^ ^^ ;^''^ * ^ V s \ V

SSSiSSffi3!S!SsfinSteH2S15S22SBBSr

[AN FRANCISCO AND

CHARLES KEELER#.#d»

From the estate ot
Professor W. H. Brewer

Dear Mary: I have often asked several of your friends if they
have heard from you and the latest on your entensive travelling,
but lately I have not had much news. I hope you are fine and
that you can 3till-w4*k be with your husband.
You are probably wondering why I, all of a sudden,
should be writing and this is the situation. I believe you
still have your apartment in New Haven, unrented, and I have
the nerve to ask you if there is any possibility of your
allowing me to subrent it for a month or 6 weeks. Now that
Germany has given up there is a slight chance my husband will
be cejseiH coming home, but unfortunately not for good this time
because he has not the required number of points. I have hopes
that he won't be sent directly to the Pacific from Europe but
you can not depend on the army. At present I am completely in
the dark as letters from Europe ane slow. But I would like
to have some plans made just in case one day soon Vincent comes
home. The Library is still- here but so many of the old timers
have left. Heddy Dejon was forced to le-ive 2 weeks ago for an
indefinite period in order to take care of her father-in-law who
came back from the hospital after having had an operation.
He seeras to be getting along fine and we all hope she will be
back soon. I realize that you have never had anyone in your
apartment and if you dont' care to subrent it just say the word.
I f iguered there is no harm in asking as the most you can say
is no.

FROM A PAINTING BY WILLIAM KEITH, OWNED BY THE BOHEMIAN CLUB
THE DISCOVERY OF SAN FRANCISCO BAY.

SAN FRANCISCO
AND THEREABOUT
By CHARLES KEELER

SAN FRANCISCO
THE CALIFORNIA PROMOTION COMMITTEE

Copyright 190a
By The California Promotion Committee
of San Francisco

Egki€

SaS,

0

!0l

PRINTED BY
THE STANLEY-TAYLOR COMPANY ^W ^^J
SAN FRANCISCO * "¦

SAN FRANCISCO AND THEREABOUT

PREFACE
There is a real need at the present day of a book on
San Francisco which shall be simple and direct, giving
a brief history of the city's romantic past and a just
description of its present life, with the picturesque
setting of bay and hills. It is needed not merely to
introduce people at a distance to the American metrop
olis of the Pacific, but also that the younger gene
ration of native sons and daughters may not forget the
exciting scenes which have been enacted here, and that
they may be reminded of the enlarged life in which
they are called to participate. In undertaking these
brief essays I have tried to give a true picture of the
city so far as the limited scope of the book permitted.
In writing the historical chapters, condensed to
a few telling episodes of the stirring life of a century
and a quarter, I have consulted the voluminous Annals
of San Francisco by Soule, Gihon and Nisbet, Theo
dore H. Hittell's History of California, John S. Hit-
tell's History of San Francisco, Lights and Shades in
San Francisco by B. E. Lloyd, Bayard Taylor's El
Dorado, Dana's Two Years Before the Mast, and many
other books and pamphlets. The descriptive chap
ters are chiefly the result of personal observation dur
ing the past fifteen years, supplemented by such
pamphlets as the Reports of the Chamber of Com
merce of San Francisco and other papers and articles
bearing on the subjects discussed. If this little book
succeeds in stimulating a few residents to read more
deeply of the city's past, and to continue with increasing
zeal the work of its future upbuilding, or if it awakens
in some of our Eastern friends the migratory impulse
which impels them to follow Horace Greeley's advice
to go West, it will have accomplished its mission. C. K.

CONTENTS
The Padres of Saint Francis  i
The Coming of the Argonauts .... 9
The Railroad and Bonanza Kings ... 22
The Peerless Bay  26
Vignettes of City Streets  34
Highways and Byways  44
The Barbary Coast  54
A Corner of Cathay  5°
Pleasure Grounds by the Sea  70
The Awakening of the City .... 73
The Eastern Shore  02
South of San Francisco  86
About Mount Tamalpais  89
Through the Golden Gate  92
ILLUSTRATIONS
Discovery of San Francisco Bay . faces
Mission Dolores  "
San Francisco from the Bay . . "
Looking Down Market Street . . "
Looking Up Montgomery Street from
Market  "
Looking Down Kearny Street to Market "
A Van Ness Avenue Residence . . "
The City Hall  "
Trinity Church  "
Along the Waterfront .
An Alley in Chinatown
On a Restaurant Balcony
Quaint Japanese Garden .
On the Rim of the Golden Gate . . "
A Glimpse of the Business Section . "
On Campus of University of California "
Burlingame Country Club . . ''
Inner Quadrangle of Stanford University "
Mount Tamalpais . . . . "
Passage Between Two Hemispheres

Title

Page

: 8

((

26

«

34

(1

?,(>

«

.^«

(1

42

(1

44

«

.?2

((

14

((

60

«

68

(1

71

«

72

((

76

((

84

u

86

u

88

u

90

u

96

THE PADRES OF SAINT FRANCIS

N these days of steam and electricity,
when news is thrilling back and forth
over the wire nerves of the land, and
trains are coursing like arterial blood
from shore to shore, it is hard to real
ize that in the memorable year of
1776, while our own ancestors were
making the immortal declaration which gave birth
to the American nation, the Spanish padres, knowing
nothing of the momentous conflict across the land,
fraught with such deep meaning both for America and
Spain, were establishing the humble mission of San
Francisco for the conversion of a few Indian souls. To
understand the motives which inspired the little band
of zealots in wandering thus to the outer rim of the
western world, and to learn their means of establishing
themselves there, a swift backward glance is necessary.
During those far away times when Protestant
Elizabeth jealously watched the doings of Catholic
Philip, a lonely galleon sailed once a year across the
waste of the Pacific from the Philippine Islands to the
Mexican port of Acapulco. It was laden with spice
and the treasure of the Orient destined for Seville. Eng
lish buccaneers lurked in the bays of the west coast of
the Americas waiting to plunder the treasure ship,
or, failing in capturing this prize, to loot the Spanish
towns of Central and South America. Foremost of
these daring pirates was Francis Drake, who followed
up the coast of North America and passed San
Francisco Harbor without discovering it. It was in
the year 1579 that he landed in the bay which today
bears his name and took possession of the territory.

2 SAN FRANCISCO AND THEREABOUT
calling it New Albion, and holding there, before a
wondering band of Indians, the first Protestant service
on the Pacific shore. A stone cross has recently been
erected in Golden Gate Park to commemorate this
event. Even before this time, California had been named
and its coast superficially inspected by the Spaniards.
Cortez and the explorers in his service had sailed about
the end of Lower California, which they supposed to
be an island. They had read the popular romance,
Amadis de Guala, wherein is described a fabulous race
of Amazons, decked in armor and precious gems, who
lived on an island to the right of the Indies, and half
hoping no doubt to prove the fiction real, had called
their discovery after the mythical land of the Amazons,
California.* Barren and unpromising the region proved
to be. Cabrillo in 1542 sailed along the coast and in
1603 Vizcaino explored it, mapping the bays of San
Diego and Monterey, but adding little else of value
to the knowledge of the region. He noted, however,
that as he proceeded northward, the country became
greener and more inviting in appearance.
Not until the year 1768 was there any serious
thought of settling the region which today is known
as California. Baja or Lower California was occupied
by Jesuits until the hostility of the government drove
them from the land. Their missions were taken by
the Dominicans and the way was at last open for the
Franciscans to undertake the settlement of the prac
tically unknown wilderness of Alta or Upper Cal
ifornia. Junipero Serra, a fervid enthusiast, was
chosen as leader of the movement, and he lost no time
in setting out, with three little vessels and two land
parties, for San Diego, where he proposed to locate
the first of the new establishments. According to the
plan of the governor-general, Galvez, three missions
?An attempt has been made to find the derivation of California in two
Spanish words, caliente fornalla, a hot furnace, but this origin is generally
discredited.

THE PADRES OF SAINT FRANCIS 3
were to be founded, at San Diego, Monterey and at a
point midway between the two, to be called San Buena
ventura. When the devoted Junipero Serra heard this,
he asked if Saint Francis, the founder of their order,
was to have no mission dedicated to him. Galvez
answered discreetly that if Saint Francis wished a
mission he could show them the port where it was to
be located. Shortly after reaching San Diego, despite the
exhausted condition of many of the party, despite the
numerous deaths from scurvey of those who had come
by sea, and the loss of one ship with all on board, de
spite the hostility of the Indians and the uncertainty of
the way, a detachment was sent forward to find the bay
of Monterey, known only from the rude chart of
Vizcaino, and to locate there the second mission. It
was this party that missed their objective point and
discovered instead one of the world's most wonderful
harbors, a hundred miles and more beyond.
The party, commanded by Governor Portala,
included Captain Moncade, Lieutenant Fages, En
gineer Costanso, Sergeant Ortega and two priests.
Padre Crespi and Padre Gomez, together with thirty-
five soldiers, a number of muleteers and some Mission
Indians from Baja California. Can we not conjure
up a picture of them as they climbed the sage-brush
mountains, forded the rivers and looked on the beauty
of the live-oak glades, or penetrated the mysterious
solitudes of the redwood forests? There were the two
friars in their coarse gray cowled robes. Governor
Portala and his officers in gay costumes, with short
velvet jackets and wide slashed breeches trimmed with
gold lace, bright sashes and plumed hats; the soldiers
with loose leather coats hanging to their knees, and
leather breeches; the muleteers in scrapes and som
breros, and the scantily clad Indian followers. Afflicted
with scurvey, many of the party had to be carried on
litters by their able-bodied fellows. Still they pressed
on, they knew not why nor whither. On November

4 SAN FRANCISCO AND THEREABOUT
first, discouraged and exhausted, they climbed the
heights near the ocean and saw the wide coast bight
formed by Point Reyes to the northward and sheltered
by the Farallones de los Freyres, a group of rocky islets
off shore. Most of the party were satisfied that they
had overshot their mark, but as some uncertainty still
existed, Sergeant Ortega was sent forward with a party
to explore. Some of the soldiers left behind in camp
went hunting in the hills to the eastward, and on re
turning told their companions of a great arm of the
ocean which they had seen to the north of them. When
the explorers came back they reported that Indians, met
on the way, told them of a harbor two days' journey
ahead, where a ship lay at anchor. With renewed
hopes of finding Monterey, Portala pressed forward
with his flagging band. After traveling well to the
north he climbed the hills in an easterly direction and
from their crest looked down upon the splendid reaches
of San Francisco Bay. What thought he as he scanned
that vision of land-locked tide — of misty miles of hill-
encircled bay with silver bars of sunlight flung across
the gray-blue expanse from the cloudy sky? Not of
marts and emporiums for the commerce of the world
was his vision, but simply of a new site for a mission
and a new center for spreading the gospel and main
taining the prestige of the King of Spain.
He found that the report of a ship was false and
that in truth he was looking upon a hitherto unknown
country. Accordingly, after a few days of further
exploration along the hill crests in view of the splendid
bay, the party retraced their weary way to San Diego,
there to report the failure of the expedition. When
Father Serra learned of the discovery of this wonderful
bay, he recalled the words of Galvez and was con
vinced that the explorers had been miraculously led
by Saint Francis to the spot where he wished his
mission to be established. Some six years intervened
before this could be accomplished although the devoted
leader never lost sight of it as the objective point in

THE PADRES OF SAINT FRANCIS 5
his work. Meanwhile Monterey was re-discovered
and settled, and after it San Antonio, San Gabriel, San
Luis Obispo and San Juan Capistrano.
Three years after the first expedition in search of
Monterey, Father Serra persuaded Lieutenant Fages
to further explore the Bay of San Francisco with a view
to locating a mission. A third party continued this
work in the fall of 1774, and at Point Lobos on a hill
overlooking the Golden Gate and the Seal Rocks, set
up a cross to commemorate their work. The next
year, when the San Carlos sailed into Monterey Bay
with supplies for the mission, it brought the welcome
news that orders had been given to send a party of
settlers from Mexico to establish the new presidio of
San Francisco. Ayala, the commander of the little
vessel, had also been instructed to make a survey of
the harbor by boat, which he at once proceeded to
undertake. On the fifth day of August, 1775, he sailed
through the strait and anchored in the bay of San
Francisco, the first navigator to penetrate to its majestic
waters. He selected an island for his headquarters,
naming it in the deliberate Spanish fashion, Nuestra
Senora de los Angeles, the same that has since been
curtailed and Anglicized into Angel Island. From
this rendezvous the bay was explored in small boats
as far as the mouth of the Sacramento River.
The first party of emigrants for San Francisco
started at about this time from Sinaloa and Sonora in
Mexico on the long and weary march over a region
without roads. Two hundred strong they set forth —
soldiers and settlers with their wives and children,
driving herds of cattle before them. At San Gabriel
and again at Monterey they had long, vexatious delays.
Finally a small advance guard pushed on to their
destination and selected the spot now known as Fort
Point for the presidio or fort. For a mission they chose
a more sheltered valley some two or three miles re
moved and midway betwixt ocean and bay. Not until
June, 1776, did the main party, much depleted in

6 SAN FRANCISCO AND THEREABOUT
numbers, finally leave Monterey for San Francisco.
Two missionaries, Francisco Palou and Pedro Benito
Cambon accompanied them. Under the leadership of
Jose Moraga they set forth — a sergeant, two corporals,
sixteen soldiers, seven pobladores or settlers, muleteers,
vaqueros, servants and Indians, together with their
wives and children. Many of them were mounted,
while a pack train and a herd of about three hundred
cattle were driven before them. Shortly after their
departure, the San Carlos sailed with a load of freight
for the settlers. Father Serra took leave of the emi
grants and bade them God speed, loath to see them go
without him.
A ten days' march brought the party to the San
Francisco peninsula, where, near the present site of
Dolores Mission they set up their tents. Their first task
was to erect a rude hut to serve as chapel, where the
mass could be celebrated. They then made further
inspection of the country, and, ere long, leaving the
missionaries with a few soldiers and the cattle, moved
out upon the hills flanking the Golden Gate, where
they set about building rude temporary dwellings and
a chapel which they deemed of more immediate im
portance than a fort.
When the San Carlos, after much delay by head
winds, lagged into port, the presidio was more care
fully planned in the usual Spanish style, with a plaza
in the center. The carpenters were assisted by the
sailors, and ere long the combined force had contrived
to build a cluster of low houses of poles coated with
mud and roofed with tule thatch. After lending a
hand at this enterprise, the willing sailors gave their
services to the friars at the mission station, and put up
a small church and house adjoining it. Thus was built
the first settlement of San Francisco 1
On September the seventeenth of this same mem
orable year, 1776, the first celebration was held, the
ceremony of taking formal possession of the presidio
for King Charles III. Imagine that picturesque
gathering by the Golden Gate! Comandante Moraga

THE PADRES OF SAINT FRANCIS 7
in all the splendor of a Spanish officer's costume;
Commander Quiros of the San Carlos, also gaily
attired ; the tonsured Gray Friars ; the soldiers, sailors,
settlers and servants, all decked in festal garb! The
mission bells were rung; the two clumsy cannon were
fired; there were volleys of musketry and singing of
hymns. The royal standard floated in the fresh breeze
sweeping in from the sea. A cross was reared and a
high mass celebrated. Following this came the bar
becue with an abundance of joints of roasted steer,
tortillas and frijoles seasoned with red peppers, and
no doubt some good Spanish wine to wash them down.
San Francisco had been founded to extend the domin
ion of the king of Spain, and the spiritual influence of
Saint Francis.
Early in October followed a second celebration
to mark the founding of the mission, San Francisco
de Assisi. Padre Palou officiated, while the same
little band of officers, soldiers, and sailors took part in
the solemnity. Work was forthwith commenced on
the church, but the task of making Indian converts
was beset with unusual difficulties. The Padres must
have been reminded of the old receipt for cooking a
hare, which runs : First catch your hare, etc.
A fight between two tribes had left the country
practically depopulated, the survivors having fled on
rafts to the opposite shores of the bay. Later on, when
the panic subsided, they returned to harass the mission
aries, and open hostilities were only averted by flogging
and subsequently by shooting one or two of the
recalcitrant natives. In this discouraging fashion the
work among the Indians commenced. Nevertheless,
one by one they were taken into the fold, until, when
some five years later Padre Junipero Serra came up
from Monterey, sixty-nine natives were laboring at
the mission and ready for confirmation.
The spiritual training of the Indians was of a sort
that taxed but little the intellectual powers of these
unsophisticated people. Certain rites and ceremonies
they soon learned to imitate, coupled with the recita-

8 SAN FRANCISCO AND THEREABOUT
tion of a few Spanish., or Latin hymns and prayers.
The application of the lash served to increase the de
votion of the inattentive and a strict discipline enforced
by rigorous punishment made all the mission Indians
regular church goers. Food of the simplest character
was served them, barley and maize with peas and beans
constituting the staples. ¦;
Some of the men toiled in the grain fields and
learned the simple art of letting the wind winnow
their wheat; others became expert vaqueros, riding
after cattle, throwing the reata and rounding up the
herd ; still others were trained as boatmen and handled
big barges on the treacherous waters of the bay. The
women spun the wool which the men sheared, and wove
blankets and fabrics. They sewed garments and were
busied in making drawn-work altar cloths and doing
other handiwork.
Thus all were kept employed from early mass to
vespers. With the help of the Indians, low mission
buildings of adobe, covered over with plaster and
roofed with tile, were constructed about the church
to serve as workshops and dwellings. The simplest
of clothes were provided for the people. When a girl
was considered of a marriageable age she was allowed
to choose one of a number of the young men and they
were straightway mated.
A flourishing trade in hides and tallow grew up
between the padres and the Yankee skippers from
around the Horn, and this, together with contributions
from the Pious Fund made the mission prosper. In
1825 the establishment was reputed to own seventy-
nine thousand sheep, a thousand tame horses and twice
as many breeding maires, as well as hogs, working
oxen and a large store of wheat, merchandise, and some
twenty-five thousand dollars in hard cash. Such was
the prosperity of the mission of San Francisco at the
time when Mexico gained her independence from
Spain, but all this temporal power of the Franciscans
proved but a passing phase in the working out of a
greater destiny for the city by the Golden Gate.

mission DOLORES.

