this referred to some acquaint- ance — "you know him; well, he came up and said, * I hope 3'ou enjoy your dinner.' * Yes,' says I, * but why ? ' * Well,' says he, * one of them dogs was mine, and as sure as you live that is the last dinner you will -ever eat. I'll shoot you down as soon as you cross the threshold.' Well, so I finished my dinner and went out. Sure enough he let fly at me, but he was too close : I knocked his hand up, and the ball w^ent into the ceiling. So I ran back into the parlour and called the missus. * Missus,' says I, * will you lend me a pistol ? ' So she fetched one out of a drawer, but it warn't no good — one of them little things. So b55 TO SAX FRANCISCO AND BACK. I bolted out as quick as I could, fori knew there was a friend of mind t'other side of the road who would lend me a good 'un. Well, he let fly at me again and missed, but I got into " — he mentioned the name of his friend's house — " and then I . . . ." Here, some noise made me lose the exact end of the story, but I gathered that he got a good pistol and shot the owner of the dog. Several of my companions of this sort were enter- taining fellows. I had a good deal of talk with some, and heard the ups and downs of mining adventure : how such and such a mine, now of incalculable -worth, was sold for a pistol ; how such and such members of my informant's party were shot by Indians : how he, in a place he pointed out, had himself shot so and so. Some gentlemen in the train were fountains of tobacco- juice, and one in remarkably full play was pointed out to me as a leading member of his state government. I talked to him as he sat with his legs cocked up over the back of a sofa. *' Been to such and such a mine, sir," said he, "and it's dusty; look here; " and he slapped the leg of his trousers, which gave out a white cloud around him as if he had patted a flour sack. The sun gi-ew hot with the day, and w^e reached the highest elevation in the Rocky Mountains crossed by the train, at about 11. The engine panted slowly up to this, but the road presented no great engineering difficulties. The summit reached, we took a northerly THE GREAT EAILROAD. 6S- direction through a bleak country covered with a number of granite heaps, in many cases exactly re- sembling the tors on Dartmoor. The old emigrant- road frequently showed itself to the right or the left, and we passed a toiling team of Mormons on their way to the Great Salt Lake. We got to Laramie at. twenty minutes after 12, and, crossing the Laramie- plains, over which the Kocky Mountains showed grandly on our left, spent the rest of the day in pass- ing through a miserable wilderness, broken by edges of strata, and occasionally spotted with the skulls,, skeletons, and withered carcases of cattle that had perished in crossing them. Towards evening patches of alkaline soil began to- show themselves, and I could in some slight measure imagine the privations to which the emigrants are ex- posed who cross this region on foot. It is not barren, however, in all senses, for it abounds with coal, and at Carbon (well named) we fed the engine straight from the mine, shortly afterwards passing through strata of coal, which cropped out above the surface of the ground. We crossed the North Platte again near Kawlings, at 6 p.m., by a temporary bridge- of timber, which looked unpleasantly fragile, but, being traversed slowly, carried us w^ell over. These- trestle bridges are common. They are to be replaced by firmer structures, but answered their purpose^ Some creaked as if they were made of wickerwork. <54 TO SAN FEANCISCO AND BACK. The view over the broken plains by moonlight, which lit up their patches of white soda soil, was very striking, but the dust was painfully unpleasant. The only herbage consisted of sage gi-ass or brush. When the construction train was engaged upon this region, water had to be fetched from a considerable distance, and the names of two of the stations, "Bitter Creek " and " Salt "Wells," indicated the destitution of the route. We woke up early on Friday, to the same high, broken, dreary plains ; but there was a little eatable grass. We passed a party of Indians with their squaws and children in full paint, and the lamest horses I ever saw in my life. The streams which \re accompanied flowed down towards the Great Salt Lake. We had crossed the watershed of the Rocky Mountains, and at about 9 a.m. reached Echo Caiion, with high red granite clififs on our right hand, snow- patched mountains having previously shown them- selves on our left. Echo was soon reached, and we entered Weber Caiion at 10 a.m. This is a fine gorge. We followed a bright, tumbling stream, passing the *•' 1,000-mile tree," and running through a gap called the Devil's Gate, into a wide, flat bottom, like some parts of the Valley of the Rhone, at 11. This was the beginning of the Great Salt Lake Valley, the mountains which surround it soon showing themselves in beautiful variety of shape and colour. Here a 66 TO SAN FRANCISCO AND BACK. revelation awaited us. We came shortly upon the shore of the lake. Smiling farms, neat small stations, white and brown cottages, children selling melons and milk, squared fields, English stacks, herds of cattle, trim fences, appeared as if by magic — a cheerful con- trast to the wilderness through which we had passed. The bright blue waves of the lake, the finely-formed mountains around, with villages nestling at their foot, and little streams brought down from their inner stores of fresh water, gave an air of loveliness to the whole scene. This was Mormon Land. The mountain streams, led hither and thither, have made it what it is. The dreary sage grass was passing away for the cornfield, but the absence of timber still showed one great want of the land. The settlers, however, have planted fruit trees extensively ; and each cottage has its orchard of pears, peaches, and apples. Now this healthy- looking, busy, English- chattering crowd at the station, with ladies in parasols and chignons, was Mormon. Say what we will about the errors of Brigham Young, I could not but honour the wisdom which had recognised the depth of soil that lay under this plain — whose surface was in many places whitened with saline incrustations, but was rendered fertile with fresh w^ater drawn from the hills- — and the perception of beauty which had led him to choose so lovely a surrounding for his converts. THE GREAT RAILROAD. 67 We stopped at a station where a party of emigrants had just arrived. Their luggage lay on the ground. The children were playing about, the men and women standing in groups or sitting on their trunks and boxes, gazing on the bright blue lake with its fringe of mountain, which they had reached at last. It must have seemed a paradise to them. I cannot convey to you the sense of relief with which the eye looked upon cornfields, cottages, and glittering ripple after only two days' prospect of dry desolation. We skirted the water for a few hours, and then the wil- derness came upon us again on our way to the Sierra Nevada, and I think the moonlight journey of the next night and the whole of the succeeding day re- vealed as barren a prospect as I ever beheld. True^ we ran partly by the Humboldt, which irrigates a narrow strip of land, and has a few ranches, with some herds of cattle and horses, by its side ; but the predominant scenery was most desolate, the river itself at last disappearing into the ground. Hour after hour we looked from our windows upon the dry sage-brush-covered waste, and the dry mountain-tops beyond it. There was no life to speak of on the plains. We saw a few herdsmen on horseback, with broad hats and Mexican stirrups ; and once, when we stopped at a small station for water, a party of hid- eously painted Indian squaws, with brown, half-naked children, came up to beg. But they begged with 68 TO SAN FRANCISCO AND BACK. little energy, holdiDg out their hands in silence for scraps of food, which they clutched after a half-shy, half-savage fashion. The real natives of the country appeared to he Chinese, who have built the railway eastward up to the Salt Lake. We soon found ourselves among these, and passed many of their encampments, out- side of which in the evening they were cooking and chattering in groups. I should say that the upper part of the Salt Lake, which is over 100 miles long and 35 wide, is skirted by unreclaimed, dreary white wastes of saline crusts, similar, I imagine, to those seen on the borders of the Dead Sea. It lies at an elevation of somewhat more than 4,000 feet above the ocean-level. The City of the Saints lies about 30 miles off the line, and was reached by stages from Uintah. A railway, however, has now been built to replace the road. I saw no boat on the lake, but there were many gulls, and cattle grazed in the saltings close to its edge. It smells much like the Essex marshes, though a gentleman in the train fancied there was a sul- phureous taint in the air. It was only by thinking about it and sniffing that I detected the saline odour of the breeze. The people looked very healthy. We passed through a God-forsaken-looking country all that Friday night, and dropped one poor fellow near a ranche, but far from anything like a village. THE GREAT RAILROAD. 