FROM A PHOTOGRAPH BV WATERS

THE COMING OF THE ARGONAUTS

ICHARD HENRY DANA, in his
classic of California, "Two Years
Before the Mast," gives a glimpse of
San Francisco at the close of the year
1835. In the course of his narrative
he thus describes his first impression
of the lonely port:
"About thirty miles from the mouth of the bay,*
and on the southeast side, is a high point upon which
the presidio is built. Behind this is the harbor in
which trading vessels anchor, and near it, the mission
of San Francisco, and a newly begun settlement, mostly
of Yankee Californians, called Yerba Buena, which
promises well. Here, at anchor, and the only vessel,
was a brig under Russian colors, from Asitka, in
Russian America, which had come down to winter,
and to take in a supply of tallow and grain, great
quantities of which latter article are raised in the
missions at the head of the bay."
This was the San Francisco of 1835 — a Spanish
presidio on the shore of what was afterwards so pro
phetically named the Golden Gate, a mission establish
ment two or three miles away where a few score
Indians were employed, and a hamlet known as Yerba
Buena, consisting of a handful of Yankee traders, on
the rim of the bay! As late as 1846 the place had
grown so little that not more than twenty or thirty
houses of all descriptions lined the beach. Mud flats,
*ln Dana's time the coast line from Point Reyes to Ocean Beach, with
the Farallones off shore breaking the full force of the sea, was known as
the outer harbor or bay. It is evidently to this he refers, since from the
mouth of the Golden Gate to the anchorage is only from five to nine miles.

ID SAN FRANCISCO AND THEREABOUT
laid bare at low tide, extended for some distance out
from the shore, and the only landing-place for boats
was at Clark's Point where rocks jutted out into the
water. This was near the present site of Broadway
Wharf. A bay reached up into the valley now
traversed by Market Street, cutting across the present
line of First Street and penetrating as far as the border
of Montgomery. In order to understand the sudden transition of
this quiet little Spanish settlement into a lawless
frontier town of America, and from that into a great
metropolis where the commerce of the Pacific centers,
a brief glance at the history of the time is necessary.
For years Mexico had been disturbed by revolutionary
upheavals. In 1821 these culminated in the recogni
tion by Spain of the independence of the land from
which for centuries she had drawn such store of
treasure. Three years later a liberal constitution was
adopted, making the country a republic.
The republican government was on the whole
unfavorable to the church, but for the first ten years
no action hostile to the missions of California was
taken. A comandante-general acted as governor of
the territory, but the chief power was still lodged in
the hands of the padres. During the year 1833, how
ever, the Mexican Congress enacted a law providing
for the dispersion of the Franciscan fathers of Cal
ifornia, and a division of their vast principalities
among the settlers and Indians. This so-called order
of secularization was not put into immediate execution.
Revolutions and rapid changes in Mexican politics
delayed it somewhat, but the padres realized that the
inevitable was at hand and wasted the mission property
in a most reckless fashion. Cattle were slaughtered
in vast numbers for their hides, the buildings were
neglected, treasure was sent to Mexico and Spain ; so
that, when the blow fell a few years later, the missions
were already stripped of their wealth. Soon the
Indians scattered, the padres left the country and the
broad fields of the California valleys fell into the hands

THE COMING OF THE ARGONAUTS II
of the Mexican ranchers who governed their princi
palities like the barons of old. These were the days
of boundless hospitality, when a man's family was as
large as the surrounding population, when every
stranger was welcome at the hacienda and became a
guest for as long as he chose to stay. Those happy
patriarchal times on the ranches of California, how
they vanished at the coming of the gringo, the stranger
from across the plains!
By the year 1840 a number of Americans had
found their way to the remote Mexican territory of
California. They had come as trappers and traders
and were a hardy, adventurous set of men. That the
suspicion and jealousy of the dons was not unfounded,
subsequent events soon demonstrated. The Russians
had pushed down the coast from their fur-trading posts
in Alaska, and were narrowly watched by the Mexicans
until, in 1841, they sold their California possessions
to a Swiss settler, Captain John A. Sutter. Another
element, however, was added to the population by the
visits of the American whalers at San Francisco.
So strained had become the relations between the
Mexicans and the Americans that about a hundred
English-speaking people were arrested at San Fran
cisco on one occasion by order of the governor. They
were sent to Monterey as prisoners and subsequently
many of them were carried south into Mexico where
they remained for varying periods without trial. Such
violent efforts to discourage immigration had little
effect in staying the tide which had already set in.
Fremont, the pathfinder, had crossed the plains and
had written glowing accounts of his adventures on mesa
and prairie. Farnham, another early comer, described
the Mexican territory of California in enthusiastic
terms. They told of the wonderful landscape, of the
great Sierra forests and the herds of deer, elk and wild
horses that made their home on the broad valleys of
the Sacramento and San Joaquin. Societies were
formed in the East to promote immigration to the new
country.

12 SAN FRANCISCO AND THEREABOUT
The American flag was first raised at Monterey
by Commodore Jones of the sloop-of-war Cyane.
Hearing that the United States was at war with Mexico,
he put up the stars and stripes and proclaimed the
territory American. A day later, becoming convinced
of his error, he retracted and apologized to the best of
his ability. When, in April, 1846, the war which had for some
years been brewing between the United States and
Mexico, finally reached the stage of active hostility,
an independent war of conquest had already been
waged in California by General John C. Fremont
(then a colonel in the American army) in co-operation
with Commodore Robert T. Stockton of the navy.
Fremont had been sent with a party of army engineers
on an exploring expedition, to map new routes from
the East to California. In pursuit of this work he
arrived near Monterey at a time when relations be
tween the Mexicans and gringos were much strained.
General Castro, the comandante of Monterey, sus
pected ulterior motives, but Fremont went in person
to explain the peaceful nature of his mission. Pro
ceeding on his route, he found a band of hostile Indians
opposing him and received a report that Castro was
planning an attack on his rear. A man of sudden
resolution and indomitable will, he decided upon the
hazardous plan of declaring war against California
with his miniature army of sixty-two men.
Following this alarming move on the part of
Fremont came the raising of the Bear Flag at Sonoma.
William B. Ide was made commander of the troops
there and issued a proclamation calling upon all citi
zens to rally around his standard. General Castro
planned to attack Sonoma, but Fremont, who had left
the town feebly garrisoned, hastily returned and held
the Mexicans at bay. On July 4, 1846, the assembly
of Americans at Sonoma declared their independence,
made Fremont governor, and issued a formal declara
tion of war.

THE COMING OF THE ARGONAUTS 13
It would carry us too far from the immediate
history of San Francisco to describe the numerous
complications which followed during the Mexican
war, — the work of Commodore Sloat in seizing Mon
terey, the raising of the American flag in Portsmouth
Square by Captain Montgomery, the military opera
tions in the South under Commodore Stockton and
Colonel Fremont, when, with a forlorn-hope band, they
marched through a hostile country and conquered it,
the arrival of General Kearny and subsequent mis
understandings which led to the courtmartial of
Fremont. By the treaty of 1848 the country became
American territory and the last political obstacle to
the emigration of American pioneers was removed.
There is something pathetically tragic about the
discovery of gold in California. For centuries, Spanish
adventurers had been the advance guard of the world
in finding treasure. El Dorado of song and story was
ever before them. But in California they had seen no
trace of the precious metal. In January of the very
year when the land was wrested from Mexico, 1848,
the news reached San Francisco which ere long set
the whole world into a fever of excitement. James
W. Marshall, an employee of Captain Sutter, the
Swiss settler, had discovered gold in large quantities
amid the sand of the American River, a tributary of
the Sacramento. When the report was confirmed by
the shipment of considerable quantities of the coveted
dust to San Francisco, a wild scramble to the spot
ensued. The news spread in all directions like an
epidemic, despite the remoteness of the land. Ships
carried it to the four corners of the Pacific. From
Chili and Peru came dark-eyed mestizos. Whalers
and traders brought their quota of Kanakas and
Marquesans. It is said that the Hawaiian Islanders
were so stirred by the news of gold in California that
by the month of November, 1848, twenty-seven vessels
had sailed for San Francisco, carrying some six hun
dred people, while four thousand persons are reported

14 SAN FRANCISCO AND THEREABOUT
to have gone from Chili that year to work in the mines
of the new Dorado.
Meanwhile word reached the Eastern seaboard
of America, and the great westward wave of migra
tion swept across the plains. Stillman says that never
since the Crusades was such a movement known.
The host, estimated at from twenty-five to forty thou
sand people, traveled in prairie schooners over that
interminable stretch of plain, of desert, and moun
tain, braving the hardships of hunger and thirst, the
perils of predatory Indian tribes, the dangers of the
road which beset them from start to finish. Women
and children shared with the men the privations of
that terrible overland trail. Some were killed by
the Indians, some perished of sheer exhaustion, others
were storm-bound by the high Sierra snows, and died
by inches, resorting to cannibalism in their maddened
desperation. At the same time that this multitude was cross
ing the plains, ships were fitted out for the long voy
age around Cape Horn, and old-fashioned side paddle-
wheel steamers were put on the run to carry people
by way of Panama. Thus from every State of the
Union and from various parts of Europe came adven
turous spirits, all expecting to rock the sands of the
Sacramento and make their fortunes.
The city of San Francisco grew almost in a day.
It was a city of tents and gambling houses — a raw,
crude, lawless place with the most cosmopolitan pop
ulation the world has ever seen. Here if anjrwhere
was a confusion of tongues that would rival Babel.
Bayard Taylor, who came by steamer in 1849 as cor
respondent for a New York paper, thus describes the
scene :
"We scrambled up through piles of luggage, and
among the crowd collected to witness our arrival,
picked out two Mexicans to carry our trunks to a
hotel. The barren side of the hill before us was cov
ered with tents and canvas houses, and nearly in front

THE COMING OF THE ARGONAUTS 15
a large two-story building displayed the sign 'Fre
mont Family Hotel.'
"As yet we were only in the suburbs of the town.
Crossing the shoulder of the hill, the view extended
around the curve of the bay, and hundreds of tents
and houses appeared, scattered all over the heights,
and along the shore for more than a mile. A furious
wind was blowing down through a gap in the hills,
filling the street with clouds of dust. On every side
stood buildings of all kinds, begun or half finished,
and the greater part of them mere canvas sheds, open
in front, and covered with all kinds of signs, in all
languages. Great quantities of goods were piled up
in the open air, for want of a place to store them.
The streets were full of people hurrying to and fro,
and of as diverse and bizarre a character as the
houses ; Yankees of every possible variety, native Cal
ifornians in scrapes and sombreros, Chilians, Sonori-
ans. Kanakas from Hawaii, Chinese with long tails,
Malays armed with their everlasting creeses, and
others in whose embrowned and bearded visages it
was impossible to recognize any especial nationality.
We came at last into the plaza, now dignified by the
name of Portsmouth Square. It lies on the slant side
of the hill, and from a high pole in front of a long
one-story adobe building used as the Custom House,
the American flag was flying. On the lower side
stood the Parker House, an ordinary frame house of
about sixty feet front — and toward its entrance we
directed our course."
Bayard Taylor tells of the chaotic state of city
streets and of all that goes to the making of a metrop
olis of canvas and packing boxes. He itemizes some
of the rents during that feverish year. The Parker
House yielded a hundred and ten thousand dollars
annually, at least sixty thousand of which was paid
by gamblers who held nearly all the second story. A
canvas tent fifteen by twenty-five feet in size, called
El Dorado, was leased to gamblers for forty thousand

1 6 SAN FRANCISCO AND THEREABOUT
dollars a year. Provisions and wages were propor
tionate; extravagance, profligacy and gaming were
the order of the day.
The winter of 1849 was the most notable in the
history of San Francisco. The rains were unprece-
dentedly heavy and the miserable streets became im
passable bogs. Horses were hopelessly mired and
left to die. Kegs, boxes and rubbish of all sorts were
thrown into the worst mud-holes to form stepping
stones for pedestrians. The tent city was of the most
temporary and inadequate description. Men leaving
for the mines were obliged to travel by sailboat up
the bay and Sacramento River, a tedious journey of
days and sometimes weeks. Municipal affairs were
in such a state of chaos that at one time there were
three town councils in the city.
Out of all this hurly-burly and confusion of the
mushroom metropolis, matters were presently reduced
to at least a semblance of order. During nine months
of this year, two hundred and thirty-three ships ar
rived from the Atlantic Coast and three hundred and
sixteen from Pacific ports. As most of these vessels
were deserted by their crews, who all rushed for the
mines, the fleet of ships anchored in the harbor made
an imposing appearance. A line of steamers was
also put on by the Pacific Mail Steamship Company
during this year, leaving monthly by way of Panama.
Still, the difficulties of crossing the isthmus by row
boat and pack train and the dangers of fever there,
made many people prefer the longer route around
Cape Horn.
During this period of excitement and disorder,
an organization of ruffians known as the "Hounds"
terrorized the city. They marched through the
streets professing to be upholders of the rights of
Americans as against the foreigners, and, with this
pretext to shield them, attacked and looted tents,
chiefly of the Mexicans and Chilians. Emboldened
by success, they established headquarters, changed

THE COMING OF THE ARGONAUTS 17
their name from Hounds to Regulators, paraded the
streets with drum, fife and banners by day, and robbed
and murdered by night. When, in July, 1849, they
had become so fierce and desperate as to terrorize the
whole city, a public meeting in Portsmouth Square
was called by the Alcalde. Those present formed
themselves into a voluntary police force to punish the
desperados. Many of the worst offenders were
speedily arrested and imprisoned on a ship in the
harbor. An impartial jury trial followed which re
sulted in the conviction of a number of the ring
leaders to imprisonment with hard labor for varying
terms. To add to the terrors of this memorable year, a
destructive fire swept the town, fanned by a high wind,
licking up the flimsy houses of frame and canvas.
It was but the first of a series of disasterous conflagra
tions which leveled the city during its early years.
Painted cloth interiors furnished excellent fuel for a
big blaze, and once started, the hand engines worked
by a host of resolute young fellows, could make little
stand against it. During the three years from 1849
to 1 85 1, six fires devastated the city, involving a loss
amounting in some cases to several millions, but with
wonderful energy and courage the ruined citizens
went to work each time to rebuild, improving with
every bitter experience, until they learned to put up
brick buildings with iron shutters on doors and win
dows to withstand the fearful ravage of the flames.
That some of these fires were of incendiary origin,
no doubt was felt. Despite the suppression of the
Hounds, lawlessness grew apace. The rush to the
latest gold fields had attracted numbers of fearless
criminals from various parts of the world. Australia
was a penal colony, and thence in particular came a
crowd of villains ready for robbery, murder, arson
and all desperate deeds. They frequented the water
front saloons about Broadway and Pacific Street — a
quarter of the city which was known as Sydney Town

1 8 SAN FRANCISCO AND THEREABOUT
— and this region became a veritable hotbed of crime.
The police were too corrupt and inefficient to cope
with the evil. Judges and juries failed in their duty,
and although over a hundred murders had been com
mitted, not a criminal had been executed.
So terrible had the demoralization of society
become that desperate measures were necessary to
restore order. In this period of stress and peril a band
of citizens formed the world-famous Vigilance Com
mittee — an association as they themselves declared
"for the maintenance of the peace and good order of
society, and the preservation of the lives and prop
erty of the citizens of San Francisco." They had
been organized but a short time when work was
found for them to accomplish. John Jenkins, a mem
ber of the gang of Sydney Coves, as the criminals
from Australia were termed, entered a waterfront
store one evening and carried off a safe. Pursued, he
took to a boat. Other boats were close upon his traces
when he threw his plunder overboard and submitted
to arrest. The safe was recovered, thus establishing
the guilt of the prisoner beyond a shadow of doubt.
He was taken to the rooms of the Vigilance Commit
tee on Battery Street near Pine. Almost immediately
the town was aroused by short sharp double clangs of
the Monumental Fire Engine Company's bell. It
was the signal for the Vigilantes to assemble. Swiftly
they responded. At the door only those who could
give the pass-word were admitted. Outside waited
the excited crowd, knowing that a dramatic moment
in the history of the city was at hand. From ten to
twelve o'clock they stood about, when, at the midnight
hour, a thrill went through the assembled multitude.
The bell of the California Engine House was tolling
a death-knell. It was nearly an hour later when Mr. Brannan,
one of the committee, came out and announced to the
people that the prisoner had been tried and found
guilty. Within another hour the committee, all