69 I did not know why the train was stopped, or I suppose I should have given him a dollar or so. I was taking my evening stroll up the train ahout 9 P.M. ; the moon was shining brightly, and I had stopped on the platform of one of the forward cars, when we pulled up and set down a man with a blanket rolled up on his shoulder. I heard him say, " I've had nothing to eat since ." Then he added, to the guard, " Much obliged for your polite- ness. I've got a dollar." " That won't help you much," said the man ; " get down." So he got down, and we were off before I realised that the poor wretch had been dropped in the wilderness, having been found out in the attempt to ride without a ticket. It was bitterly cold when I awoke the next morning (Saturday) to find the train still in the same horrible desert. We parted with a crowd of miners at Elko for the White Pine district, where, they say, silver can be cut out of the rock with a chisel. The riches of this district are concealed under a forbidding out- side. People said that the mineral wealth of the region through which we were passing was incalcu- lable, but comparatively untouched. Hour after hour we rushed on through the sage-brush plains skirted by these precious mountains. We saw a few wander- ing Shoshones. The alkaline dust annoyed us again, and my finger nails by this time had become quite 70 TO SAN FKANCISCO AND BACK. brittle. We were all in a wearisome humour through this day, and were glad to get to bed. Early next morning (Sunday) we found ourselves ascending the Sierra by a number of sharp curves. The steepest gradient is 116 feet in the mile, and some curves have a radius of only 600 feet. There are, they say, 40 miles of curves with a radius of less than 1,000 feet. In some places the train seemed to make an half-circle. It was freezing sharply on the summit. Humour asserts that political interests have taken the line over a needlessly difficult ridge, and that a much better pass could have been found to San Francisco if Sacramento had not insisted on being made the first terminus of the line. The scenery to the right, where several lakes show themselves far below the tract, is veiy beautiful ; but it is spoilt by the snow-sheds, which cover the line for some forty miles, and afford only glimpses of the country far beneath the traveller. These sheds are made of sawed pine timber, covered with plank, and a more convenient arrangement for a long bonfire I never saw. This part of the line must be burnt some day, as the chimney of every engine goes fizzing through it like a squib, and the woodwork is as di-y as a bone. For some time from the summit we passed through mountains wholly covered with pine and cedar, and ran carefully round the heads of valleys and spurs of THE GREAT RAILROAD. 71 the range. As I have said, steam was shut off, and men were put at all the breaks. It struck me that there was greater care shown by the officials in this part of our route. The breaksmen and conductors had hitherto smoked and chewed whenever they could, which was almost always ; but when I offered a cigar to a fresh Californian breaksman here he said, " Thank you, sir, but it's against the rules to smoke while on duty." Presently we came down to sawmills and cows, the effect being strikingly Swiss when the Chinese were not in sight. Then we reached the surface gold mines, where the soil on both sides was pitted with diggings, and many water-troughs led streams for the miners to wash for the metal. At last we got a glimpse of the yellow Californian plain, and soon found ourselves on the flats — park-like breadths of grass and cornland, studded with scrub oaks and blazing in the sunshine. We reached Sacramento — a hot, dusty town — between 12 and 1. Magnificent pears, grapes, &c., were offered at the left hand window of our train, while on the right we saw the yellow river with its white steamboats. Here we were shifted to the cars of the unfinished portion of the rail, and took ten hours to reach San Francisco, though the distance traversed is only 134 miles. Part of the route lay over a perfectly flat plain covered with cornfields and cattle, and skirted by distant hills on either side, the 72 TO SAN FRANCISCO AND BACK. river lying some distance off on our right. The value of these plains is increasing yearly ; they are very ex- tensive, one corn valley alone leading off from them with a flat bottom 17 miles wide and nearly 200 long. A few years ago these priceless fields could have been secured on the Government terms of a dollar and a-quarter an acre. Not only is the soil rich and deep, but the farmer may be sure of sunshine during harvest. The corn is not even put into sheaves, but gathered up to the steam threshing machine from where it lies. The straw is burnt, as no one thinks of using manure. Towns and Tillages are springing up like beds of mushrooms along the railway which traverses this precious district, and already the Cali- fornian sells his wheat at a profit in Liverpool. The latter part of the road lies through a country of mounds, and a ferry is taken across the bay for half-an-hour to San Francisco. We left a straight wake in the smooth bay, as under a glorious moon we steamed towards the twinkling lights of the ciij, having the Golden Gate or entrance to the harbour on our right. It was past 11 when I reached my hotel, but, though so late, I got at once what the sense of a week's racket, accumulated soda dust, and engine smoke, had made me long for — a delicious, roomy warm bath — and enjoyed a chamber more than two feet high. I will tell you something about San Francisco in my next chapter. CHAPTER VI. SAN FRANCISCO. This is, I should think, the most hilly town in the world. Laid out in squares, like other American cities, almost every vista presents a slope, with some- times a gradient of one in six, inasmuch as the ground on which it is built is simply a collection of steep sandhills. The inconvenience of this is, of course, very great; and though it may be a fine thing in theory to defy the ups and downs of nature and show a map as rectangular as that of Philadelphia, the San Franciscans are beginning to make cuttings in their city. This, however, leaves the houses which lined the street high up in the air. I called on the Bishop of California one afternoon. The " Directory " said he lived at 348, Second Street. So I went to Second Street, and found in the part where his house ought to have been, a fresh-made cliff, 50 feet high, on either side, and a crowd of navvies carting away stuff. It was impossible to reach the Bishop's nest from the street, so I beat round to get to the back of it. On arriving at the spot I asked where the Bishop lived. 74 TO SAN FRANCISCO AND BACK. " The Bishop ? " said a jolly-looking gentleman to me ; " why, his house has tumbled down into the street. But come with me : I know some one who will tell you where he has gone to." And he turned into a bar, saying, *^ Sir, what will you drink ? " It is mortal offence to refuse such an invitation, so I " put a name " to some American liquid. ** Now then," said he to the bar-keeper, "tell the gentleman ■where the Bishop lives ; " and I found that he had flitted to the other end of the city, but I had to go elsewhere for his address. One advantage, if it be such, in this perpendicular style of architecture, is that in whichever direction you walk you soon have a bird's-eye view of the place. It is well situated on the bay; but the beach, at least that portion of it frequented by the inhabitants, is some six miles off. The shore of the bay by the town is full of busy wharves, and set thick with masts. The hotels, churches, and other public buildings in the centre of San Francisco, have large pretensions, some of them being really very fine ; but as the city stretches out in readiness to grow to any size, the streets soon pass into steep sandy roads, in which the wind makes deep drifts, and the wheels of the ** spider waggons " common in America sink half- w^ay up to the axle. Many street cars ply in the most navigable thoroughfares. As usual, there are no cabs, but lumbering " silver-plated " hackney coaches SAN FEANCISCO. 