THE COMING OF THE ARGONAUTS 1 9
armed, marched silently forth from their quarters,
guarding the prisoner in their midst. Solemnly they
proceeded through those dark streets, followed by the
multitude, to the Plaza. A rope was hastily tied
about Jenkins' neck and in a trice the other end was
tossed over a projecting timber of a low adobe house.
The prisoner was speedily hoisted up and the rope,
held in the grasp of willing arms, suspended him for
some time after he ceased to move. The thousand
spectators looked on in silence until the body was low
ered when they quietly dispersed to their homes.
The effect of this dramatic episode was electrify
ing. Most of the sober-minded of the community
justified the violation of the law. All but one of the
papers sustained the Vigilance Committee. It was
the spirit of the people asserting itself against crime,
but in defiance of constituted authority.
Other executions followed in rapid succession
during 1851. A month later, another notorious crim
inal, James Stuart, was tried by the committee for a
number of offenses, and after receiving the death sen
tence confessed his crimes and admitted the justice of
the punishment. He too had been an Australian con
vict before coming to San Francisco. Two hours of
grace were given him after the passing of judgment,
and a minister was left alone with him. The whole
committee, four hundred in number, kept the death
watch in an adjoining room. Silent, resolute, they
waited there. Not a whisper, not a murmur disturbed
the awful calm of those two hours. Then the pris
oner was brought forth and, closely bound and
guarded, was marched to the end of the Market Street
Wharf where he was hung up to a derrick.
Two more men were subsequently hanged together
from beams out of the windows of the Vigilance Com
mittee rooms, a crowd of six thousand people witness
ing the execution. This, with the deportation of
many other desperate criminals, ended the work of
the first , committee and brought a state of tolerable

20 SAN FRANCISCO AND THEREABOUT
security to life and property out of the condition of
anarchy which had hitherto existed.
In 1856 the disordered state of society called a
second time for strenuous measures and the Vigilance
Committee was revived. Politics were at this period
shockingly corrupt, and professional ballot box stuffers
plied their vocation with impunity. A champion of
the people and of order arose in the person of James
King, the popular editor of the Bulletin. When, one
day, the Bulletin made a statement, undoubtedly true,
that a certain office-holder named Casey had served
a term in Sing Sing Prison, the individual cited
attempted to clear his reputation by a personal attack
on the editor. He therefore shot and fatally wounded
King, who died in a few days. Again the Vigilance
Committee formed, larger, stronger and better organ
ized than before. They went to work in the same cool
determined way to mete out justice and restore order.
The execution, after due trial, of Casey and another
desperate criminal, Cora, followed. Dangerous and
disagreeable as was the work of the committee, they
did not flinch in their attempt to supplant the law
with a more just and effective tribunal. The specta
cle of an organized body of the most respected citizens,
formed to act in defiance of law for the establishment
of order in the community, has no parallel in history.
They assumed full responsibility for their actions,
their names were published with their sanction, and
they incurred heavy personal expense and the danger
of violent retaliation both from the desperate men
whom they punished and the law which they defied.
The second Vigilance Committee ended its work
amid great enthusiasm on August the eighteenth, 1856.
The city was crowded with sightseers from the sur
rounding country. Flags and bunting brightened the
streets. So strong had the organization become that
over five thousand armed men passed the reviewing
stand of the Executive Committee, including infan
try, cavalry and artillery, all equipped for action.

THE COMING OF THE ARGONAUTS . 21
After the parade the Vigilance Committee disbanded,
having done its work so thoroughly that a different
moral tone pervaded the community.
During this period, and in fact ever since 1852,
when the gold output of California culminated in
eighty-five million two hundred and fifty thousand
dollars, a period of great depression occurred in San
Francisco. Although over seventy-four million dol
lars' worth of gold were obtained in 1853 people
became alarmed at the decline. Miners began to
economize, trade fell off, the tide of immigration
ceased and after a year or two even turned the other
way. Business houses failed; Meiggs, the financier
and promoter of North Beach, became a defaulter for
immense sums and made his dramatic flight to Tahiti
and South America. The whole situation in San
Francisco looked blue enough. It was not until the
Bonanza days of the Civil War that a revival of pros
perity came to the city.
Thus toiled the Argonauts for the golden fleece
of El Dorado, and thus out of chaos and the strenuous
life of the frontier grew modern San Francisco.

THE RAILROAD AND BONANZA KINGS

FTER the decline in gold production
in 1853, San Francisco passed through
a period of comparative quiet and
readjustment. In spite of the fact
that for a number of years the annual
gold output continued above fifty
million dollars, public confidence in
the boundless nature of the supply declined. Dull
times fell upon San Francisco until the exciting days
of the Civil War, when union or secession became a
burning issue. The State decided with the North and
showed its loyalty by subscribing for some time to the
Sanitary Commission twenty-live thousand dollars a
month, half the sum contributed by the entire coun
try. This from a city of a hundred and ten thousand ,
people astonished the whole nation.
During the stirring times before the war, the
eagerness to receive news and to communicate with
far-away friends became so great that the pony
express was started. Hardy riders carried the mail-
bags on fast broncos all the long and dangerous way
from Sacramento to St. Joseph, Missouri, the western
terminus of the railroad. The distance was covered
in the surprisingly short interval of ten and a half days,
making the time from San Francisco to New York
only thirteen days.
Still the people of California realized the neces
sity for closer relations with their kinsmen across the
Rocky Mountains, and a railroad was the issue of the
day. Congress, appreciating the strategic importance
of a transcontinental system, listened to the demands
of California and passed a bill for the construction

THE RAILROAD AND BONANZA KINGS 23
of the road. In 1863 work on what seemed an almost
hopeless undertaking was commenced at Sacramento.
A small company of men who had been successful in
business enterprises in Sacramento, notably Leland
Stanford, C. P. Huntington, Mark Hopkins, Charles
Crocker and E. B. Crocker, secured enormous con
cessions from the Government both in land and money,
for building the Central Pacific Road, while another
company received similar grants for constructing the
Union Pacific Road, starting at the eastern end of the
line. The dramatic race across the continent in the
construction of these roads, each of which was to
have all the line it had laid up to the point of meet
ing, ended on the desert near the Great Salt Lake,
where, with due ceremony, in May, i8ot, Leland
Stanford drove the last spike in the line which united
California with the East.
It was indeed an auspicious time for Califor
nia, but San Francisco was disappointed with the
result. The directors of the road lived, during the
first few years, at Sacramento. An effort, the second
in the history of the city, was made by people inter
ested in Benicia, to make that place a rival of San
Francisco, and to have the overland terminus there.
Furthermore, the intention of the Central Pacific
directors to make Goat Island their approach to San
Francisco, connecting it by ferry with the city, was
so hotly contested that the permission of Congress was
withheld. Instead of the expected boom upon the
completion of the road, San Francisco suffered a most
disastrous panic.
After the decline of gold in California, specula
tive interest in the precious metals was revived by the
discovery in Nevada of vast deposits of silver. As
these mines were largely owned and controlled in San
Francisco, the market in silver stocks became a
gambling enterprise on a vast scale. Fortunes were
made and lost in a day and the prosperity of San
Francisco was dependent upon the reports of the out-

24 SAN FRANCISCO AND THEREABOUT
look in Virginia City. In 1862 the Comstock Lode
produced six million dollars in silver. Speculation
in the mines of this region was so great that, in the
following year, stocks of one company sold at six
thousand three hundred dollars a share. Of course
a panic ensued, although the yield of the Nevada
mines in 1864 reached sixteen million dollars.
Ten years later all this fever of speculation was
eclipsed by the vast yield of the Comstock Lode.
Fabulous sums were taken from the Consolidated
Virginia and the Gold Hill Bonanzas. In less than
four years the Belcher and Crown Point mines had
produced forty million dollars. Then came the Con
solidated Virginia, paying monthly dividends of three
thousand dollars. So wild was the excitement that
the combined value of the Comstock shares is said to
have increased during two months at the rate of a
million dollars a day.
This was the time when the bonanza kings reaped
their harvest. The most spectacular of the fortunes
made thus were amassed by two San Franciscans, J. C.
Flood and W. S. O'Brien. They began investing in a
small way as early as 1862 in the Kentuck mine, but
it was not until some years later, when associated with
two practical miners of Virginia City, J. W. Mackey
and J. G. Fair, that their operations became so large
as to attract public attention. At the time they se
cured possession of the Consolidated Virginia, its
shares had a mere nominal value, since it had yielded
no returns and showed little prospect of so doing.
Luck was with them in the venture, and when a
fabulously rich vein was unearthed the stock rose so
that the four men found themselves possessed of
princely fortunes.
Happily for California the day is over when her
prosperity is dependent upon lucky mining strikes.
The mineral output of the State for 1900 was over
thirty-two million dollars, no inconsiderable sum even
in comparison with the great yields of the past, but

THE RAILROAD AND BONANZA KINGS 25
today the State relies upon such a diversity of products
that the vicissitudes of mining cannot shake her. In
1900 the value of the cured fruit crop was eleven
million dollars, only four million less than the gold
output for the same year, and this is but an index of
the productiveness in other horticultural and pas
toral lines. Wheat, wool, oil, borax, beet-sugar, lumber
and building-stone, are among the many products
which contribute to the wealth of California.
With this brief glance at the stirring incidents
of the San Francisco of the past, it will be in order
now to inspect the city and its environs as they appear
today. A community of four hundred thousand peo
ple, with boundless commercial opportunities, with a
country of rare productiveness all about it, San
Francisco looks to the future for her history as well
as to the past.

THE PEERLESS BAY

FREE sweep of water navigable for
the largest ocean vessels over a stretch
of well-nigh sixty miles; a land
locked harbor with but a single pass
age a mile in width leading to its
sequestered waters ; a haven cut off by
hills and mountains from the ocean,
yet so accessible that the largest steamers can enter on
all tides — such is San Francisco Bay with its four hun
dred and fifty square miles of water! A quarter of
the population of California dwells on its shores.
With a width varying from seven to twelve miles, it
lies just within the Coast Mountain spurs that em
brace it, and in that most temperate of latitudes, the
thirty-eighth parallel. Its upper reaches are subdi
vided into two inner bays — San Pablo and Suisun.
The former, with a diameter of some ten miles, is
the northern end of the great waterway, while the
latter, connected by the narrow Carquinez Straits, lies
to the eastward and appears like a huge reservoir into
which the Sacramento' and San Joaquin Rivers pour
their flood.
Such is the harbor which Portala first looked
upon from the heights in 1769, and into which the
little Spanish ship San Carlos sailed in 1775. Great
are the changes which have taken place since then,
but we of today are only on the threshold of the civil
ization destined to flourish here. This peerless bay,
accessible, deep, safe, convenient, large enough for all
the navies and merchant fleets of the world without
crowding, in a climate free from winter snow and
summer heat, surrounded by one of the most pro-

SAN FRANCISCO FROM THE BAY.

THE PEERLESS BAY 27
ductive countries known, where nature is lavish alike
of her fruits and precious metals, — ^who dare set a
limit upon its growth? The eyes of the world are
upon the Pacific now, and upon the United States.
San Francisco Bay is the great point of departure for
America into the Pacific, and as such is destined to
be one of the great world harbors of the years to come.
What wonder that many explorers sailed along
the California coast and failed to perceive the nar
row break in the rocks through which the Sacra
mento River rolls to the sea? Fifteen miles away,
more or less, the Berkeley Hills rise from the farther
shore of the bay, forming a background, which, viewed
from the ocean on a misty day, appears to effectually
close up the mile-wide gap which alone affords an
entrance to the broad expanse of secluded water.
Barren dreary rocks flank the shores, fog-hung and
storm-worn, inhabited by cormorants and murres.
To the south, guarding the entrance, is Point Lobos,
with the Seal Rocks off shore where herds of sea
lions bask in the sun or fish in the adjacent water. To
the north is Point Bonita, where a lighthouse and fog
horn warn mariners to avoid the rocks. Through
the narrows the tide runs like a millrace. An old-
fashioned brick fort stands close by the water at the
inner point of the strait on the city shore. It is now
abandoned, but upon bluffs to right and left are ter
raced embankments behind which lurk batteries of
immense disappearing guns, while just inside the
Gate in the midst of the bay is a rocky islet which has
been converted into a citadel commanding the entire
channel. This is the picturesque Alcatraz Island, a
point of peculiar strategic importance in the fortifi
cation of the bay.
On either side of the Golden Gate a peninsula
juts from the mainland, with the sea to westward and
the bay to eastward. The northern peninsula is
occupied by Mount Tamalpais and the Bolinas Ridge,
with villages and charming residence suburbs nestling

28 SAN FRANCISCO AND THEREABOUT
at its base (Belvedere, Sausalito, Mill Valley and
San Rafael) while upon the hills of the southern
tongue of land is the city of San Francisco. Straight
away eastward on the far shore of the bay, stretching
along the plain and foothills of the low spurs of the
Coast Mountains, is a group of. towns and cities which
are practically fused into one, although still retaining
their separate names and municipal governments.
The principal of these are Alameda, Oakland and
Berkeley, with an aggregate population of about one
hundred thousand.
San Francisco Bay is an ever-changing pageant
of gray and blue, with purple hills on its margin vary
ing with the season from green to brown. The same
point of view seldom appears twice alike. Seasons,
weather, hour, all stamp their imprint upon it and
make it live. It is the more companionable because
of its many surprises. You think you have followed
it through the whole gamut of its changes, grave and
gay, veiled and transparent, calm and tempestuous,
when behold the next hour has transfigured the scene
and presents an aspect before undreamed!
Who shall undertake to describe this palpitating
wonder of water and cloud, margined with billowy
ranges? At best it must be but a few fleeting impress
ions that the pen transfixes. In summer-time when
many rainless months succeed, the hills are sear and
brown. The monsoon sweeps in through the Golden
Gate and spends its refreshing salt breath upon the
Berkeley Range, flecking the dull greenish-blue tide
with white. Off to the south the water seems to reach
away to a misty dreamland. Somewhere down there
is the prosperous city of San Jose, but of this the eye
gives no hint. Northwards there is a long rolling
boundary line of pale purple hills. Red Rock, an
island in the bay, stands up as a striking bit of con
trasting color. We can distinguish the dark bands
of eucalyptus groves high up on the tawny slopes of
the Berkeley Hills, and the settlement below dotting

THE PEERLESS BAY 29
the foothills for some miles. To the northwest is
Tamalpais, rising gracefully to its 2,600 feet, a pale
blue mountain mass with keenly chiseled profile, slant
ing down to the north in a fine sweep, with the hills
of Angel Island in the foreground. In a secluded nook
at the northern end of the bay, opposite the little town
of Vallejo, lies the Mare Island Navy Yard, with its
drydock, repair shops, and equipment for the naval
base of the Pacific squadron.
From Black Point, the military reservation just
within the Golden Gate, the profile of San Francisco
is built up in big terrace lines to the quaint old frame
battlemented structure on the bold rocky summit of
Telegraph Hill. Thence in long sinuous sags, inter
rupted by the square angles of houses atop the ridge,
it runs ; streets may be seen plowing through the banks
of buildings up the steep slopes. The turrets of the
Mark Hopkins Institute of Art stand out conspicu
ously on the summit of California Street Hill, from
which point the ridge falls off abruptly to the low
land of the valley followed by Market Street. The
city's main thoroughfare may be traced from afar
by three landmarks — the slender gray stone clock
tower of the Ferry Building, the high domed Spreckels
Building and the dome of the City Hall, surmounted
by a colossal figure of Liberty. This dome is the
third highest in the world, rising to a height of three
hundred and thirty feet, and is a graceful point in the
city's heart whether viewed from sea or shore.
Beyond the valley which sunders the hills of San
Francisco, rise the Twin Peaks to a height of over
nine hundred feet. On extends the range south into
San Mateo County where the mountains stretch away
in blue misty reaches.
The waterfront is lined with docks crowded with
ships and steamers, the slender masts and maze of rig
ging foresting the shore with ropes and spars. Other
ships and white transports from the Philippines lie
at anchor here and there off shore, with an occasional

30 SAN FRANCISCO AND THEREABOUT
battle-ship or cruiser to lend impressiveness to the
scene. Comfortable fat white ferry boats with black
smokestacks slip in and out on their journeys to and
from the opposite shores. In midstream is Yerba
Buena Island, now popularly known by its nickname
of Goat Island — a rounded land mass, treeless and
brown on its exposed side but with groves of live-oak
hidden away on its northern slopes. A naval training
station is located there, fitting boys for sea duty on our
men-of-war. To the eastern eye accustomed to verdure in
summer-time, the dry hills of San Francisco Bay look
strange enough, but the old resident loves this aspect
of nature and would not change it had he the power.
There is something quieting and restful about the
sober tones which vary from brown and yellow
through a whole range of purples, grays and blues,
with plumbeous curtains of fog rolling in from the
sea. The wide vistas, the dignity and gravity of the
scene, the bigness and freedom of all, sink deep into
the heart. There is nothing trivial or commonplace,
nothing merely pretty about it. Its largeness and
nobility grow upon the beholder with years of resi
dence. At times all this varied, sweep of view is revealed
in the utmost detail, with sun sparkling on the rippling
waves, and an hour later the high summer fog
will drift over, softening the outlines, veiling the
hills, dimming the distant heights, and giving the
fancy free scope to build into the obscurity what it
pleases. A fresh sea breeze generally blows across
the bay throughout the summer, but there are days
when the water seems fairly oily in its serenity.
The night views of the bay have their own charm.
As the ferry boat leaves the waterfront, a multitude
of bright lights sparkle at the many piers, some of
them red and green, throwing splashes of soft waver
ing color in the water. The city streets up the steep
hills are indicated by twinkling stars, and across the

THE PEERLESS BAY 3 1
water sparkle the lights of Berkeley on the upper
slopes. The dark dim land masses, the blackness of
the bay with a foggy sky above leave a solemn and
mysterious effect of vastness and loneliness on the
mind. I have dwelt on the beauty of the bay in sum
mer because it is so distinctively Calif ornian; but the
winter, too, has its own loveliness. The few showers
of early autumn are often followed by some of the
warmest days of the year, in October and even in
early November. This is the season when we look
for northers, those singular wind storms which some
people dislike, but which I for one welcome among
the experiences of the year. The north wind blows
with hot dry gusts of the desert. If the rains have
started any green blades forth, they droop and wilt
beneath its withering fury. Every particle of mois
ture in the air is dried out and the atmosphere is
crystal clear. At night the stars blaze and flash as
if opening wide their wild eyes at the tumult of the
wind. Each successive day for three days the weather
grows hotter and drier and the force of the wind in
creases. Then the gale dies away as suddenly as it
arose, to be followed not infrequently by a welcome
shower. There is something immensely stimulating,
exhilarating, even exciting about this storm beneath
an azure sky. It is our substitute for thunderstorms
which are almost unknown.
When the winter rains finally set in, what a
change comes over the landscape! Every shower
starts forth the green blades on hill and plain. The
southeast wind blows a gale, the dark clouds hurry
over the leaden bay, the torrents fall, and everybody
is happy. At the end of the storm, when the sun
thrusts its searching rays through the cloud loops,
striking the distant hillsides, a pale glint of green
brightens them. Soon, how wonderfully soon, they
are clothed in verdure from valley to crest! The
green fairly glows and shimmers beneath the winter

32 SAN FRANCISCO AND THEREABOUT
sun. And the atmosphere, washed of all impurities
by the downpour, is of matchless transparency. Every
ravine and dimple on the blue slopes of Tamalpais is
revealed in all its lovely nakedness. Far away on the
summit of the San Mateo Range the redwood trees
may be seen standing up against the sky. From the
Berkeley Hills, out through the Golden Gate the larg
est of the Farallone Islands is plainly visible forty
miles away and its intermittent light flashes during
the hours of darkness. The houses of San Francisco
and the ships in the harbor are defined in startling
clearness. The winter months about the bay are really a
curious union of autumn with spring. Winter is
overlooked in the rushing together of the dying and
newborn year. Flowers are blooming, birds are sing
ing and a thrill of life passes over land and sea.
At this season the bay is crowded with hosts of
birds. Ducks and scoters swim about off shore.
Murres and cormorants, grebes and loons dive and
sport to their hearts' content. It is the gulls, however,
that attract the greatest attention of passengers on the
ferry boats. They follow the boats back and forth,
picking up food thrown overboard from the cook's
galley and darting after bread tossed them from the
deck by interested spectators. Feeding the gulls has
become a favorite amusement, and a pretty sight it is
to see them poise in readiness and swoop upon the
morsel of bread, catching it in mid air. So tame do
they become that I have known them to take bread
from the outstretched hand of a man.
With this winter view of the bay, let us leave it
to inspect more closely the great mart upon its shore.
Hills of green and blue lie afar off. Mount Diablo,
one of the commanding peaks of the Coast Moun
tains, lifts its head back of the Berkeley Range. A
brown streak on the blue water of the bay marks the
course of the Sacramento River, flooded by the winter
rains. The islands are beautifully green; ships have

THE PEERLESS BAY 33
spread their clouds of canvas to dry after the storm;
back and forth the eye ranges over miles of varied
scenery, all colored with a palette that only a Cali
fornia winter furnishes. The great ferry boat glides
into its slip and we follow the crowd off the upper
deck into the magnificent nave of the Ferry Building
and down the broad stone stairway to the city street.

VIGNETTES OF CITY STREETS

H the bewilderment of a first view of
a big hustling American city! To
be dropped off the ferry into the vety
center of the maelstrom of life, where
every mortal is bent upon his own
task, where streams and counter-
streams of humanity hurry in and out
and round about, and all seem at first glance like the
chaos of life. After the repose of the country, the wide
serenity of the hill-encircled bay, to grapple with the
noise and stir of the city! But what a sensation of
exhilaration, this elbowing with the eager crowd, this
trotting with the pack after the quarry, this pressing
on with the tumult of men in the rush for place!
Here life and effort are focused, and the great organic
forces of the State are centralized and defined. The
wheels of the Juggernaut Progress roll along the
street and their victims are many, but the victories of
peace atone for all the strife, and humanity goes its
way, cursing and praying, weeping and singing, fight
ing and loving, but on the whole advancing from the
beast to the angel.
At the foot of Market Street the long low Ferry
Building of gray Colusa stone commands the view,
and its graceful clock- tower rises above the commo
tion of the city highways. To right and left stretches
the waterfront street, where big docks and wharfs are
lined with shipping. Heavy freight vans rattle and
bang over the cobble-stones. Bells are clanging on
cable cars, newsboys are piping the sensation of the
hour ; there is an undertone of many voices, a scuffling
of hundreds of feet on the cement walks, a hurrying

VIGNETTES OF CITY STREETS 35
of the crowd for first place on the cars. From this
point of vantage one might parody the well-known
lines of Tennyson into:
Cars to right of you.
Cars to left of you,
Cars in front of you clatter and rumble.
The Market Street cable cars bear the most be-
wilderingly diverse inscriptions. No two seem alike,
yet all roll merrily up the same broad highway. The
novice soon discovers that for all practical purposes
one is as good as another unless his journey be into
the higher residence portions of the city, and he
furthermore learns that by a most extensive system of
transfers he can keep traveling almost ad lib for one
five-cent fare, journeying thus from the bay to the
ocean. There is a great parade of cars in front of
the Ferry Building. The red and green cable cars
of the Washington and Jackson districts come sweep
ing around a loop out of a side street with clanging
bells and a watchman preceding them. Beyond their
stand are electric and horse cars, all off to the right of
Market, while to the left several important south-of-
Market electric systems start. Here are the fine big
cars that run down the peninsula to San Mateo, as well
as the Mission and Harrison Street lines.
About the only distinctive feature in the laying
out of San Francisco's streets which relieves the pre
vailing prosaic checkerboard system of American
cities, is found in the direction of Market Street which
slants boldly across the center of the town. The
streets to the north of it were stupidly laid out on the
points of the compass, up hill and down dale, but a
direct route from the mission to the bay following
down the valley, was a matter of so much import
ance in the early days that this highway was perpet
uated in the permanent scheme for the city. The
streets of the section south of Market are parallel or
at right angles to that thoroughfare, while the district
to the north is laid out in streets which run on other

36 SAN FRANCISCO AND THEREABOUT
lines, making gore blocks at every intersection with
Market. Nearly everyone seems bound up Market Street,
either a-foot or a-cable, so why not follow the crowd?
Cars of many colors are swinging around on the
turn-table one after another, and the man in 'the house
of glass, who I trust never throws stones, is giving
them the queue for starting up town. A big under
ground gong is clanging its warning as the cars swoop
upon the turn-table; bells are jangled at the imper
turbable crowd, and in some mysterious way people
manage to escape being run over.
Jumping on the first car to start, I find an outside
seat on the dummy. The bell rings, the gripman
throws back his lever which clutches the cable. You
can hear the grip work amid the rumble of the start.
He hammers away at his foot gong and off we roll!
There is a rush of wind down the street, a whirl and
confusion of traffic. Wholesale houses and office
buildings line the way, mostly landmarks of the old
regime with much gingerbread ornamentation, but
here and there a fine modern building of stone or terra
cotta shows that the city is alive and growing. There
is time for but a glance up the streets that shoot off
from Market at an acute angle ; California, Pine, Bush,
are passed in a trice and the corner is reached where
Post and Montgomery impinge upon Market. The
fine Crocker Building is squeezed in on the gore block
between Post and Market while across the way on
the south side of Market a whole block is taken up
with the Palace Hotel — a monument of bay windows.
A sort of Bridge of Sighs crosses New Montgomery
connecting the Palace with the Grand Hotel. On
the northeast corner of Market and Montgomery
Streets, a modern terra-cotta office building is occupied
by the business departments of the Southern Pacific
Company. Up Montgomery Street, past the Lick House
and the Occidental Hotel, both in the architecture of
two or three decades ago, is the magnificent Mills

LOOKING UP MONTGOMERY STREET FROM MARKET.

VIGNETTES OF CITY STREETS 37
Building, one of the most substantial and well pro
portioned structures of the city. Another massive
edifice of fine design is the Hayward Building, a
block beyond the Mills Building, but the clanging car
is rolling up the street and there is no time to itemize
the many modern buildings which are daily climbing
up on steel frames from the noisy city pave.
Another block of navigating the grip and the
coign of observation, the navel of San Francisco is
reached. It is the corner of Third, Kearny, and
Geary Streets, where the busy life of the city centers.
So many people leave the car at this point that 'tis
evident there is something doing, and meekly enough
I fall in line with the crowd. The three morning
papers seek companionship upon the corners here —
the Chronicle, whose building is of red sandstone and
brick, with its clock tower — a well-known landmark
of the city; the Examiner Building, in Spanish style,
with simple plaster walls, deep recessed portico at the
top, and tile roof; and the Call tower, rising fifteen
stories to a fine dome, the most commanding archi
tectural feature of the business district. At this
meeting of the ways is Lotta's drinking fountain, a
token of which San Franciscans are fond from its
association with the soubrette who, in early days, first
made fame and fortune here by winning the hearts of
the pioneers. Kearny Street is the highway for shopping, and
hosts of fair ladies trip its stony pavements, looking
with absorbed attention at window displays of silks
and laces, coats and curtains, or casting glances at the
latest walking exponent of fads and fashions. Some
are lured by the fragrant aroma or tempting window
exhibition into the sanctuary of ices and candies ; others
succumb to the florist, and thus money circulates by
the caprice of feminine fancy.
At the Kearny Street corner, right in the shadow
of the Chronicle Building, is a bright and attractive
feature of the city streets— the flower sellers. They

38 SAN FRANCISCO AND THEREABOUT
are ranged in a long row on the curb, men and boys
standing beside their baskets and holding out bouquets
to tempt the wayfarers. The busy stream of humanity
sweeps by with fluttering skirts and laughing voices.
Electric cars clang up and down, a coachman snaps
his whip as a glistening carriage with jingling har
ness rolls over the asphalt pavement and the horses
hoofs clatter merrily. It is a democratic procession
— the negro with his pipe, the traveler with dress-suit
case, an officer just returned from the Philippines, and
above all, the women, over whom even Rudyard Kip
ling, with cynic eye and caustic pen, could not but
indulge in rhapsodies. Mid all the din and grit of
the city, alike in winter as in summer, the flower sellers
are at their post, and the perfume of the violet, the
sweet-pea and the rose, or whatever may be the flower
of the season, steals upon the senses, while the brilliant
array of bloom makes an oasis in the desert of stone.
San Francisco is commonly divided into north
and south of Market Street. In the early days of the
city the aristocratic part of town was in Happy Val
ley and on Rincon Hill, to the south, but when a cit
izen, Mr. A. S. Hallidie, successfully solved the
problem of climbing the steep hills north of Market
by inventing the cable car, people flocked to the heights
commanding a view of the bay and the Golden Gate.
Then it was that California Street became the nob hill
where palaces of ample dimensions were built by the
Stanfords, Hopkins, Crockers, Floods and other mil
lionaires, while people of more moderate means set
tled upon the adjacent hills and slopes. The south
of Market section became the home of the artisans for
the most part, and certain cross streets, notably Third,
Sixth and Eighth, have developed into secondary
shopping centers. Mission Street, the first thorough
fare south of Market, is becoming the great wholesale
street of the city, and numbers of splendid modern
structures, solid, substantial, and simple in design, are
being constructed upon it.

FROM A PHOTOGRAPH BY LANGE
LOOKING DOWN KEARNY STREET TO MARKET.

VIGNETTES OF CITY STREETS 39
The residence district is today reaching out over
the hills between the Presidio and Golden Gate Park,
while the business section, once crowded down on the
made land of the waterfront, is expanding up the resi
dence streets, especially on Geary, Post and Sutter.
Post Street is to me one of the most attractive
shopping highways, owing to the number of artistic
stores which have of late years been established there.
The idea, which originated with a picture dealer who
commenced in a very modest way, has grown with
surprising rapidity. Book stores, bazaars where
Oriental brasses and rugs are displayed, collections of
artistic photographs, Japanese embroidery and prints,
Egyptian embroidery, jewelry, carved and antique
furniture are among the displays noted in passing the
shop windows. I know of no other American city,
not excepting Boston and New York, where one may
find the equal in taste and refinement of some of these
stores. To go into a picture house where every detail of
furniture, from the carved chairs and simple tables to
the lockers with big brass strap hinges, are works of art,
studiously harmonious, where wall decoration is con
sidered as well as the pictures selected with so much
taste to adorn them — surely this is as inspiring as it is
unusual! Then to be led into mysterious back rooms,
reserved for sequestrating choice collections of oil
paintings, displayed with more generous wall space
than any art gallery affords, and other rooms lined
with soft Japanese grass-cloth for showing watercol-
ors and etchings! Verily it is enough to surprise the
tenderfoot who thinks of San Francisco as the metrop
olis of the wild and woolly west, where whiskered men
in top boots and flannel shirts carry six-shooters in
their belts. Some people have slipped a half-century
cog in picturing California from the other side of the
continent. Culture and art have taken on a new lease
of life here, and like the exuberant vegetation are
already bearing the fruit of the Hesperides. Let us

40 SAN FRANCISCO AND THEREABOUT
frankly confess that it is to be found only in spots,
like oases in a desert of the commonplace, but evety
wind that blows is scattering broadcast the seeds.
Where but in San Francisco can one find a book
store like an aesthetic library? Here are books in
glass cases, books upon finely designed tables, and,
scattered about the room, exquisite antiques in brass
and bronze, choice vases and bits of pottery, with a
few well chosen photographs and cards on the walls.
Other rooms adjoin the main apartment — the old
book room where many quaint and curious books in
rare bindings are treasured, the children's room and
the old furniture room with its quaint fireplace.
Another bookseller on the same street, a man of years'
experience and standing, has gone extensively into the
publication of books by San Francisco authors, and
the works which bear his imprint will compare with
the output of the best Eastern houses in workmanship
and style. Many cable cars go into the residence district on
the heights. We may travel on the California Street
cars through the business quarter, even more exclu
sively the haunt of men than Kearny Street is of
women, and up the steep ascent past the Hopkins Art
School, looking backward down the street to the bay
with the Berkeley Hills and Mount Diablo beyond;
or we may be hauled up Clay Street through China
town, holding on to our seats the while as best we may
to prevent sliding down upon our neighbor, and ulti
mately get up into the Western Addition out on Jack
son Street or Pacific Avenue. There are countless
blocks of the older residence portion of the city to be
passed en route, built up of painted board houses out
of which rows of bay windows bulge vacantly, orna
mented with diverse whimsicalities that are as mean
ingless as they are wearisome. But the cable car jogs
on up the hills and down the valleys. An occasional
dracaena flutters its ribbon leaves, or a eucalyptus
sways its stiff hanging foliage in the fresh sea breeze.