75 with two horses, for riding in one of which from the landing-stage of the ferry to the hotel I was charged two dollars and a-half. The pavement of Montgomery Street, the chief thoroughfare, is thronged by crowds of men who all seem busy and in the prime of life. It combines business and pleasure, being at once the Wall Street and Broadway of the city. Every nation and tongue has representatives here. Californians, merchants and miners, Mexicans — I have seen them, with high- peaked saddle and lasso, riding by — negroes, the broadest Irish, Germans, and Chinese make up the multitude. Sudden fortunes bring the miner into the best hotels. The man sitting near you at dinner may be well dressed, but he may have hands horny and brown as a navigator's, and a navigator's appetite. In the same room, perhaps at the same table, are elegant Californian belles. The way in which society, as seen in the streets and inns, is jumbled up here, is very striking. But though there are evil-looking, underground, gas-lit saloons, in which sirens sit to greet any visitor, close to the best hotels, the be- haviour of the people in the streets is outwardly decent, and you seldom see a policeman. The quarter of the Chinese up Sacramento Street is very curious. They live here in thousands, and have made a portion of the city almost their own, having theatres and joss-houses, or temples, where 76 TO SAN FRANCISCO AND BACK. they play and pray in the most orthodox national fashion. I spent many hours in prowling and shop- ping among them. They say you may buy rats to eat, but most unpleasant-looking pork seems to be their chief meat. All is done after Chinese ways. The signs of the shops are written and the books kept in Chinese. I bought a pair of shoes and a wonderful hat of " Wo Cum," who tied up my parcel with a stiip of grass, and entered the transaction at the wrong end of a rice-paper book, with a brush dipped in Indian ink rubbed on a saucer, in compli- cated letters an inch square. Then I wanted a Chinese coat. He showed me a silk one. **Inglis good," said Wo Cum. ''No," replied I; "no Inglis, give Chinaman's." And he despised me for buying one of native fabric and manufacture. I was very anxious to see a joss-house. Cali- fornians seem to treat such places with contempt, and I asked in vain some half-dozen persons whether they could direct me to one. So I went into the shop of " Loo Sing," w^ho, far from being jealous of a Christian going to see his house of prayer, sold me, nodding and smiling, a bundle of joss-sticks, things like thin bulrushes, made of pastil, and burnt before idols. Then said I, adopting his own Chinese English, " Want see joss-house. Chinaman's god." ** Oh ! ah ! Tchess," said John, grinning; " I show." But even when he had directed me to the right corner SAN FRANCISCO. 77 of the street I was still at a loss, seeing nothing hut ordinary houses. At last I caught a passing China- man, and made him take me to the sanctuary. It was approached through a shop. We went upstairs and along a passage ; then he waved his hand as he led me into a good-sized darkened chamber, where I found myself for the first time in my life in the pre- sence of real heathen idolatry. The air was heavy with incense. An altar, some 8 feet by 3 feet, and 3 feet high, draped in embroidered cloth, with two mats for kneeling before it, stood at one end of tho chamber. It had upon it two burning lamps with slender stems, two candlesticks, a vessel with smoul- dering incense, and two vases of artificial flowers. Immediately behind it, in a shallow recess, was the idol, with drapery concealing all but the small wooden face of a doll, whose dark hair was parted in the middle. At the first glance there was little to dis- tinguish what I saw from a dirty altar in a dark Roman Catholic chapel. The incense, the drapery, the vases of artificial flowers, the burning lamps, the joss-sticks of worshippers stuck in front like tapers, and the wooden shrouded doll, at once illustrated an anecdote, which I had disbelieved, of a Chinaman who visited a Jesuit chapel, and came out, saying, " Good, joss-house same." " This Chinaman's god ? " said I to my guide. ** Tchess," replied he, " Chinaman's god ; " and some new thoughts came into my mind. 78 TO SAN FRANCISCO AND BACK. I visited the Chinese theatre, and was fortunate in being present on a benefit night, when the entertain- ment was wholly for the Chinese. I w^as the only- white man present, with the exception of a police- man in plain clothes, who turned out to be a native of my own county, Sufi'olk, in England. I gave him a cigar, which he smoked then and there while on duty. The play was so far intelligible that it involved love and jealousy. The theatre was crammed ; the actors who did not play in the piece sitting on either side of the stage. There was apparently a religious element in the drama, for an altar stood in the middle of the stage, and the two chief performers, dressed in long straight embroidered robes, with loose sleeves, knelt down before it for a minute with their backs to the audience. There appeared to be an Emperor and his Queen, who quarrelled be- cause of some attentions paid by the former to a young lady, who sang a song accompanied by a gong, bones, and a sort of fiddle. The Queen pulled the Emperor's beard, whereupon he beat her. Then came, gorgeously dressed, the Council of State, who drank tea from tiny cups with his Majesty. But something went amiss, for the Queen enlisted their services in her favour, and they pulled the Emperor about the stage by his hind legs. Then he sang a comic song, and the mandarins played at leapfrog. SAN FRANCISCO. 79 The play was followed by a tumbling performance, in which the chief feat of the tumblers was to jump off two tables, set one upon another, and fall flat upon their backs with a thud which ought to have broken their ribs. But they got up and did it again. The whole business was a caricature of a pantomime, in which all in turn were clowns and pantaloons. The audience appeared to be gratified, for they laughed much. The price for the whole theatre, exclusive of two boxes tenanted by Chinese aristocrats, was the same— half a dollar, and barbarous music was kept up throughout the performance. The Chinese are making progress here. They have built the Central Pacific Kailway, but they do more than supply hands for hard work. There are wealthy mercantile houses owned and carried on by Chinese merchants. You not only see the humble laundry of Ho Ki, where the proprietor himself, in spectacles and pigtail, is patiently ironing a shirt by the window, but large wholesale establishments and offices with *' Ho Sing, Wo Chung & Co." announced over the doors. They are fighting Californians with their own weapons and on their own ground ; and they are mak- ing such way that a popular comic placard in the town, representing the Irishman and the Chinaman with the head and boots of the American in their respective mouths, ends by picturing the Chinaman as having swallowed both Paddy and Uncle Sam. *' Ah, sir," 80 TO SAN FRANCISCO AND BACK. several persons said to me here, " the Chinese will soon reach New York, and presently you will see them in London." Their numbers do not increase very much, however, at present; but when once the China- man comes, not only with his gods and his theatre, but with his family, and gives up the sentiment which now makes him stipulate that his bones shall be re- stored to his own land, it is impossible to speculate on the Chinese flood which may pour into America. No wonder an industrious, money-loving people like the Chinese admire California. This country, twice the size of Great Britain, possesses everything which makes a nation rich. Mountains and plains — the former covered with magnificent timber and filled with all mineral wealth, the latter deep with fertile soil, sea board rivers, a most genial climate, and a position commanding the American and Eastern continents — make California the pregnant terminus of the first Atlantic and Pacific Railway. Great as has been its growth, it is still in its infancy. The consciousness of having unbounded opportunities gives the Califor- nian an appetite for progressive change so great, and a craving for a fiercer speed so keen, that a native said to me one day, ** We enjoy earthquakes." This, of course, is not true, but the sentiment is suggestive. Earthquakes are the flies in the ointment here. People were then looking out for one, as the weather had been peculiarly oppressive; and I saw many handsome SAN FRANCISCO. 