VIGNETTES OF CITY STREETS 41
Then, as we climb, the vista to the north discloses
the blue water of the bay with the purple flanking
hills of Tamalpais upon the farther shore. Up steep
cobble-stone streets ascends the car, with isolated knobs
to the north and northeast — Russian and Telegraph
Hills, crowned with buildings. Straight ahead, ocean-
wards, are more hills up which a series of cars may be
seen moving at measured intervals.
Van Ness Avenue is crossed — a broad asphalt
street lined with costly homes and large church
edifices. Many of the houses are truly palatial in size
and style, and an air of wealth pervades the thorough
fare. On clatters the car, rumbling over a crossing
and starting up another steep ascent. Here stands an
elegant mansion of rough red sandstone, with tile roof,
there a quaint brick house with the distinctive features
of the Renaissance in domestic architecture. Down
the side streets on the lower hills, the city roofs crowd
in a gray mass.
Just off from Jackson Street is a simple little
brick church which has been an inspiration to a grow
ing number of lovers of the genuine and beautiful in
life. It matters not whether they are Swedenborgians
as the minister of the church happens to be, or have
other creedal affiliations. The spirit of the place,
with all its quiet restfulness, its homelike charm, its
naive grace, has sunk deep in the lives of a small but
earnest group of men and women. Within, the
stranger is impressed with a certain primitive quality
about everything. The heavy madrono trunk rafters
left in their natural state, the big open fireplace, the
massive square-post, rush-bottom chairs, and the large,
grave allegorical landscapes of seedtime and harvest,
painted with loving care by William Keith, combine
with the simplicity of design and the fitness of every
detail, to make a church, which, without any straining
after effect, is unique in beauty. The message of its
builder has reached his mark, and here and there
through city and town, homes have been reared in the

42 SAN FRANCISCO AND THEREABOUT
same simple fashion — plain, straightforward, genuine
homes, covered with unpainted shingles, or built of
rough brick, with much natural redwood inside, in
broad unvarnished panels. The same reserve which
has characterized the building of these homes has
likewise been exercised in their furnishing. A few
antique rugs, a few good pictures or photographs of
the masters, and many good books, with plain tables
and chairs, constitute the furniture. To find this
spirit, which would have been a delight to William
Morris, so strongly rooted as to assume almost the
aspect of a cult, is, I take it, one of the most remark
able features of a civilization so new as that of mod
ern San Francisco.
For a bird's-eye view of the city, no point of van
tage is more commanding than the summit of Tele
graph Hill. An electric car out Kearny Street goes
past the base of the hill, but the height must be gained
on foot. Just where Kearny Street leads into Broad
way, in that tatterdemalion Latin quarter where Mex
ican and Italian restaurants crowd about the old jail,
and the window of every two-penny shop has a name
inherited from Spain or Italy, we leave the car and
climb the steep road. Many of the side streets are
passable only for pedestrians. Flights of steps or
broad chicken-ladders lead to houses perched on rocky
heights. It is a famous place for goats, which graze
on old newspaper and shavings, looking at you the
while with wistful expressions on their bearded
countenances. Panting, we reach the summit and gaze abroad
for the first impression. What a view is spread about
within the wide sweep of horizon — of life with all its
varied activities — commerce, manufactures, homes!
It is like sitting down with a whole metropolis wrig
gling under the microscope! The great frame barn-
like dilapidated castle interrupts a portion of the view
to northward, but otherwise the whole varied pano
rama can be taken in by a turn of the head. To the

if.

^"J:

VIGNETTES OF CITY STREETS 43
east and northeast, lies the expanse of blue water
bounded by the far-away green hills of the Contra
Costa shore, rising gradually to the highest point in
Grizzly Peak of the Berkeley Range. Goat Island, a
green mound in the center of the bay, is humped up in
front of Berkeley. To the south of it, Oakland lines
the bay shore.
Around northwestwardly stands the Bolinas
Ridge, with the waters of the Golden Gate at its base.
Fort Point protrudes on the south, with Point Bonita
beyond it on the north shore, and still farther off, just
a glimpse of the glistening blue ocean. So much for
the bay view which curves around the marvelous pan
orama of the city! At the wharves is a fringe of ship
ping. Men and horses move about the docks like
black pygmies. The rumble of vans ascends from the
cobble-stone pavement, and the explosive piffs of a
gasoline engine are heard.
But the city, oh the city, how it crowds the hills
with a wilderness of gray walls and windows, cleft
here and there by the lines of parallel streets which
dare to climb the most forbidding heights! How it is
spread out there on the slopes, with lofty tower build
ings rising from the plain, and a line of pale hills
fading beyond into purple behind a veil of smoke!
Near at hand, in front of the Greek church, with its
green, copper-capped turret, is a little patch of grass.
Beyond it, on Russian Hill, are some artistic homes
with a bit of shrubbery on the adjacent hillslope.
Clothes are hanging out to dry on flat roofs far below.
The clang and din filters up from the plain in sub
dued tones, with the shrill voices of children caught
by a veering gust of wind. What a chaos of dull
houses, thrilling with life, each enclosing its family
history, its triumph or tragedy, but all so immovable
and unindividual as I look upon the mass !

HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS

T was on the corner of Market and
Kearny Streets in the evening and a
great crowd was assembled, filling the
streets in all directions for some blocks
with a good-natured mass of human
ity, dressed for a holiday and standing
about as if waiting for something to
happen. Suddenly there was a flash and scintillation
of lights, a suppressed wave of admiring exclama
tion running through the crowd, and San Fran
cisco was decked in a shimmering garment of in
candescent lights. At the meeting of the streets was
an immense canopy of fairy lamps that dazzled one
with its radiance. Up and down the way as far as eye
could travel, bands of light were stretched overhead at
frequent intervals, sparkling like stars. At the foot
of the street rose the ferry tower, its every line brought
out in electric beading. The great Spreckels Build
ing was similarly outlined with lamps, and away up
town the dome of the City Hall flashed forth glor
iously in outlines of subdued fire.
Such electric illuminations of San Francisco are
now of frequent occurrence, for the city is becoming
noted as a place for holding conventions, and from all
parts of the country come Christian Endeavorers,
Mystic Shriners, Knights of Pythias and all sorts of
orders and associations who combine a holiday in Cal
ifornia with their business. They are entertained here
with that hospitality for which the State is famed — a
heritage somewhat diluted, but still characteristic,
from the proud senors of the Mexican Republic be
fore the days of '49.

THE CITY HALL.

FROM A PHOTOGRAPH BY TIBBETB

HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS 45
So great has been the influx of visitors during the
past year that there is scarce accommodation for all,
but the completion of the two new hotels and the two-
story addition to the Palace which is now contem
plated, will relieve the present stress. The Palace
has been for years one of the landmarks of San Fran
cisco. It is big and bulging, but there is something so
distinctive about its interior design that it stands alone
among hotels. The great central court is open to the
skylight with a balcony bordering it on each floor.
In the midst is an immense palm, and the spacious
court is paved with white marble flags. Behind a
screen of palms and glass at the farther end, dining
tables are spread, where one may have a meal instead
of going to the restaurant or grillroom. In the office,
a cosmopolitan crowd is assembled — ^wayfarers from
everywhere and nowhere — and one may find here end
less types of humanity to delight and interest the
student of mankind.
Although the Palace is the largest of the hotels,
there are others about town quite as good. The New
California, on Bush Street, with its pretty little the
atre in the center, is attractive and modern through
out. The Occidental on Montgomery Street, has for
many years been the headquarters of army and navy
people, as well as for many others who do not wear
uniforms. A block nearer Market on the opposite
side of the same street the Lick House reminds us of
the eccentric pioneer who did so much good with his
money after he died. In the residence district of the
city there is an increasing number of refined family
hotels which are sought by those who come not as
curious birds of passage but as tentative residents.
In the way of creature comforts, San Francisco
is noted above all for its restaurants. The abundance
of food produced in the immediate vicinity and the
excellence of the large city markets, make it possible
to provide meals at prices that amaze New Yorkers.
An elaborate French dinner with a bottle of wine for

46 SAN FRANCISCO AND THEREABOUT
from fifty to seventy-five cents is provided at a large
number of places about town. A considerable French
population came to San Francisco during the early
days, and many of these people, gastronomic experts
by nature, have found their gold mines in frogs' legs
and rum omelettes. The old Maison Doree was for
years the aristocratic dining place of the city, but it
fell upon evil days and the sheriff took the keys. Of
the resorts long familiar not only to San Franciscans
fond of good living, but to the Bohemian globe trot
ters of many lands, there are such French restaurants
as the Poodle Dog and the Pup, Marchand's and
Maison Tortoni. Among the best known of the Ger
man places, where orchestras enliven the clink of steins
and schooners, are Zinkand's, a great favorite with
after-theatre supper-parties, and Techau Tavern, in an
old church with pillars and recessed nooks decorated
in green, where one may have rye bread and Frank
furters together with sundry other good things. Nor
must one forget the plebian Louvre which is German
to the core, in spite of its name.
The Mexican restaurants of the Latin quarter at
the base of Telegraph Hill, serve all sorts of hot con
coctions — peppery stews, chicken tamales, frijoles, and
the flat corn cakes so dear to the Mexican stomach, tor
tillas, with Chili con carne and red peppers to warm
up the meal. Italian restaurants stand side by side
with the Mexican on Broadway, with their "Buon
gusto" on the window pane to attract unwary flies
within their webs. I have alluded elsewhere to the
Chinese restaurants, but a Japanese tea house is more
of a curiosity, even in cosmopolitan San Francisco.
Up on Ellis Street is such a place, complete in all its
appointments, set in a charming little Japanese gar
den. Here the Japanese are served precisely as in
the land of the chrysanthemum and the cherry blos
som. There is even a Turkish restaurant in San
Francisco where, surrounded by hangings and rugs of
oriental richness, one may whiff the incense and sip

HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS 47
the coffee of the Ottoman Empire. Of coffee houses,
chop houses, and creameries, good, bad and indiffer
ent, there is no end. Swain's is the oldest and best
known of the bakery restaurants, while the ladies
caught out shopping generally drop into the Woman's
Exchange, where all is dainty and appetizing to a
degree. Since the palmy days of the Argonauts when gold
pieces were thrown upon the stage in lieu of bouquets
to signify the miners' appreciation of the popular dan-
seuse or soubrette, San Francisco has been noted for its
theatrical enthusiasm, and for the independence of
its judgment concerning plays and players. Of late
years the city has shared in the general American
deterioration of the stage, but anything really good
awakens the old response. The long lines of people
standing for hours in the rain to gain admission to
the galleries for a Wagner opera or an Irving play
are sufficient index. Two new theatres are to be
erected in the immediate future which will add greatly
to the dramatic possibilities of the city. Cheap opera,
both light and grand, for which we are indebted to
the German residents, is a constant feature of the the
atrical world in San Francisco.
Although the city has been for years a center for
artists, sending forth many painters of distinction and
better still keeping a few at home, it has no art
gallery save the collection in the Mark Hopkins
School of Art. Here are some admirable works, but
the building is peculiarly ill adapted for displaying
them. Paintings by many of the famous European
masters are owned in San Francisco, and at occasional
loan exhibitions are publicly displayed.
Of local painters William Keith stands alone in
his art as a master of landscape. Such poetry of field
and grove, of mountain and forest, of moving clouds
and breaking sunshine, has made his work loved more
deeply than widely by all who know California and
appreciate the great earth mother. Some day the

48 SAN FRANCISCO AND THEREABOUT
East will awaken to the fact that the greatest of Amer
ican landscape painters has been working away on the
Pacific shore all these years, and then he will be "dis
covered." The work of Thomas Hill in portraying
the larger scenes of California, especially of the high
Sierra Nevada Mountains, has given him a national
reputation. In portraiture, the tender feeling, the
warm coloring and free handling of mother and child
pictures has won a circle of enthusiastic admirers for
Mary Curtis Richardson. The moonlight scenes of
Charles RoUo Peters, the protraits of Orrin Peck, the
Indians of Amedee Joullin, the landscapes of Brewer,
Cadenasso, Jorgensen, Latimer and McComas and the
decorations of Mathews and Bruce Porter are among
the most widely known, although the list might be
greatly extended without exhausting the number of
really admirable painters. One of the signs of vitality
is the large number of young men and women who are
doing excellent work and constantly raising their own
standard as well as that of those about them. In
sculpture, Douglas Tilden and Robert Aitken, both
young men, have done work of a high order of ex
cellence. The Bohemian Club has been a rendezvous for
the artists and men of letters in San Francisco. Under
the patronage of the owl, this club has brought together
many congenial spirits who have sung songs, painted
pictures, written poems and plays, composed music and
told stories in honor of Bohemia. Their midsummer
jinks in their own redwood grove in Sonoma County,
where the majestic columns of the forest form the wings
of the theatre and the mountain a back-ground, where
the solemn grandure of a moonlight night is made
wierd and strange with red fire and colored calciums,
bringing out all the tracery of the wildwood in unfa
miliar lights and colors — all this with the music of a
full orchestra and a spectacular pageant rendered in
brilliant costumes, makes a scene of impressive beauty.
Of San Francisco's numerous clubs, the Pacific

HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS 49
Union is perhaps the most aristocratic, its membership
including many of the wealthiest and most influential
men of the city. The Country Club, which owns a great
hunting park in Marin County, is composed of mem
bers of the Pacific Union and there is also a Burlingame
Country Club, made up of the elect who play golf
and polo. In the Cosmos Club are many army and
navy men, while the University Club, as its name
implies, is composed of professors and alumni, and
entertains at its comfortable home on Sutter Street
many visiting scholars of distinction. The Olympic
Club is chiefly devoted to athletics, having a building
finely equipped with salt water swimming tank, gym
nasium, handball court, and all appliances for culti
vating the physical man.
Among the other men's clubs may be mentioned
the two select Jewish clubs, the San Francisco Verein
and Concordia. The Union League, with headquarters
at the Palace Hotel, is a Republican club exercising
much influence over local and state politics. The
Press Club is composed of leading newspaper men
of the city who meet in good fellowship and toss off
the grind and partisanship of the office for an occas
ional hour at their rooms on Ellis Street. The
Unitarian Club has no building or rooms of its own
but meets monthly around the festive board and listens
to discussions by speakers of eminence and power, of
questions of local, national, or universal interest.
These meetings have much weight in presenting to an
influential body of men, from many points of view,
matters of vital importance.
The women have their full share of clubs, most
of which are devoted to literary, art, charitable or
municipal work. The Laurel Hall Club is one of
the oldest of these organizations, and still continues
its social and literary gatherings without diminution
of interest. Many prominent women of San Francisco
are members of the Century Club, which has a house
of its own on Sutter Street. It devotes its meetings

50 SAN FRANCISCO AND THEREABOUT
mainly to music and lectures, varied by an occasional
evening reception. The California Club is a large
organization of women who undertake practical work
in the city and state. They have already accomplished
much good, notably in their agitation for preserving
the giant Sequoias. The California Outdoor Art
League, recently organized, has commenced a vigor
ous campaign in the city for the cause of flowers, trees
and parks, and promises to exert a strong influence in
beautifying the city. The Spinners and Sketch Clubs
are composed of young women interested in literature
and art. The Sorosis is a social and literary club.
The ladies of the Emanuel Sisterhood devote
themselves to helping those less fortunate than them
selves, and their aid is of the most genuine kind. They
go among the poor to teach sewing, millinery and
cooking, and other useful arts. The Columbia Parle
Boys' Club, largely supported by them, has done a
noble work among a group of youngsters south of
Market Street. In a charming home, fitted up simply
but with real artistic feeling, the boys have nightly
meetings. There is a small reading room with good
pictures on the wall and books and magazines on
shelves and tables. Classes in manual training, in
drawing and clay modeling are conducted by volunteer
workers. There is a gymnasium, a military depart
ment, a baseball club and other athletic features as well
as a chorus of young boys who sing classical songs in
a spirited manner.
A college settlement has been established in San
Francisco for a number of years, and now, through
the generosity of Mrs. Phoebe A. Hearst, has neigh
borhood meetings in its own comfortable and artistic
quarters. Another modest little neighborhood home is
delightfully maintained by Miss Octavine Briggs, who,
in the capacity of trained nurse, has brought health,
good cheer, and refining influences to many people
young and old. Over in the Latin Quarter at the foot
of Russian Hill, the Rev. Fiske and his wife maintain

HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS 51
an institutional church known as the People's Place
— a center for good practical work in that region of
saloons and poverty.
The churches of San Francisco present few
striking features to distinguish them from the houses
of worship in other American cities of the same size.
The older church buildings are for the most part com
monplace in architecture, but some of the more recent
ones are massive stone structures of fine design. Among
the city ministers, none perhaps has exercised so
powerful an influence over the destiny of the com
munity as Thomas Starr King, whose eloquent preach
ing did much to save California to the Union during
the stormy days before the war. His successor, Horatio
Stebbins, was a pillar of strength and a profound moral
force in the community. The quiet example of Joseph
Worcester has been a quickening influence for all good
and beautiful things.
Probably the most striking feature of San Fran
cisco's places of worship is their cosmopolitan char
acter. The Greek Catholic is represented here as well
as the Roman, and the towers of the synagogue rise
with the spires of the Protestant Christians. The negro
Baptist, Salvation Army and all are here. The Jap
anese Confucian and the Chinaman with his joss,
worship in their own peculiar fashion. Christian
Science, the newest, and Theosophy a modern echo of
the oldest of religions, each has its following.
The city schools differ in no material respect from
those of other American cities of corresponding pop
ulation. There are a number of manual training and
industrial schools, notably the Wilmerding, the Lick
School of Mechanical Arts, the Polytechnic High and
the Cogswell Schools. There are three academic high
schools, the Lowell, Mission and Girls', each sending
annually many graduates to the University. A feature
of the school department is the salaried School Board,
consisting of men who devote themselves exclusively
to the work, and who, in connection with the Superin-

52 SAN FRANCISCO AND THEREABOUT
tendent of Schools, conduct all the public educational
affairs of the city.
The museums of San Francisco are nearly all in
an early stage of development. . The largest is in
Golden Gate Park, a gift of the Commissioners of the
Midwinter Fair and is especially rich in archaeology.
The California Academy of Sciences maintains a free
museum of natural history in its building on Market
Street and has the most complete extant herbarium and
study collection of birds of the Pacific Coast. This
institution also gives monthly popular lectures on
scientific subjects which are largely attended. Its
printed proceedings are recognized among the im
portant contributions to science, and have an inter
national reputation. As one of the residuary legatees
of the Lick estate, the Academy has an assured income,
although not sufficient to properly carry on all its
activities. The University of California maintains in
the Ferry Building a small but interesting collection
of Alaskan ethnology, most of which was presented to
it by the Alaska Commercial Company. The same
building also contains the mineralogical museum of
the State Mining Bureau, and the agricultural and
horticultural exhibitions of the State Board of Trade
which has for many years undertaken to make the
resources of California more widely known. The
Pacific Commercial Museum, recently organized, also
has its headquarters in the Ferry Building where it
is installing a collection of the commercial products
of the countries of the Pacific Ocean. Its work is out
lined somewhat on the plans of the Philadelphia Com
mercial Museum, and it aims to keep the merchants
of San Francisco in touch with trade openings and
developments in foreign countries.
Of local libraries but a passing word need be said.
The large Public Library is temporarily quartered in
the City Hall, while the Mechanics' Library, especially
popular on account of its location near the business and
shopping centers, has a building totally inadequate to

dw
n

HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS 53
its needs. Plans are already maturing for a new build
ing. The Mercantile completes the list of general
public or semi-public libraries. The Sutro Library is
a wonderful repository containing many priceless
illuminated codices, incunabula and other rare old
editions, but it is at present stored where it is inacces
sible to the public. The Academy of Sciences has a
valuable working library of scientific books, its collec
tion of journals and proceedings of other societies being
especially noteworthy. The employees of Wells, Fargo
and Company have an excellent circulating library and
the Bohemian Club has a choice and well selected
collection of books for its members.
The above somewhat dry review of the institutions
of San Francisco seems essential to a proper under
standing of the city life of today. The present period
of growth, the awakening of the city to new opportun
ities and new responsibilities, will no doubt lead to an
enlargement of the various institutions of civic life.
The nucleus of all good things is here and with the
support and encouragement which is bound to follow
the present wave of progress, there is no reason why
libraries, museums, art galleries and all civic institu
tions for the advance of civilization and the betterment
of humanity should not grow to their just proportions
in the community.

THE BARBARY COAST

GROUP of sailor men stood in the
doorway of an outfitting store, talk
ing in loud thick voices. "You're just
a good-for-nothing coot," cried one
brawny fisted sea dog to a companion
disappearing around the corner. The
dim lights shone feebly down the dark
street. Arc lamps on the docks illuminated the
rigging of the many masts along shore. On the
window of a saloony-looking restaurant was painted
"Sanguinetti's," and three Bohemians doing the
Barbary Coast entered. The master of ceremo
nies stood behind his counter — red-faced, bullet-
headed, bull-necked, with one eye gone and the other
betwixt a leer and a twinkle. He was in his shirt
sleeves with a sort of apron tucked about his ample
form. Two darkies strummed a banjo and guitar,
singing the while hilarious coon songs. We stepped
noiselessly over the sawdust floor to a table at one side
and ordered clam chowder, spaghetti, chicken with
garlic sauce, and rum omelette, with Italian entrees
and a bottle of water-front claret for good cheer.
A buxom middle-aged lass of heroic build was
so affected by the strenuous twanging of Old Black
Joe that she got up and danced. Everybody joined in
the songs; everybody talked to his or her neighbors,
sans ceremony. There was an ex-policeman present
with his best girl, the captain of a bay schooner, a
tenderloin politician or two, and several misses who
scarcely looked like school marms as they warbled
coon songs and sipped maraschino.
After dining, we dropped into "Lucchetti's" next

ALONG THE WATERFRONT.

FROM A PHOTOGRAPH BY TIBBETS

THE BARBARY COAST 55
door, where it is the custom to lead your partner
through the mazes of the waltz when dinner is over
and before going uptown to see the marionette show.
One feels safer on the streets of this quarter at night
when he elbows a good companion. No doubt there
is no danger, but stories of sand-baggers, and of board
ing masters armed with hose pipe and knock-out drops
for shanghaiing luckless wayfarers and smuggling
them off to some deep-water ship outward bound, will
crop up in the mind of the lonely pedestrian.
By day, the waterfront is a scene of romantic in
terest. Every weatherbeaten vagabond who walks
the street is itching to tell you stories of the ends of
the earth. Every grimy grog shop has its quota of
yarn spinners who like nothing better than an excuse
to talk and tipple from morn to dewy eve. Go where
you will along those miles of docks, an endless rim of
shipping reminds you of the lands across the sea; and
every wedding guest is in the clutches of some
ancient mariner.
Schooners with five masts all of a size, and with
scanty upper rigging, are discharging pine from Puget
Sound. English steel ships deep laden with coal from
Wellington lie alongside the wharves. Yonder is a
clumsy old square Sacramento River steamer with
stern paddle wheel and double smokestacks. A rak
ish brig from the South Sea Islands crowds up along
side of a stumpy little green flat bottom sloop which
plies on the bay.
Sparrows chatter on the dusty wharf and scarcely
budge for the heavy dray, drawn by ponderous Nor
man horses that shake the planks beneath them as
they thunder along. Donkey engines rattle and clat
ter at unloading coal into cars on bridges leading
across the street to the huge grimy coal store-houses.
Teamsters pass with big lumber trucks and wagons
loaded with sacks of grain. A group of heavy-set,
stolid coal passers shuffles by. Idle beach combers
and wharf rats with sooty faces lounge on lumber
piles and stare vacantly at the scene.

56 SAN FRANCISCO AND THEREABOUT
A vista through the shipping shows the steely
blue water of the bay with a lavender-gray background
of fog. There is a medley of schooners, scows, ten
ders and tugs along shore and a black, three-syksail
Yankee clipper ship, the queen of them all, anchored
out in the stream. A whirl of sawdust comes with
the salt breeze; a tug toots as it passes, dock engines
gasp and pant, vans rumble past, and thus commerce
thrives on the grit of the waterfront.
Great grim steamers lie in narrow berths loading
or discharging — the tramp from Liverpool, a Panama
liner, monster boats for South America, a big black
Australian mail ship and others for China or Japan.
White transports with buff funnels striped with red,
white and blue, tell of the Philippines. A steamer is
just in from Nome with returning miners, and an
other is billed to sail in the afternoon for the inside
passage to Alaska.
The most picturesque spot on the waterfront is
Fisherman's Wharf. Here the Greek fishers moor
their little decked boats rigged with graceful lateen
sails. One must be up betimes to see them to advant
age, for the fisher folk are early birds. Their brown
three-cornered sails may be seen dotting the bay at all
hours, but the return of the fleet at sundown, like a
flock of sea birds scudding on the wind to their roost,
throws the spell of the Mediterranean over this far
western haven. Although some years have elapsed, I
still have vivid recollection of a conference at five in
the morning with a captain and crew of one of these
boats. The men were boozy and sleepy as we talked,
in the little waterfront saloon, of our prospective trip
to the Farallones, and they appeared so stupid that
we had grave doubts concerning their ability to nav
igate a boat. We found the long double wharf
crowded with perhaps a hundred fishing boats, pointed
stem and stern, decked, and with their long cross
booms on the masts making an unusual effect. A few
bronzed fishermen in blue shirts, rubber hip boots, and

THE BARBARY COAST 57
bright sashes, were at work at the first peep of the
sun, washing and hauling in a seine to dry or cleaning
off the decks of their boats. The men proved to be
skilled sailors despite the bad water-front whisky,
and at the turn of the tide we sped away under a brisk
head wind, bound out through the Golden Gate.

A CORNER OF CATHAY

FEW blocks up Kearny Street from
the corner of Market is a stretch of
green popularly known as the Plaza,
but officially designated Portsmouth
Square. It lies upon the hill-slope to
the west of Kearny, between Clay and
Washington Streets, and its benches,
scattered about under the greenery, are the receptacle
for as motley an assembly of weather-beaten hulks of
humanity as one is apt to chance upon in all San
Francisco. The spot is teeming with memories of
the early days. Here the American flag was first
raised by Captain Montgomery of the sloop-of-war
Portsmouth. Here the Vigilance Committee first
took the law into its own hands. The Parker House,
and afterward the Jenny Lind Theatre, stood on the
site now occupied by the Hall of Justice, a fine new
building with a clock tower, situated on Kearny
Street just opposite the Plaza. In the days of '49 the
town life centered about this square, and many public
meetings of importance were held here during those
intensely dramatic days.
Today Portsmouth Square is the lungs of China
town — the one breathing space in that strange Oriental
city which crowds down upon the greenery of the lit
tle park. The graceful drinking fountain in its cen
ter, a memorial to Robert Louis Stevenson, reminds
us that the genial story-teller was wont to linger here
during some of his least happy days, and the little
sermon upon the stone tablet is a perpetual inspira
tion for all outcasts of humanity who tarry before the
quaint bronze symbol of a ship.

A CORNER OF CATHAY 59
Oh, that strange mysterious horde in the center
of San Francisco, which is in the heart of the city
and yet not of it, that packed mass of busy humanity,
living in a civilization as ancient as the pyramids! I
look upon the silent procession of dark inscrutable
faces with a feeling of awe. The settled content, the
plodding self-reliance, the sense of antiquity over
shadows every countenance. Here is a fragment of
one of the oldest and most conservative civilizations,
grafted upon the newest and most radical. Certain
innovations of up-to-date Americanism the Chinese
have adopted. They have a telephone central station
with native operators, and many of their buildings are
illuminated with incandescent lamps, but these things
are external and superficial. Two thousand years of
arrested development is not conducive to a pliable
mind. The Chinaman who uses the telephone, eats
with chopsticks and goes before his joss with presents
of food to propitiate the god and make his business
prosper. His queue is as sacred to him as it was to
his forefathers. He will run a sewing machine and
drive a broken down plug hitched to a dilapidated
laundry wagon, but when it comes to delivering vege
tables he swings two immense baskets from a pole
across his shoulder, and runs mechanically along with
a weight that would appall a white man.
The lover of the curious and the beautiful de
lights in the conservatism of the Chinese. Although
their art as expressed in the handicrafts is not so grace
ful and spontaneous as that of the Japanese, it has a
medieval quality, a frankness and simplicity com
bined with much dexterous handling and barbaric
splendor, that makes it a vital expression, beside which
our machine-made articles seem cheap and common
place. The buildings of Chinatown are abandoned
stores and dwellings of the white population, more or
less made over by the addition of balconies and such
other changes as the requirements or fancies of their

6o SAN FRANCISCO AND THEREABOUT
present owners may suggest. The restaurants and
joss houses are particularly striking on account of
their deep balconies, ornamented with carved wood
work brightly colored or gilded, and set off with im
mense lanterns and with big plants in china pots.
About whatever these strange people do there is an
elusive, indefinable touch, which is distinctively racial
and picturesque. It may be nothing more than the
bright splashes of long narrow strips of paper pasted
upon buildings with inscriptions in the curious per
pendicular lettering of the people, but it serves at once
to create an atmosphere.
Along Dupont Street, a block west of Kearny,
the bazaars center, and many of them have marvelous
displays of beautiful bric-a-brac. Silks, embroideries,
carved ivories, antique lanterns and bronzes, orna
mented lacquer ware, hammered brasses, carved teak-
wood chairs and tables, camphor-wood chests, sandal
wood boxes and fans, and chinaware of exquisite work
manship — cloisonne, Satsuma, Canton ware, and a
bewildering variety of other gorgeous things make up
the stock of these places. Spectacled merchants figure
with the aid of the abacus and keep accounts by writ
ing in brown paper books with pointed brushes.
The crowd which passes along the street is prob
ably the most unusual to the average American of any
within the confines of the United States. How the
throng scuffles along in its thick-soled felted shoes,
dark-visaged and blue cloaked! At first the almond-
eyed, sallow-faced multitude looks like an undiffer
entiated mass of humanity, and the stranger despairs
of finding any points in which one man varies from
his neighbor. But as the type grows familiar the
individual characteristics become more marked. A
quaint little roly-poly woman passes, her black shiny
hair brushed back over the tops of her ears and neatly
rolled up in a knot on the back of her head, richly
ornamented with a hammered gold clasp. Great
pendant earrings of jade sway as she steps along on

AN ALLEY IN CHINATOWN.

A CORNER OF CATHAY 6 1
her high rocker shoes. Her loose black pantaloons
show below the shiny black gown that comes to her
knees or a trifle below. With her is a little boy who
seems as if he belonged in a colored picture book of
the days of Aladdin, His mild face looks like a full
moon with eyes turned askew. He is clad in a gor
geous yellow silk jacket fastened across the breast
with a silk loop, and his lavender pantaloons are tightly
bound around the ankles. His queue is pieced out to
the regulation length with braided red silk, and yet
withal he is a picture of unconscious contentment as
he toddles beside his mother. In the passing horde I
distinguish an old man, bent, and wearing immense
spectacles, his gray queue dangling sedately as he
walks. A man picks his way through the crowd with
a big wooden tray balanced on his head, and a little
girl with broad flat nose and narrow eyes wears silver
bracelets on her ankles. Yonder walks a withered
little man with smiling face, slits of eyes, thin lips,
sharp cheek bones and prominent ears. His head is
covered with a stiff black skull cap surmounted by a
red knotted ball, his slender hands are half concealed
beneath the loose sleeves of his dark blue coat lined
with light purple silk. His white stockings show
above the low shoes. There are bare-footed coolies
in straw sandals, wearing coarse clothes, and with dull
besotted expressions on their saturnine faces, contrast
ing sharply with the refined features and graceful car
riage of the well-to-do merchants. All these and
many more are to be seen upon the streets of San
Francisco. The time to get the full effect of Chinatown is at
night when the streets are crowded with the toilers of
the day and the lights of many lanterns add their touch
of color to the scene. From a sequestered balcony
comes the strange monotonous squeaking of a Chinese
violin. The high sing-song voices of children sound
from a distance. On following their call I find a
group of funny little imps about a bon-fire in the gut-

62 SAN FRANCISCO AND THEREABOUT
ter. Their queues dangle and flop about as they play.
They wear odd black caps and thick-soled, heavily
embroidered slippers. Their bright jackets are fas
tened with cord loops and their trousers are bound
about the ankles. A row of red Chinese candles and
some punks are burning on the curb and these quaint
little elves seem to be in high glee over their illumina
tion. Across the way a restaurant is resplendent with
big colored lanterns on its balconies and the sound of
music from within tells of a dinner party in progress.
The restaurant is entered through the kitchen, where
strange bright yellow cakes and other mysterious
delicacies are being prepared. The second floor is
reserved for the common people and here are many
men shoveling streams of rice from bowls to their
mouths with the aid of chop-sticks. The aristocratic
top floor is elegantly furnished with black teak-wood
tables and carved chairs, inlaid with mother-of-pearl.
Decorations in the form of carved open-work screens
adorn the partitions between rooms, and there are
couches along the wall covered with straw mats, where,
after eating, one can recline to smoke the pipe of
peace. A Chinese dinner party is a brilliant affair, — the
black circular tables loaded down with confections in
little dishes, the gorgeous silk robes of the men about
the festive board, and the women, even more brilliantly
attired, who are present but may not sit at table while
the men are dining! I choose a retired corner in an
adjacent room and order a cup of tea with roasted
almonds, dried lichis, preserved cumquats and ginger,
and some curious Chinese cakes, listening the while to
the high-pitched sing-song voices of the revelers, the
rapping of drunis, clanging of cymbals and squeaking
of fiddles, and imagining myself a disciple of Con
fucius in the heart of the Flowery Kingdom.
Returning again to the street, the bazaars are left
behind with all their splendid art work, and plebian