61 houses being built of wood, at least likely to be thrown down. A gentleman resident there came into my room while I was writing, and told me the street talk was then of earthquakes. You heard the word from groups at the corners. He said, "Last October travellers would not come into this hotel for a month." As I inhabited an apartment in the top storey, I expected to have the sensation at its height if it had come. Besides earthquakes, San Francisco is very appre- hensive of fire, and the arrangements for the assem- blage of engines (steamers) and notice to the inha- bitants are excellent. As elsewhere in America, tbe city is divided into wards, and its parts are numbered, the San Franciscan pocket-books having the numbers in them. Frequent telegraph signals communicate with a central building, which has a large bell. I have already referred to the procedure in case of fire. Suppose I live near telegraph station No. 56, and my house catches fire, I give a signal at once. The big bell tolls five times quickly, and then after a pause six times. The firemen all know where to go, and people in the street turn to their pocket-books to see where the fire has broken out. This tocsin is repeated to make the warning sure. It rang sometimes twice a night. An industrial exhibition was open while I was there, and set forth well the resources of the country. I was struck by the abundance and apparent excellence of the machinery. The products, however, which first 6 82 TO SAN FRANCISCO AND BACK. take the eye on a hot summer day are fruit aud wine; the former is excellent and abundant. Strawberries are grown the whole year round ; and the grapes, figs, pears, melons, limes, and peaches might make the mouth of a statue water. Melons are mostly eaten be- fore breakfast. The waiter brings you one, say a foot and a half round, to begin with, as soon as you take your seat at the table. One morning I saw a gentle- man break his fast with half a sphere which would have served for a dinner party of a dozen in London. I laid down my knife and fork to look at him, and he ate it up with a spoon. The other fare was good. Venison, and occasionally turtle, salmon, smelts, perch, cod, oysters, frogs, squirrels, quails, turkeys, beef, mutton, pork, &c.; with pastry and ice creams, Indian corn (of which the green ear is boiled whole, but- tered and eaten as a dog gnaws a bone), sweet pota- toes, huge tomatoes, and other vegetables, formed our ordinary dinner. Breakfast is similarly abundant, and lasts from 6 to 12. Luncheon comes on from 12.30 to 2.30, dinner from 4 to 7, tea from 7.30 to 9, supper from 9 to 12. Though labour is dear here, food is not ; the charge for daily board at this, which is one of the best hotels, being three dollars. Salaries are not bad, as the head waiter, who had been servant in a gentleman's family in England, told me he received eighty dollars a month, or about 240Z. a year. But trifles are dear. SAN FBANCISCO. 83 *' A bit," or 6cl., seemed the smallest current coin. You have a bottle, or rather glass, of soda water. '' How much ? " " A bit," and so on. Education is made much of here. Some of the schools are very fine. I went over the Lincoln *' grammar," or, as we should call it, "national" school, though the scholars remain longer than they *' there are pretty many, but I am sure he would see you if you walked upstairs." *'I won't trouble him,"" said I ; *' besides, I have not come prepared to seek a presentation." I referred to my dress — wideawake and overcoat, which I wore because the wind was keen, though the sun was bright. He saw what I meant and laughed, adding, *' We don't think about that here, sir," So I strolled up the stairs, whicli were public, and found myself, without introduction, in a large room, where General was hearing aa 192 TO SAN FRANCISCO AND BACK. application from some contractor at a table, a secretary sitting at another, and an old gentleman standing hefoi'e tlie fire with an unlit cigar in his mouth. A negro porter sat by a door on the other side of the room. The General, too, asked me most courteously if I wanted to see the President. I replied that had I known he received that day I would have sought, with others, the honour of making my bow to him, but that I did not like to go in as I was. He smiled, and said that made no difference, and added, " Send your card in. Sit down." So I gave him my card and. sat down, while he went on with his business. In a minute or two I was called into an inner room, and found the President standing before the fire smoking a cigar. He was exceedingly courteous, and honoured me with some conversation about Utah and the great line, the former of which he knew much about personally, having been there. Then I made my bow, he shook hands, and I went out certainly much impressed with the extreme facility of access granted by the head of the Government to visitors. 'The whole thing was so unexpectedly informal that I felt it difficult to realise that I had had an interview with so great a personage as the President of the United States. He is a very gentlemanly man, with a quiet, deliberate voice, and an eye that looks straight at you when he speaks. He wore an ordinary morn- A SHORT RUN SOUTHWARD. 193 ing dress, almost scrupulously well- fitting ; and I noticed that, like the majority of Americans, he had SL small white hand and very neat boots. There can be no greater mistake than to represent the conventional American in a tail coat and bulgy boots. I did not notice a tail coat worn in the morn- ing while in America, nor did I ever see a more clean iieeled race in my life. Even in the rough West, where trousers are worn stuffed into '* Wellingtons " — though they are not known by that name there — the boots were almost invariably neatly built. Our guide in the Sierra wore a high-heeled pair, which might have come out of the most fashionable shop in Eegent Street. The President is exposed to much detail of work, which must be very wearisome. He receives, I forget whether it is twice or three times a week, and is, of course, constantly pestered with personal applications for office. It was exceeding good-natured in him to see me, a wandering Englishman, as he did after the reception hours had passed. No one, moreover, could be more pleasantly courteous than General , with whom, before I left, I had some very agreeable ■conversation. And this courtesy descends to lower officials. Again and again I ventured to introduce myself to such as the officers of Public Charity and Correction, and Emigration, and nowhere did I find a ^' Jack in office." All everywhere offered me all the 13 194 TO SAN FRANCISCO AND BACK. facilities in their power, often puttiug themselves to trouble in showing me what I wanted to see. The ordinary attendants, moreover, never seemed to expect a fee. Only once did I have a hint of the kind, and that was from a convict boat crew, in party-coloured dresses, when their officer offered to row me across the East River from the Penitentiary. They suggesteci that they had no "baccy." The absence of formality in American institutions is very striking. Perhaps it is most so in the law- courts. We find it difficult to realise a judge on the bench in a frock coat and pointed moustache. And as the prisoner stands on the floor of the court, which is covered with chairs, in which the counsel sit in all manner of beards and easy morning dress, it is some- what difficult at first to realise who is who and what is going on. The friends of the prisoner sit below, close by the counsel, in a place reserved for them. But I must close this rambling chapter. I left Washington impressed with a mingled sense of mag- nificence, incompleteness, and simplicity. No place has a finer Capitol, no nation has a more accessible chief magistrate, and I should think no city is as yet so imperfectly realised as the metropolis of the United States of America. rHESIDEKT GRANT. 196 CHAPTER XV. RELIGION IN THE UNITED STATES. I SIT down to devote a chapter to the aspect of reli- gion in the United States, specially in reference to the Episcopal Church ; and I do so with some hesi- tation, for though I have seen and heard a good deal of the working of that Church, I cannot allow my pen to run so freely on these matters as I have on such outside phases of daily life as present themselves to the ordinary tourist in America. Let me, however, set down some of the impressions I have received. I was not prepared to find such strong evidences of popular respect for religion as met me ever^-where during my tour. I found them not only in the city and the country, but in the forest, the steamboat, and the railway station. While in the Yo Semite Valley I was at once asked to hold a service on Sunday. The Californian steamboat had a notice full of godly advice to young men posted in the saloon ; and, to give a characteristic instance of the importunity with which religion occasionally presents itself in the KELIGION IN THE UNITED STATES. 