A CORNER OF CATHAY 63
food shops take their place. Pork is the meat of the
people ; little strings of meat which for want of a better
name I may call bunches of slender sausages, hang
temptingly in view. Dried fish dangle on strings.
Eggs are suspended in open wire baskets. There are
many strange vegetables which are unfamiliar to
Caucasian eyes — melons, tubers and fruits which belong
exclusively to the Orient. Down in basements barbers
are at work tonsuring patient victims. A drug-store
dispenses dried lizards, pulverized sharks' eggs and
sliced deer horns, together with numerous herbs for the
curing of disease and the driving out of evil spirits.
Dr. Lum Yook Teen of Canton, China, advertises pills
to cure the opium habit, and, be it noted, finds it profit
able to have his sign printed in English as well as
Chinese. On a corner, a Chinese fruit vender has his
stand and offers candied cocoanut shreds, and lichi
nuts with brown shells as soft as paper which crush
in at a touch and reveal the sticky sweetish dried pulp
clinging to a pit in the center. He also has plates of
dried abalones for sale — the meat of the beautiful ear-
shells. There are lengths of green sugar-cane which
the Chinese boys love to suck, and many other delica
cies exposed to view.
Shops are crowded together with displays of
embroidered shoes and sandals, of long slender tobacco
pipes, and opium pipes which look something like
flutes, of dry-goods done up in neat little rolls and
packages, and brass pots for the kitchen. In one
window sits a spectacled jeweler, working away in the
dim light at a hand-wrought ring. He has bits of
carved jade and silver bracelets about him as evidences
of his handiwork.
Off from the main business street of Chinatown
extend many side lanes and dark alleys, packed with
sallow-visaged Celestials. There are narrow passages
and long dark stairways that one hesitates to venture
upon. Other alleys are brilliantly illuminated but
have barred doors and windows with little peep-holes

64 SAN FRANCISCO AND THEREABOUT
where lowering men with intense black eyes scan evety
one who approaches. These are the gambling dens.
The nervous banging of doors sounds constantly as men
pass in and out and the heavy bolts are turned to exclude
the police. A fat dowager in a shiny black dress stands
in the shadow of an alley and peers out with a sinister
look on her face. At a street corner a crowd is reading
a red bulletin pasted upon the wall.
During one of my nocturnal rambles through
Chinatown I was fortunate enough to witness the
annual ceremony of feeding the poor dead. It was held
in Sullivan Alley, so named, no doubt because it is in
habited exclusively by the Chinese, and Irishmen, as
well as all other people of pale complexions, are ex
pressly warned off by sign and guard. A crowd of
Celestials pushed in and out through the doorway in
the high fence that made the alley private. Now and
then a man would come with a covered pewter dish
of food which he was bearing from the restaurant to
some one within, or a waiter would pass, balancing
a tray on his head with a whole meal in pewter
pots. The narrow street was aglow with solid
rows of lanterns suspended from both the lower
and the upper balconies. At the end of the alley
stood a gaudy booth decorated with flowers, in
scriptions and banners. A band of musicians, lav
ishly dressed in colored silks, dispensed wild music;
banging drums and clashing cymbals broke in upon
the strange cadences of shrill pipes and squeaky fiddles.
Around the corner of the alley was a great screen
painted with three immense figures of josses, fiercely
grotesque. Before them a table spread with rare altar
cloths richly embroidered was loaded with confections
and flowers. Candles and incense burned before the
shrine. Four priests in vivid scarlet robes with gold
embroidered squares on their backs, and elaborately
embroidered trimmings of white and silver in front,
their heads covered with stiff black caps surmounted
by large gold knots, faced the tables and bowed in
stately fashion to the tune of the strenuous music.

A CORNER OF CATHAY 65
Ladies dressed in gorgeous costumes with their black
hair plastered back, leaned over balconies in the glow
of lanterns, and watched the scene. Stolid crowds of
men with expressionless faces packed the alley, coming
and going in a never-ending stream. The odor of
sandal-wood incense, the rythmic whine and clash of
the music, the Oriental horde in the softened light of
lanterns, made a picture which seemed more appro
priate to a court of Cathay in the long forgotten
centuries than to a scene in an American metropolis of
this late day of steam and electricity.
So much for the street scenes! On entering those
dark portals which lead up or down by crooked ways
into the labyrinths of rooms, a new phase of Chinatown
is disclosed. Here in garrets and cellars human beings
are stowed away, stacks of bunks holding the packed
mass of humanity. In stifling subterranean chambers
opium fiends lie in beastial filth and dream of bliss.
Even the theatre is honey-combed with such dark
and devious tunnels where the actors live. The white
visitor gropes his way to the stage through crooked
lanes bordered by dingy closets of rooms whence floats
the dried-apple odor of burning pellets of opium, and
those other undefinable but eminently distinctive smells
which only Chinatown can generate.
Once upon the stage, attention is divided between
the great sea of faces in the pit — silent, wrapt, dark,
mysterious faces that grin and gaze as the action
changes, but make no sound — and the action of the play.
In the boxes sit the women, apart from the crowd.
Seats are placed at the side of the stage for our accom
modation and the play goes unconcernedly on. The
musicians, at the back of the stage, keep up an infernal
bang and clatter, mingled with shrill twangings, pipings
and squeakings in monotonous iteration. Men imper
sonating women step mincingly about in their high,
awkward shoes, singing in falsetto voices, daintily
swinging fans, and pursing up their painted lips to
simulate the charms of the gentler sex. The emperor

66 SAN FRANCISCO AND THEREABOUT
is almost certain to appear, sooner or later, and the
officer who gets astride a chair or broomstick for a
hobby-horse. After he is beheaded he stands up and
gravely walks off and the audience looks more serious
than ever at his exit. Stage scenery is severely simple.
A table will serve for a mountain and a sign for a forest.
The play continues for days and weeks, like the Arabian
Nights tales, and since our capacity is limited for ap
preciating all its subtleties of wit, and the depths of its
tempestuous tragedy, we betake ourselves from the noise
of crashing cymbals which sound as if all the pots and
pans of a big hotel kitchen were being hurled simultan
eously at the head of some luckless cur, and, after
elbowing through the group of actors, and groping
along dark lanes, finally emerge upon the street, well
satisfied with a cursory view of the dramatic art of this
wonderful people.
The joss houses or temples of Chinatown have no
external beauty save in the carved panels of their
balconies. They are on the upper floors of buildings
and are approached by long straight flights of steps.
The interiors are characterized by a wealth of gro
tesque and conventional carving. The altars are
marvels of intricate relief, generally overlaid with gold
leaf. There are big brass bowls upon them, in which
sticks of incense burn, and before the images of the
josses are offerings of food and lighted lamps. Poles
and emblems borne in processions on festive occasions
adorn the walls, and there are various fortune-telling
appliances about the place. If a man is to undertake
a business venture he consults the joss. Two pieces of
wood shaped like a mammoth split bean are much in
vogue for reading fates. These are thrown violently
upon the ground, and according as they fall with the
flat or rounded side up is determined the man's fortune.
There is also a plan for drawing straws to tell luck.
When a man is well advised by the joss, and succeeds
in business accordingly, he is apt to remember his spirit
ual counsellor with a handsome present, and thus the

A CORNER OF CATHAY 67
temple thrives. Thus it becomes possessed of its
splendid embroidered altar cloths, its rare old carvings
and furniture, and other paraphernalia which makes it
a place of wonder.
A Chinese funeral is an event that forces itself
upon the attention of every wayfarer. The beating of
tom-toms, scattering of imitation paper money to the
devil, the express-wagon full of baked hogs and other
food, are all matters of note. And then there are the
antiquated hacks drawn by raw-boned horses that
eminently suit them, the professional mourners, the
sallow-visaged friends of the deceased. The train pro
ceeds to the cemetery keeping up its infernal din the
while. When the body is interred, a portion of the
baked meats and confections are placed over it together
with some lighted punks. The remaining viands are
then taken back to Chinatown where the whole party
unite in a feast in honor of the dead. At a later period
the body is exhumed, the bones are scraped, and all that
remains of the departed is shipped to his beloved rest
ing place — the Flowery Kingdom.
Chinese New Year is celebrated a month and more
after ours. At this time the whole district is bent on
merrymaking and hospitality. Every door is open to
welcome guests. There is a display of gorgeous cos
tuming that would rival a prize exhibition of cockatoos.
Everybody makes presents ; nuts and sweetmeats are in
every hand. Houses and stores are decked with
lanterns; heavy-scented China lilies are stood about
in pots and vases; punks burn, firecrackers pop, and
the revel lasts for days. The procession in which a
hundred-legged dragon a block long writhes through
the streets accompanied by priests, soldiers and attend
ants in gorgeous livery, is the crowning event of the
celebration. The Chinese question was for many years one of
the live issues in California politics. So large an
invasion of the little brown men was occasioned by
the discovery of gold that their presence soon grew

68 SAN FRANCISCO AND THEREABOUT
to be a menace to white labor. Thrifty, industri
ous, imitative, bringing nothing with them and carry
ing away all they made, it was soon evident that the
tide of immigration must be checked. The watchword,
"The Chinese must go," was a stock phrase of the
stump politicians. After much sand-lot agitation and
some rioting. Congress was prevailed upon to enact
legislation prohibiting the entrance of Chinese laborers
into the United States. Similar legislation was re-
enacted at the last session of Congress, the time limit
of the old law having been reached. The Chinese pop
ulation of San Francisco numbers a little under twenty-
five thousand at the present time, having declined
somewhat since the passing of the restriction laws.
California faces a land with a population of prob
ably five hundred million people. We have demanded
free access to that land for all our citizens, but we deny
them the same right in return. To permit an unre
stricted immigration of these people would be to court
disaster. They huddle together without families,
nourished on rice and tea. The readiness with which
they learn our arts, coupled with their mode of life,
makes competition with them an impossibility. Their
women are mainly slaves held for traffic. The police
have made little headway against their gambling dens;
fan-tan is played openly behind barred doors; opium
is the curse of the race. Highbinders, professional
murderers of rival tongs, are hired to assassinate
enemies and generally manage to elude pursuit in the
mazes of Chinatown.
Despite all this, the Chinese are in many ways
useful and perhaps essential factors in the development
of California. In the fruit picking and packing in
dustry they are more reliable, more mobile and in every
way more dependable than white labor. As market
gardeners they have no equal. A good Chinaman is an
ideal household servant, neat, thorough, industrious
and far better trained than the average white woman
servant. In the country districts he will go to places
where women are practically unobtainable.

FROM A PHOTOGRAPH BV TABER

ON A RESTAURANT BALCONY.

A CORNER OF CATHAY 69
The solution of the Chinese problem is to be found
in a conservative and unimpassioned handling of the
question on all sides. Neither the wide open door nor
the total exclusion will ultimately prevail, in all prob
ability. But however the question may be decided,
Chinatown is today a place of strange and absorbing
interest, where much that is both curious and beautiful
may be found, and where the oldest of the world's
civilizations is religiously treasured in the heart of a
big modern American city.

PLEASURE GROUNDS BY THE SEA
REARY sand dunes, blown about by
the fog-laden wind fresh from the
ocean, and barren hills that seemed to
give no promise of fertility, lay be
tween San Francisco and the sea when
in 1870 work was commenced on the
Golden Gate Park. The seemingly
impossible has been accomplished, and today the park is
a great pleasure ground full of beauty and surprise at
every turn. Broad avenues wind about through the
miles of shrubbery and trees, with footpaths branching
in all directions. Spirited horses and elegant carriages
speed along the way. Crowds of people enjoy the
outing on foot while many bicycles flash by. Exclusive
of the Panhandle which is to be extended into the very
heart of the city, as far as Van Ness Avenue, there are
over a thousand acres in the park with seventeen miles
of carriage drives winding through its beautifully
diversified groves, lawns and gardens.
In the midst rises Strawberry Hill, commanding
a superb view of the surrounding country. Oceanwards
the surf is breaking on the sandy beach and a ship looms
out of the mist into the golden light of the setting sun.
Northwestward lies Tamalpais set in masses of nearer
hills, with the whole sweep of the Golden Gate at the
foot of it. To the northeast, just over the cross on Lone
Mountain, the crest of the Berkeley Hills may be dis
cerned. Due eastward, over the noble dome of the City
Hall and way back of the hills on the far shore of the
bay. Mount Diablo lifts its two great mounds above
the mist. The slopes of Strawberry Hill are clothed
in pine and cypress, with glimpses of ponds and lake-

THE QUAINT JAPANESE GARDEN.

FROM A PHOTOGRAPH BY LANGE

PLEASURE GROUNDS BY THE SEA 7 1
lets below. The stone cross in commemoration of Sir
Francis Drake stands on an eminence near at hand
and the park with its forests and broad winding drive
ways is all about. Flanking this are great smooth
windswept piles of sand, softly ribbed and wrinkled
here and there as the setting sun falls on its creamy
folds. Beyond, on the hills, are the outskirts of the city,
with masses of houses huddled in blocks and patches
on the heights. Thrushes and white-crowned sparrows
are happily singing in the shrubbery, to the accompani
ment of the ocean breeze which sighs through the pine
trees. Encircling Strawberry Hill is Stowe Lake, an
artificial waterway with islets and bridges to diversify
it. No spot in the park is more fascinating to me than
the quaint Japanese garden and tea house, where dwarf
trees and evergreen carpets cling amid the rocks bor
dering pools spanned by rustic bridges, where cosy
nooks invite you to linger for the refreshing bowl of tea
and crisp crinkly little rice cakes.
The Park Museum, an imitation of an Egyptian
temple, is especially rich in archaeology and ethnology,
although it contains a museum of natural history as
well. It has a fine collection of Indian baskets and its
Colonial exhibit comprises much of interest and beauty.
In the large Crocker conservatory are rare varieties, of
begonias, orchids and other frail exotics, while the
splendid Victoria regia, the giant Guiana water-lily
with a pale pink night-opening blossom a foot in
diameter, spreads its broad tray-like leaf pads in the
central pool. There is a massive stone music stand in
the park, the gift of Claus Spreckels, where band
concerts may be heard once a week. The children have
merry times in their play-ground, and boys play base
ball on an expansive green lawn. There is an aviary
where many bright-plumaged birds disport, a bison
paddock and deer park. The trees and shrubs of the
park have been brought from all over the world — from
various parts of North and South America, Siberia,

72 SAN FRANCISCO AND THEREABOUT
China, Japan, Australia and Africa. It is claimed
that no other park has so great a variety of trees, the
temperate climate of San Francisco supporting the
plant forms of all but torrid countries.
To the energy, taste, and enthusiasm of Mr. John
McLaren, for many years park superintendent, is
largely due the miracle of making the wind-swept sands
into a garden of rare beauty.
Beyond the park is the long line of ocean beach
with its fine shore drive, and the Cliff House perched
defiantly upon the rocks where the breakers thunder.
Off shore but a stone's throw are the Seal Rocks where
herds of sea lions lie about in the spray, roaring above
the dashing surf. The Sutro Baths are situated near
the shore here, with their immense salt-water swim
ming tanks surrounded by seats to accommodate over
seven thousand people.
I like best to leave the works of man which for
the most part mar rather than beautify the coast, and,
slipping off into some retreat along the rocky shore at
the foot of Point Lobos, watch the great Pacific surf
come riding in to spend its might against the weather
worn rocks at the entrance to the Golden Gate. Ships
under full sail sweep proudly in with a fair wind.
Gulls poise and flutter overhead.
The cry of the surf on the rock-bound strand, stern
and lonely, the salt spray and the driving foam, the
clanging bell on the buoy that rides on the rim of the
channel, the mist overhead hastening in through the
Gate, all bear token of that great mother of us all, who
calls men forth to alien shores, all speak the Titan
language of Ocean, the mighty mistress whence cometh
the strength of nations.

?s^

FROM A PHOTOGRAPH BY TIBBETS

ON THE RIM OF THE GOLDEN GATE.