197 United States, let me tell you that when I bought a sleeping-car ticket at Sacramento for my long journey eastward across the Continent, the clerk, on learning I was a clergyman, took me to task for travelling by a train in which I should have to spend the Sunday. Of course I did not choose Sunday travelling, but in these long journeys it is sometimes very difficult to avoid it ; and when once I tried to do so, starting on a Monday morning, I did not get away from the train till the following Sunday night. However, on the occasion to which I refer, the clerk, knowing the length of the journey, and not knowing or asking what my engagements were, took upon himself to rebuke me for securing a sleeping berth when I did. The man was perfectly sincere, and I mention the matter to show how religious feeling rises to the surface in America. This was far from being a solitary instance of similar punctiliousness. Indeed, a clergyman using the simple natural freedom of an English Christian must expect to find Americans sometimes provokingly exacting when he travels in their country. Again and again I came across phases of religious severity which were strikingly importunate, if not always radically matured. There is a sort of tartness, like that of unripe fruit, in some growths of American religion. The old Puritan stock still bears strong crops, and spiritual food is frequently given before it has time to mellow. Americans are very 198 TO SAN FRANCISCO AND BACK. fond of rules and regulations, and this taste shows itself often in the conyentional codes of piety which are adopted by the various Churches. In theh- country, private judgment is more or less limited to the choice of some particular community, the members of which profess the same opinions and look sharply after each other. I am bound to say, however, that one Church will receive members from another ; but the names of applicants are submitted to the congre- gation with whom they wish to be in communion. I have heard them read out on Sunday. All this shows the prevalence of a minute ecclesiastical super- vision which runs through the whole mass of pro- fessing Christians in America. I except, of course, the Romish Church, which holds no communion with others ; and I have reason to believe that the " Pi?o- testant Episcopal," or, as it is more generally called, the " Episcopal," takes a more exclusive attitude than other Protestant communities. All, however, are called "Churches." The term "Dissenter" or " Nonconformist " is, of course, unknown ; and a " chapel " is merely the building attached to a church for the purpose of meetings, lectures, subsidiary services, Sunday-schools, &c. There is no body corresponding to a national church which admits catholicity of views among its members. Churches and parties are sharply defined, though, as I have said, among the chief Protestant communities there RELIGION IN THE UNITED STATES. 199 is some interchange of membership, and ministers frequently unite in the prosecution of some common object. But the views of the majority prevail in each •church. A congregation of Episcopalians is, I think, throughout the country, more distinctly high or low than with us. I say " congregation," because the ■word *' parish," as understood in England, has no meaning in America. It is constantly used, but in a congregational, not territorial, sense. And there seems to be no real representation of the minority in the government of any Church. The minority must conform or depart. There is practically no historical code or supreme court to which appeal may be made by such as cannot trim their sentiments to any which may possess the current or prevailing majority. A margin of a few High or Low Church- men among the Episcopalians can by their votes colour the whole government of the Church, and procure the promotion of the adherents of their own party alone. One effect, however, of the American system is to promote schism. A party gets pre- eminence and keeps the other out of place. And this is a process which accumulates in intensity till the baffled minority breaks off and forms a new com- munity for itself. When that is done, there may be ;an interchange of some offices between the two bodies, but till then the member of a Church who cannot always think according to order is in a somewhat 200 TO SAN FRANCISCO AND BACK. depressed and irritating position. I have, for instance, been struck with the paucity, if not absence, of those whom we call " Broad " in the American Episcopal Church. I was almost going to say that they were *^ nowhere" in that body. And from what I could make out, this applies in some measure to all American religious communities. A man belongs to some party, and that party has a representative " church " which holds some friendly relations with others, but expects its own members to think in unison far more than the members of the Church of England do. There is more choice of opinions than individual liberty of judgment. The result of this is a conglomeration of sects which forms the nearest approach to a national Church, Among these there is in the main some informal good understanding, but no one would care to claim or allow anything like authoritative pre-eminence, ex- cept, of course, the Romish Church, which recognises nothing but itself. Each governs itself ; there is no fixed common representative accredited body. Some may unite for a passing purpose, but such union is only temporary. The American Church, in the largest sense, is a congeries of religious republics which have no permanent federation. Each being, however, as it were, a republic, wide religious provision is made for the masses of the people. There is little in America corresponding to KELIGION IN THE UNITED STATES. 201 the provision of the means of Divine worship for the *' poor " of which we hear in England. I have heard this hrought as a charge against American Churches. But the real answer, to speak generally, is that there are few "poor," as we understand the word. Large numhers of the working classes who^ might he loosely classed as "poor" with us are, as far as my ohser- vation has gone — and I have attended many services, or looked in while they were heing held — in the habit of attending some place of worship. I have seen congregations of Methodists or Baptists where any one with an eye for the social position of the material of a crowd could perceive at once that those present did not belong to what we, perhaps, would call the upper or middle classes. Moreover, we are too ready to form an opinion on the general religious provision for the " masses " in America from what w^e see in cities. The subdivision of the land into small parcels, each worked by tbe owner of the soil, his family, and some " farmers," as agricultural labourers are called in America (these last sometimes living in the landowner's house), pro- vides a class which to a great extent occupies the place and does the work of such as are commonly known as poor in England. Thus the bulk of the real American people are found in the country. The city poor are mainly Irish Roman Catholics, who are looked after by their own priests with much external 202 TO SAN FRiNCISCO AXB BACK. success, if I may judge by the cliaracter of the con- gregations I have seen in Roman Catholic churches. Hence the religious provision for many who look poor in the streets of a city is accounted for. Then there are the negroes, who are chiefly Baptists, and have their own places of worship. Then consider, as I have said, how the real masses of Americans are spread over the country. Look at the little wooden church in every village. See how the spire or tower, staring with paint and sesthetically ugly as possible, shows itself in a new settlement, and ask, "Who build these — who attend them ? " The real " working men " of America. The people have reversed the process with which we are familiar in England. Instead of having money begged for them by others for a church, they build it themselves ; and instead of having a parson set amongst them, they look about and *' call " someone to be their minister. It is the same in education. Hero the parson begs and scrapes to get a school built — there he looks out of his window and sees the thing done without his moving a finger. No doubt there are outlying or isolated settlements, or half nomadic gatherings of miners, where difficulty is felt in making provision for public worship and pastoral ministrations. The Episcopal Church is exerting itself much to meet cases of this kind, espe- cially in the mining districts of the "West. But the EELIGION IX THE UNITED STATES. 203 bulk of the people look after themselves, and churches in the main are self- feeding. We have one very ex- ceptional case in the Church Mission in the Salt Lake City. There the great want is a house of refuge, as it might be called, for those — many of them once poor members of the Church of England — who are growing weary of their perversion to Mormonism. They can hardly form a community strong and rich enough to build a church. They are specially hampered, and it is hoped that some help may be sent from the old country, whence a large proportion of Mormons have been recruited. The American clergy work at high pressure. They have — I speak now of the Episcopal — to keep an account of all the services they have held, sermons they have preached, lectures they have delivered, &c., &c., which, with the numbers of those baptized, con- firmed, and admitted to the Holy Communion, is printed, and public property. This is likely, in some cases, to induce an unwholesome air of competition, and several times I heard remarks made upon the report of sach and such a clergyman as not exhibiting a genuine test of the work accomplished. But what- ever a man does or leaves undone is exposed to lay and clerical scrutiny. Every minister of religion lives and works in the full glare of the public eye, and runs his course with the spur of public opinion in his side. 204 TO SAN FRANCISCO AND BACK. I confess that I did not like divers of the services in the Episcopal church which I attended. Any of our brethren in America who may read this must for- give me when I say, that I was sometimes struck to the backbone by their coldness. Eespectability seemed to reign supreme. That is, however, an essential feature in American religious gatherings. In church there was frequently but little responding. The choir, consisting generally of ladies and gentlemen in a gallery, as a rule sings to the congregation, which listens. Some of the clergy feel this painfully. At one church where I assisted in the service, on being asked some question afterwards in the vestry, I could not help saying that I thought the Te Deum rather long. It was very elaborately sung, one young lady taking a prominent solo part. " Te Deum ! " said the rector ; " it is what I call Tedious." The failure in congregational music is more striking in some Episcopal churches, from the habit which some of the congregations have of sitting while the hymns are sung to them. The best congi-egational singing I heard in America was in Mr. Ward Beecher's church in Brooklyn. The next to that was in an Episcopal church at the corner of Sixth Avenue and Twentieth Street, in New York. This church is, I believe, almost unique in its way. The seats are all free and unappropriated. There is not much of what is called ritual, since the choir of men and boys who chant KELIGION IN THE UNITED STATES. 205 antiphonally in choir seats at the east end are not €ven surpliced. One thing which struck me in almost all the con- gregations I saw was the large, in some instances very large, proportion of men present. The defect in re- sponding does not, I believe, arise from indifference to the service, but rather from the silence, which is a striking feature of American gatherings. Religion there is an eminently pressing — nay, sometimes im- portunate — matter of general public concern, and men do not leave its observances to be attended by what have been called "bonnets and babies." The man element is very conspicuous. I w^nt to the St. Alban's — so named — of New York, where the service is highly ritualistic, candles being lighted on the altar during celebration, banners carried, wafer bread used, ^c. Here the seats are free and unappropriated ; but as there were, at least where I myself worshipped, no kneeling-boards or hassocks, many sat during prayers. The church is small, there being possibly room to seat 300. It struck me that the proportion of women was greater here than elsewhere. I am inclined to suspect that "ritualism" will not commend itself much to Americans ; but whatever else may be thought about it, the service at St. Alban's in New York is a bold attempt to break through the cold crust of public worship in the States. I should say that one of the warmest services I attended in America was in the 206 TO SAN FRANCISCO AND BACK. cathedral at Chicago, which has a surpHced choir, without what we understand by rituaHsm. There was a fine congregation, and, especially in the evening, a hearty congregational service. As far as I could understand it, however, generally the style of service in the Episcopal Church was what is sometimes called ** high and dry" with us. Again I remark, that the coldness I noticed must be attributed more to what appeared to me a national spirit of silence, if not sadness, than to indifference. Americans struck mo as naturally preoccupied and reserved, and their re- serve shows itself when they are particularly serious. I shall not easily forget the impression I received in one Presbj'terian church. I went in while the singing was going on, and anything more dismal I have seldom seen or heard. Almost all the churches I saw were extremely com- fortable. The seats, and in some cases the backs, were softly cushioned. The best sermons, at least those which appeared heartiest, were in Presbyterian and Congregationalist places of worship. But what I think surprised me most was the " orthodoxy " of sen- timents I heard in a Unitarian and Universalist church. In the latter, where there was a magnificent congre- gation with a large proportion of men, the minister laid down the doctrine of the Atonement with extreme minuteness of detail. In another, a non-Episcopalian church — I really cannot say to what denomination 208 TO SAN FRANCISCO AND BACK. it belonged — I heard, I think, the driest, boniest sermon I ever listened to, and that is saying much. The preacher was discoursing on the verse in the sixth chapter of St. John — '* Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of Man," &c. He said : " This cannot be understood literally, for such a supposition would offend the best feelings of propriety." The congre- gation looked as if especially accessible to such an appeal. The most magniloquent sermon I heard was by a black minister in a negro Baptist church. Episcopalians have the character of presenting the most "respectable" congregations. I cannot say that I perceived this. A large proportion of the most educated classes are, however, said to belong to the Episcopal Church. It is decidedly influential, but comes low in the list, if we may judge by the number of its adherents. Methodist, Baptist, Congregation - alist, and Presbyterian Churches are much more numerous, the two former at least counting five or six among their followers where the Episcopal Church counts one. The latter, however, is generally admitted to be growing; and it has lately exhibited a fresh movement in the support of home missionary work, and it numbers notoriously some most devoted men among its bishops and ministers. I must be allowed to state that the clergy in America would not generally be considered by Englishmen as clerical in their appearance. I have seen the rector RELIGION IN THE UNITED STATES. 209 of an eminent Episcopal church wear a black neck- cloth while officiating on Sunday. This applies also to ministers of other denominations. It is frequently very difficult to distinguish a clergyman by his dress. My impression for some time was that no clergymen were to be met in the streets. It struck me that clergymen are treated with great respect in America. I have, unasked, had an abate- ment made in the price of an article because I was a clergyman. Some railways carry ministers free, and I was told it was not an unusual thing for a company to present a bishop with a free pass over all its lines. Indeed, I was advised myself always to mention my cloth in taking a ticket, as 25 per cent, would be de- ducted from its price. I did not do this, and so cannot vouch from experience for the effect of the statement. From lay and clerical sources I gathered that the clergy, as a rule, are far from being ill-paid' in the United States. In some cases congregations even meet the expenses of a tour when their minister is in need of exceptional rest, and provide funds for a sub- stitute while he is away. Americans do not grudge their clergy liberal stipends when they like them>. but an unpopular man feels his unpopularity ima material sense. I cannot conclude this chapter without saying that nothing could surpass the kindness of those Episcopal 14 210 TO SAN FRANCISCO AND BACK. clergy I met. "With no exception they all spoke in the handsomest and friendliest manner of the Church of England ; and, as far as I was personally concerned, I can never thank them enough for the cordiality with which they held out their hands to a mere stranger like myself. 211 CHAPTEK XVI. SOME ACCOUNT OF THE LANDING AND TREATMENT OF EMIGRANTS IN NEW YORK. As popular interest in emigration is increasing, perhaps our readers may like an account of the reception and treatment of emigrants at New York. I assisted in the landing and disposal of some 1,200. They set foot first in America on the tip of the tongue of land on which New York is situated. A large heavy circular building stands there. It was once a fort, but is now called ** Castle Gardens," and is the receiving-house of the Emigration Commissioners. It will shelter many hundred emigrants. Outside it, towards the bay, is a wooden landing-stage. The emigrant ships lie some distance off, and send their loads on shore in steam-tenders. Having, on a comparatively blank day at Castle Gardens, presented an introduction to the general agent, Mr. Casserly, he kindly put me into the hands of a gentleman, who took me round and showed me to all the officers, as one with the privilege of entry. This was needful, as otherwise I was liable to be 212 TO SAN FKANCISCO AND BACK. summarily turned out if found on the premises while emigrants were being landed, or I should have had no time to exhibit a pass and justify my presence all about the place during the bustle of a reception-day. I was shown the landing-stage, the passage from it into the Rotunda, the desks at which the clerks sat to greet the new-comers, the various counters at which different kinds of information were given, the waiting- room of friends, the refreshment place, and Labour Exchange. The whole process of the reception of emigrants was then explained to me, that I might know what to look for and what to do when I came. Next morning I went down to see the establish- ment at work. I found it quite empty of all but the officials, who were at their posts with books open, ready to begin. Two large ships, full of emigrants, were lying in the bay about three -quarters of a mile off. The tender was alongside one of them, taking in her load. I walked to the bare landing-stage and waited. The tender soon left the ship, her deck being apparently heaped with people like currants on a tray. She came slowly up towards the quay, and presently I perceived a bank of white faces, all turned one way, and a thousand eyes all straining at the shore. As she bumped gently against the stage, and a railed plank was run out to her deck, there was a sway and rush among the emigrants to get on land. ** Gently 214 TO SAN FRANCISCO AND BACK. there!" cried the officer in command; "one at a time, please." After I had seen the stream begin to pour out, I ran back into the building, and took my place behind a counter by a clerk whose business it was to put down the names. The passage to this ad- mitted the people in single file. The first face soon came, looking very bewildered. "Name, please," said the clerk, kindly. *' Bridget Nolan, sir." "Where do you come from, Bridget?" and his cheery voice calmed her face down at once. " Mayo, sir." "Ever been here before, Bridget?" "No, sir." '^ Where are you going, eh ? " " Illinois." Thus he inquired all about her, and putting the particulars doyra as quick as lightning, pointed to where she should wait. The string of emigrants hearing all this, and seeing how the thing was managed so far, came up primed with their answers. There were men and women of all ages, some quite old. Pre- sently there appeared two tiny heads hardly reaching to the counter. They were those of a little boy and girl about eight and nine years of age. She was the eldest, and held her brother's hand in her left, while she clutched tightly in her right the brass check which had been given them for their one small piece of luggage. "Anybody with these children?" said the clerk. " No, sir," replied a woman, who had six of her own crowding close behind her ; " but they have been EMIGRANTS IN NEW YORK. 215 along with mine in the ship, and I have done what I could by them." *' How old are you, my dears ? " asked the clerk, leaning over towards them. They shook their heads ; they didn't know. " Come in here," said he. Then I brought the two trots inside the counter, and set them down by the fire. They held one another very tight. On asking if they were hungry, they nodded, both of them. So I got them a good hunch of bread and meat from the refreshment place, and went back to my post by the clerk, while they fell, to at once, in silence. The putting down of the names was soon over. Practice does wonders in this business. Thus all were registered, and waited in the wide space in the Kotunda, outside the counter. Then those who had money to buy railway tickets had them supplied. After this, a clerk got into a sort of pulpit, and desiring the attention of the emigrants, told them that he was going to call out the names of those who had letters or money orders waiting for them. As they answered, these were put into their hands. Then he called out the names of those who had friends in another room, where they were taken, as they answered, by an official. These processes were repeated, lest any at the first roll-call should have missed their names. At last the crowd was sifted down to those who had no money of their own, no letters, and no friends. 216 TO SAN FRANCISCO AND BACK. More about these presently. Those who had paid for their tickets were packed off the same day to their destination in the country. Those who wanted to stay in New York, and could pay for their main- tenance, were introduced to special respectable lodg- ing-house keepers, licensed by the Mayor, and carried off by them. Those who had friends in the waiting- room were let go on being claimed, but not without, in several instances, careful examination of both parties by an officer as to whether the claim was true. This part of the business was very touching. I went with the introducing official. Generally the recogni- tion was obviously genuine. Eyes met, and people rushed together. The woman with the six children, who had been kind to the two babes on the voyage, pounced on me in the Rotunda, eagerly asking, '* Where is my husband ? I know he must be some- where about ; I saw him rowing round the ship in a little boat : I thought he would be here." " All Tight, mother," said I, "he is in the next room ; " and I took her in. She was far too grateful to think of thanking me. There he was, and a cheer}^ broad- shouldered fellow he was, too. How they all blocked up the passage with their family embrace ! They made quite a little mob. How he kissed her and hugged the children all around ! How they leaped upon him ! " Come now," said the officer, good- humouredly, " You really must let these other people EMIGRANTS IN NEW YORK. 217 get at tbeir friends." So they trooped out, all flus- tered with joy. Some who had no particular destination, but in- tended simply to seek work in America, went at once, free of charge, into the Labour Exchange, a large office in Castle Gardens, where employers or their agents were waiting to engage labour. Clerks sat behind counters, over which were written up the names of the various trades in which work was then to be found. The wages being given that day were — La- bourers, 1 dollar 75 cents to 2 dollars a day ; tailors, up to 20 dollars a week ; carpenters, 25 dollars a month and board, or 18 dollars a week without board ; bricklayers, 5 dollars a day ; farmers, i.e., agricultural labourers, 12 to 14 dollars a month and board ; shoe- makers, 6 to 15 dollars a week. These were the figures I took down from the clerks. " Farmers " get more in the summer, sometimes as much as 25 or 30 dollars a month with board, in the West. Tailors and shoemakers, whose maximum wages were 20 and 15 dollars, received in many cases much less, the claims of some to w^ork at their respective trades being almost nominal. Bancroft LlbiATj So much for the Labour Exchange, which seemed to be conducted with much care and to do a great deal of business. Some of the newly landed emi- grants found w^ork at once through this institution, a record being kept of the various engagements entered 218 TO SAN FKINCISCO AND BACK. into by its means, thus affording the Commissioners of Emigration an easy method of reference in case of complaint, and the emigrants a convenient mode of tracing friends who had gone before them. The baggage of those thus engaged, as well as of those who were sent off by rail or otherwise disposed of, having been examined on board ship, was given to them afterwards. They had checks for it, being allowed to bring none but hand-parcels into the Rotunda. I should add, that, beside provision of railway tickets, there were counters for general infor- mation, assistance in letter-writing, telegraphic mes- sages, and exchange of money. Clerks in attendance spoke and wrote the various continental languages. Let us now go back to those without money, letters, or friends. They formed a dismal party, and had to shake down that night as well as they could, under supervision, in the Rotunda. Next day they were put on board a steamer and sent to Ward's Island, about an hour off, up the river. I went with them. Divers were in tears. One woman in particular was loud in her sorrow. She had expected to find her husband, and found neither him nor any message. She had four or five small children with her. The officers told me that the friends of emigrants in America often waited till they saw in the papers the arrival of the ship in which their relations were to come, and, knowing that they would be eared for EMIGRANTS IN NEW YORK. 219 by the Emigration Commissioners, did not write or make their appearance for a day or two. Thus I was glad to learn that the two lone children would be ac- counted for. They had a father in the States, who had caused them to be shipped for America, like parcels, to be kept till called for. But this woman would not be comforted. As she was embracing her children, and lamenting in the broadest Devonshire accent, I said to her, ** Don't be frightened, my good friend; from what part of Devonshire do you come?" This touched the vein of her sorrow. She turned to me as to a deliverer, and dried her tears when she found that I knew something of her home. I explained all about the place she was going to, the strong pro- bability of her being soon fetched away by her husband, and cheered her wonderfully. Among the emigrants was an Irishman, shrewd enough in some things, but rather bewildered at what was being done with him. He thought he was going to some workhouse. He told me where he came from and said that he had expected letters. I made him more comfortable in mind, and gave him some tobacco. " Now," said I, " tell me all about it." I give his story, translated from the strongest brogue, but very touchingly narrated by him. " Sir," he said, " I have had two brothers in America for some years. I thought I would stay be- hind, as I had fourteen acres of land, and thought it 220 TO SAN FRANCISCO AND BACK. would go hard if I could not get my living out of it. So I dug and drained, and all promised well. Then, one day, the agent came to me and, says he, * I can get double the rent for that land now, Mike, and you must pay it or go.* So I went. But I have given all that work to the landlord for nothing. I assure you, sir," he continued, " I know violence is wrong, hut when these things are done, a man's mind is upset ; he forgets himself." Then he paused for a moment, spat into the river, and added, " Sir, I've known 'em lie behind a hedge with a revolver — men like me. I know it's wrong. I said to myself, *I'll go. I'll leave this place and go to the Land of God.' So I am here, though I have only feasted my eyes upon the shore, and not set foot upon it yet." It was a hard case. Along with the other passengers were some dregs of emigration : tattered, greasy, blear-eyed. The Com- missioners bind themselves to provide shelter in the State of New York to emigi-ants for some time after they land, in case they are in tribulation. And some prefer chronic tribulation. They earn a little money, drink, are turned off, and throw themselves upon the Commissioners. There were two or three of these poor rascals on board. Besides them were sick emi- grants going to the hospital on Ward's Island. Pre- sently we landed, and all trooped up to the receiving office. There I presented my introduction, and was EMIGRANTS IN NEW YORK. 221 asked to take a seat by the chief behind his counter. The party was soon disposed of. Some were sent to the refuge, where they had work to do, but were fed and lodged. Some were dismissed to the hospital. The children were sent to school, but not separated from their parents. Tben came the turn of the most prominent rascal. The officer glanced up. *' Drunk again, I suppose." " Yes, sir," said the man sheep- ishly. " Go into that corner," replied the officer. They make the place uncomfortable to these gentry, though the Commissioners are obliged to feed them. When the crowd was melted down, the officer took me over the establishment. It appeared to me to be well managed. The Commissioners hold more than one-half of the island, or about 121 acres. The build- ings are the refuge and the hospital proper, reserved exclusively for non-contagious diseases and surgical cases ; there are also fever hospitals — placed near the water and isolated, — the lunatic asylum, dispensary, barracks, nursery, surgical wards, and residences for the officers. There are two chapels, one Episcopal, and one Roman Catholic, each holding about 500. Representatives of religious bodies and societies may distribute religious books and papers among the emi- grants, and may report to the officers any wants not of a religious nature. They may also visit any sick in the hospital as often as their presence is desired by patients. 222 TO SAN FRANCISCO AND BACK. The lunatic asylum was especially distressing. The poor sufferers appeared to be treated with much kindness, but the proportion of lunatics is great. I was told that some who had built their hopes on emi- gration and come out with vague ideas of meeting friends at once, had gone mad, on finding their hopes suddenly dashed to the ground. Attached to the refuge is a farm, on which many emigrants are set to work till they can get employment. In the previous year, the total number of inmates cared for and treated in all the various establishments, including hospitals and refuge, was 14,250; the total number dead or discharged in the same period being 12,249. Thus 2,001 were left in December, 1868. These destitute, sick, or temporarily friendless, form a small proportion of the emigrants received and dis- posed of by the Commissioners in the twelve months. The total number landed was, in 1868, 213,686. I will not weary our readers with statistics, which I take out of the published report of the Commissioners to the Legislature of the State of New York, but I might mention that there was in 1868 a decrease in alien emigration of 29,045 from the number received in 1867 ; but an increase over the average of the previous twenty years, of 22,421. Germans came in proportionately larger numbers. These amounted to 101,989 ; Irish to 47,571 ; Enghsh to 29,695 ; and all other countries together to 34,431 ; showing a EMIGRANTS IN NEW YORK. 223 decrease of 37,182 in the emigration from Germany, Ireland, and England together, but an increase of 8,137 in the miscellaneous emigration. The most marked feature in this latter item is the great number of emigrants from Sweden. Among the year's arrivals were 7,390 Scotch, 2,811 French, 699 Welsh, 268 Poles, 149 Belgians, 33 Australians, 22 Turks, 10 Africans, 3 Japanese, and 1 Sardinian. The advantages held out to emigrants by the Com- missioners are very great. The chief one is care for some time after landing, in case they become sick or fail in getting employment, either in Ward's Island or in places throughout the State of New York where such help is needed. The Commissioners keep an account with country agents and institutions, to whom the needy emigrants apply. The revenues of the institution arise from the pay- ment by ship-owners to the Commissioners of about five shillings a head. This is virtually paid by the emigrants, being included in their passage-money. The result is that the Commissioners have some control over ship-owners, and can care for the comfort of emigrants on board ship. By an Act of the Legis- lature of the State of New York passed in 1867, the Commissioners are generally invested with the power (subject to certain conditions) of examining under oath any witness respecting complaints; and such testimony, if made in the presence of the persons 224 TO SAN FRANCISCO AND BACK. complained of, may be used as evidence in any subse- quent action between any of the passengers and the owners, masters, or charterers of the ship. The financial position of this gi-eat institution is good. The Commissioners had, on January 1, 1868, a balance of 6,865,013 dollars. There are many interesting details in the " Report of the Commissioners of Emigration of the State of New York." I have tried to give a general idea of their work and position, which is not so well known as it should be. I must add that nothing could exceed the courtesy with which I w^as treated by all the officials. ^^ Of THE UNIVERSITY OF THE END, CNWIN BROTHERS, THE GRE=;HAM PRESS, CHILWORTH AND LONDOX. 5o(ii(^l]| foil pi[onioliit0 (Jhr^i'iliait Kntuclrdtii!. •c>J=4^=4a« THE CHILD'S PICTORIAL. A Monthly Coloured Magazine. 4- PRICE 2d. 4- Yearly Volume, containing 12 Numbers, paper boards, 2s.; cloth boards, 2s. 6d. HIS Magazine is intended for children of the ages between four and eight years ; but it will be found interesting, it is hoped, to those beyond that age. The matter is made as interesting and edifying as possible, and the coloured illustrations are artistic and attractive. The services of the best known writers for Children have been enlisted for this Magazine, as the names of the chief contributors will show, viz., Mrs. Molesworth, Mrs. Mac- QuoiD, Mrs. SiTWELL, Miss Bramston, Rev. J. G. Wood, &c. The Illustrations are furnished by Harrison Weir, Esq., W. 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