THE AWAKENING OF THE CITY

URING a good part of the decade
immediately preceding the dawn of
the new centuty, a strange lethargy
seemed to have settled upon the city
by the Golden Gate. To the north
ward, Seattle and Spokane were forg
ing ahead with giant strides. To the
southward, Los Angeles had grown from a pueblo to
a metropolis. In San Francisco, public spirit was at
a perilously low ebb. Of local pride there was but the
faintest glimmer. Population was at a standstill;
houses were for rent. Merchants took what trade
came their way but seldom reached out for more.
Staggered by the crash of '93, the city seemed unable
to recuperate, or made a recovery so slow that people
shook their heads and spoke disparagingly of the place.
What was the matter with San Francisco? Why
did it rest supinely upon its many hills and let the world
take its own course? The railroad was commonly
blamed for all the evils arising from the difference and
indifference of public opinion on local questions. The
Octopus, as that Quixotic champion of the city's rights.
Mayor Sutro, dubbed it, was indeed a power with
tentacles far spread over the State, and permeating
many branches of civic life. But there were other
factors which retarded the growth of San Francisco,
chief among which was the lack of public spirit among
the citizens. It is a more agreeable field of speculation to note
the forces which have been instrumental in changing
all this — for a change has indeed come over the com
munity. One of the earliest symptoms of an awakened

74 SAN FRANCISCO AND THEREABOUT
civic pride was the action of the Merchants Associa
tion in reforming the work of cleaning the streets of
the business district. At about this tirne a ripple of
enthusiasm was caused by the completion of the San
Joaquin Valley Road and its absorption by the Santa
Fe System, which insured a competing overland line
to San Francisco. Events for arousing the city crowded
thick and fast about the end of the century. The Klon
dike gold excitement stimulated trade and travel with
the North. Years before Dewey's guns thundered at the gates
of Manila, far sighted men had predicted that the
strife for commercial supremacy was destined to shift
ere long from the Atlantic to the Pacific, but their
prophecies had fallen upon deaf ears. The Eastern
States took little note of Pacific Coast events, save to
chronicle a prize fight or a sensational murder. But
when regiments of soldiers came pouring into San
Francisco on their way to the Philippines, the atten
tion of the nation was centered here. It began to dawn
upon men, both at home and abroad, that this was the
port of departure not merely for the Spanish Islands
of the Pacific but also for the Orient beyond. The
strategic importance of San Francisco was impressed
upon the dullest minds. Complications in China re
quiring the presence of American troops there, served
but to deepen this realization. The moving of an
army of seventy thousand men to and from these remote
regions, the presence of fleets of transports in the har
bor, the stimulus of trade in new channels, all served
to rouse the dormant city.
Simultaneously with these stirring events came
the reorganization of the Southern Pacific Railroad.
As a part of the great Harriman System, a policy of
co-operation with the people in the building up of the
State has been vigorously pushed. It is now apparent
on every hand that the interests of the railroad and of
the people are one. If the arteries of commerce are
obstructed, will not the tissues of the State wither?

THE AWAKENING OF THE CITY 75
Or conversely, if the body politic be not sound and
strong, will it not inevitably impair the circulation of
trade? To grasp this fundamental proposition of the
organic connection between the people and the ave
nues of commerce, and to work to make this relation
ship a just and harmonious one on both sides, is the
first essential to the prosperity of a country. Espec
ially is this so of a region which from its vast isola
tion is dependent upon commercial relations with
remote parts of the land. The importance of this new
spirit cannot be overestimated in an analysis of the
factors which are now at work in rejuvenating San
Francisco. The withered staff of Tannhauser has
burst into leaf, and the dead past shall bury its dead.
The new charter of San Francisco is constructed
on the most advanced ideas of municipal government,
and already great benefits are coming to the city from
its operation. Since its adoption, large sums of money
have been appropriated for extending the park sys
tem and for much needed additional school buildings.
San Francisco occupies the proud position of a munic
ipality practically without civic debt.
In the prosperity which has come with the new
centuty, San Francisco has shared to the fullest meas
ure. Capital has been attracted from various parts
of the country. The street railways were purchased
by a Baltimore corporation and their relationship with
the Southern Pacific Railroad terminated. New
buildings were commenced in various parts of the city
— great substantial steel-frame structures of stone and
terra cotta. Whole blocks of these dignified, well
proportioned buildings are going up on Mission Street,
replacing shabby rookeries; the splendid new Mutual
Bank Building of gray stone and steep red tile roof,
towers up with the other fine structures at the corner
of Market and Geary Streets. Facing Union Square,
a block away from the big modern building of the
Spring Valley Water Company, the steel frame of the
new Saint Francis Hotel is climbing higher and higher.

76 SAN FRANCISCO AND THEREABOUT
and the stonework follows with wonderful celerity.
Over on Market Street at the corner of Powell, on the
site of the old Baldwin Hotel, and opposite the great
stone Emporium, one of the largest and costliest build
ings of the city is now being erected for store and office
purposes. Just in the nick of time, the magnificent new mar
ble postoffice is being completed up on Mission Street
to replace the miserable structure down on Washington
Street which for so many years has served as a make
shift. A magnificent hotel is to be built immediately
by the Fair Estate on the California Street heights.
These are but a few of the more striking business
buildings now being pushed to completion. In
one week, according to statistics compiled, six
millions dollars' worth of buildings were commenced
in the city. A gratifying feature of the work is the sim
plicity of design followed in nearly every instance.
Costly materials and the most perfect of modern work
manship, combined with good proportions on broad
lines, are bound to make the new San Francisco an
eminently satisfying city architecturally. In former
days the fear of earthquakes, together with the cheap
ness of wood, made people, as a rule, construct low
frame buildings. Now that the matter has been tested
and the earthquakes found to be far less destructive
than the thunder storms of the East, tall stone build
ings are no longer tabooed.
All this building is not the result of a speculative
boom but the response to a real demand for more
accommodation. People are coming to San Fran
cisco from hither and yon, to settle in the community.
New business enterprises are being started, old ones
enlarged. Vast sums are being expended upon rail
road improvement of lines centering here, and im
mense steamships are built or building for trade with
this port. Since the days of '49 such an impetus of
growth has not visited San Francisco.
That the city, and indeed all California, has

A BIRD'S-EYE VIEW OF THE BUSINESS DISTRICT.

THE AWAKENING OF THE CITY 'j'j
awakened to the opportunities now arising, is shown
by the recent organization of a Promotion Committee
composed of representatives of the various commercial
organizations of the city and State. Strangers are
made welcome at their comfortable headquarters on
New Montgomery Street, and information relative to
the resources of California is given to all who are
interested. It is almost an axiom of civic life that the perma
nent well-being of a city depends upon the prosperity
of its adjacent countty. Never did any land have
more to offer the home seeker than has California.
The orange grows to perfection in valleys a hundred
miles north of San Francisco, where it ripens by
November, a month earlier than in any other part of
the United States. Figs thrive over an even wider
area than the citrus fruits, and experiments recently
made in shipping them fresh to Chicago and New York
have proven a success. California olive oil commands
a high price on account of its freedom from adultera
tion, and ripe olives are becoming a much relished
food. The prunes of San Jose and the raisins of Fresno
have acquired world-wide fame, while California
wines compete successfully at international expositions
with their French predecessors and rivals. The im
proved railroad facilities have made it possible of late
to ship early fresh vegetables, as well as all of the
fresh fruits to the Eastern market. Indeed shipments
to Europe of fresh California fruit are now regularly
made. With the railroad back of the people a
limitless market will await the horticulturist, and
his returns will be proportionate to his labor and skill.
Many inexperienced people have imagined that
fruit growing in California was all attended to by
nature. Young Englishmen have come here, lured by
tales of prodigal fertility, and have smoked their pipes
while their ranches went to perdition. Horticulture
in California requires knowledge and hard work, much
as anything does in this world that is worth doing. The

78 SAN FRANCISCO AND THEREABOUT
best results are to be had on irrigated land, and small
holdings are now proving more successful than the
large ranches of the past, but patience, skill and grit
are needed for the work. The passage by the Ameri
can Congress of the Newlands Act has called the at
tention of the whole country to the possibilities of
development in the West through irrigation. The
lakes and streams of the Sierra Nevada Mountains
contain enough water to make fertile all the cultivata-
ble valleys of the State, and it is now only a question
of years before this will be done. The great wheat
fields of the Sacramento and San Joaquin Valleys, cul
tivated with gang plows and harvested with machines
that do the whole process of cutting, threshing and
sacking, are rivaled only by the vast prairies of the
Mississippi. Another industry that is assuming large
proportion is the manufacture of beet sugar, which is
carried on in parts of California on an immense
scale.* The old-fashioned placer mining — the washing of
gold out of the sand of river beds with a rude wooden
cradle — is no longer profitable as in the days of '49,
but during the past five years over fifteen million
dollars annually has been mined by the improved
methods now in vogue, and there seems to be no dimin
ution of the supply. The great stamps of the Placer
and Nevada County mines are thundering away at the
ore, while dredgers scoop up the sand of river bot
toms and sift out the gold as it passes through.
In manufacturing lines, San Francisco has been
greatly hampered by the lack of coal mines within
convenient distance, although a firm like the Union

*Mr. Charles F. Lummis in his brilliant serial, "The Right Hand of
the Continent," in Out West for October, gives the following summary
of California's production of sugar:
"It sends out 40,000 tons of beet sugar, an increase of fortyfold in
seventeen years. Leaving out Louisiana, California produces more sugar
by ten per cent than all the rest of the Union combined — more than the
other beet-growers, the Texas and Florida cane, the Kansas sorghum, the
maple sweets of New England, New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, West
Virginia, Ohio, Iowa, Michigan and Minnesota."

THE AWAKENING OF THE CITY 79
Iron Works, which can build such battleships as the
Oregon and the Ohio, need not take second place to
any builders in the world. Up to the present time
coal has been king; but in this as in other matters an
era of change is at hand, and Old King Coal seems
destined to take a back seat. His rival to the throne
is none other than that modern Zeus, the wielder of
thunderbolts, which we call the electric motor. For
many years the use of water as a motive power has been
out of date, but the present cycle of progress brings it
once more to the front. Over the valleys and hills of
California march silent processions of poles cartying
heavy wires upon large insulators. The lightning is
being harnessed to the waterfalls of the mountains, and
the mysterious currents generated in the far away
heights by the singing streams which pour their cur
rent down the rocky slopes, are flashed in a trice to
populous centers, there to light houses and highways,
to speed cars over city streets, and to turn the humming
wheels of industry. In the days to come, manufactur
ing supremacy shall be determined not by coal mines
but by waterfalls. California, with its glorious
Sierra battlement where the snows pile high all win
ter long, melting in never-failing streams that swiftly
course to the valleys, is above all other lands supplied
with this natural motive power. The mountain
streams shall labor now for man, and sing at their
toil. Even into the great city shall penetrate their
power, and the smoke and grime of coal shall be re
placed by a mightier and cleanlier force.
Coincident with the perfecting of insulating ap
pliances, making it possible to carry electric currents
from the mountains to the sea, has come the discovery
and development of seemingly limitless oil wells in
various parts of California, The use of oil fuel as a
substitute for coal is meeting with the most gratifying
success. Railway engines burn it and cinders become
a thing of the past. It has been tested upon a large
passenger steamer running between San Francisco and

8o SAN FRANCISCO AND THEREABOUT
Tahiti, with the result that a saving of two hundred
dollars a day is effected. Oil burning freight steamers
are plying between San Francisco and the Hawaiian
Islands. The terrible work of the stokers is abol
ished and the decks are no longer grimy with cinders.
Within a year all the engines of the Southern Pacific
Railway will be converted into oil burners. Dusty
country roadways when oiled become like park boule
vards. And thus electricity and oil are not only replac
ing coal but accomplishing far more than the old fuel
could do. To be sure the transition has but begun, and
vast quantities of coal must still be imported to San
Francisco, but when ere long the oil pipe line is laid
from Bakersfield to tide water, when J. Pierpont
Morgan's new oil company, just organized with a capi
talization of twenty million dollars, is in operation, and
the new San Francisco Electric Power Company has
brought its lines from the mountains to the city, the
demand for coal will surely not continue to increase in
proportion to the growth of population or of manufac
turing industries.
One other great natural source of wealth Califor
nia possesses, namely her forests. But evety true lover
of the wildwood looks with dismay at the recklessness
with which this treasure is being squandered. Nor is
it by any means a sentimental motive which has actu
ated the protest against this ruin and waste. The future
of California depends upon the conservation of its
water supply. Without this the land will become a
desert. The forests are the only power which can
restrain the impatient torrents from despoiling the land
— from rushing down the mountains in freshets and
tearing away the soil of the valleys. The forest roots
restrain the floods, the arching branches retard the
melting snows, and the bounty of heaven becomes a
blessing instead of a menace to the valleys. Hence the
wisdom of a great series of national paries in the Sierra
Nevada Mountains. The hungry saws are ripping up
the sublime redwood forests of the coast district —

THE AWAKENING OF THE CITY 8 1
forests as beautiful and impressive as any in the world.
One State park of thirty-eight hundred acres in the Big
Basin of the Santa Cruz Mountains is already saved,
but aside from this the entire stretch of redwood for
ests is at the mercy of the lumbermen. There should
be a chain of such parks up the coast to the Oregon
boundaty, lest our children grow up to curse us for our
sinful neglect of them. San Francisco, awakened,
aroused, building, reaching out, must not be satisfied
with accomplishing its own immediate ends, but must
remember that it has children who are to inherit the
work of its hands.

THE EASTERN SHORE
VERY fifteen minutes during the day
light hours a great ferty boat leaves
the gray stone building at the foot of
Market Street for the eastern shore,
passing in transit the return boats.
During the evening, travel is lighter
and boats run at less frequent inter
vals. Six miles of boating and a like distance by train
for five cents to daily travelers or commuters, and ten
cents for occasional passengers, is the cost of the trip — a
rate unparalleled in suburban traffic. The larger
boats, comfortable and modern in every detail, are
capable of accommodating over two thousand persons,
in spite of which they are often taxed to their utmost
seating capacity during the morning and evening
hours. It is estimated that a daily average of over
forty thousand people cross the bay, while on special
occasions the travel has been as great as a hundred
thousand persons in a day.
Oakland, with its estuary for deep-water ship
ping, with ship yards for the building and repairing
of vessels, and every facility for the immediate transfer
of freight from ship to car, is peculiarly well located as
a commercial center. Two long piers, or "moles" as
they are called, reach out into the bay to carry South
ern Pacific overland and local trains as near as possi
ble to San Francisco, and a third pier is now nearly
completed for the electric car service of the Santa Fe.
Alameda County, of which Oakland is the metropolis,
is one of the most productive districts of the State. It
is famed for its vineyards, its hop fields and orchards.
Indeed all fruits and vegetables thrive in its equable

THE EASTERN SHORE 83
climate. The project of tunneling the hills back of
Fruitvale, thus affording easy access to the sheltered
valleys beyond the Coast Range, is now nearing con
summation, and will become an important factor in
the city's development. Already Oakland is the third
city in the State in population, its inhabitants number
ing about seventy thousand. It has many charming
residences tucked away amid semi-tropic gardens, the
district about Lake Merritt being especially noted for
its substantial homes.
Alameda, with over sixteen thousand inhabitants,
lies to the south of Oakland on the low land, which, by
the recent cutting of the tidal canal, has been con
verted into an island. Its well-kept macadamized
streets and many fine homes embowered in shrubbery
and vines, make it a favorite residence town for an
increasing number of people who do business in San
Francisco. Alameda is a headquarters for the yacht-
men and canoeists of the eastern shore, while its salt
water baths are an attraction to those fond of aquatic
sports. One may be forgiven for an undue partiality to
his own home town, which is my only excuse for en
larging on the charms of Berkeley. I know it and
love it from many years' residence. It is an unfinished
place with much about it that might be bettered, par
ticularly in the provincial architecture of its business
section, yet I have never known anyone, however
widely he may have traveled, in New England or in
Old, who has once lived under the spell of the Berkeley
oaks without wishing to make it a home for life.
Berkeley lies upon the hills opposite the Golden
Gate. Its homes command the whole glorious sweep
of bay and shore. Tamalpais rears its finely chiseled
profile to the right of the Gate, and San Francisco on
its many hills lies to the left. The selection of this
site for a State University was an inspiration on the
part of its founders. Just where a beautiful canon
in the Berkeley hills descends to the plain, with classic

84 SAN FRANCISCO AND THEREABOUT
laurels fringing its upper slopes, and the patriarch
live-oaks sanctifying its lower levels with their gnarled
gray trunks and dark canopies of verdure, upon the
gently rising slope which leads up from the bay shore
some two miles distant, a tract of two hundred and
eighty-five acres has been set apart for the University
of California. The Berkeley Hills rise abruptly back
of it to the crest of Grizzly Peak, some fifteen hundred
feet high, and upon the three lower sides of the grounds
extends the town.
Wherein lies the charm of Berkeley? Is it in
the vine-covered cottages and profusion of flowers
which at the height of the season make the town seem
decked for a carnival? Is it in the glorious prospect
of rolling mountains and far-spread bay? Or is it the
people, drawn from near and far by that great mag
net, the University? We old timers complain that the
town is getting crowded and no longer has the rural
tone of a few years ago. But what matter? Ceaselessly
the houses go up, new ones springing into existence on
every hand, and the only consolation is that on the
whole the architecture is steadily becoming simpler
and better. There is probably no other spot in Cali
fornia where so many really artistic homes are assem
bled. For those who like the sort of people attracted
by a great institution of learning, no society could be
more delightful than is to be found here. People are
flocking to Berkeley not only from various parts of
California but from many sections of the East. They
hear of its wonderful climate, softer than San Fran
cisco but favorable for work all the year round, the
most truly temperate climate imaginable, They hear
of its homes, its people and its accessibility to the great
city. They come to educate their children at the Uni
versity and once here never leave save by compulsion.
The growth of the University of California in
recent years is one of the most significant facts in the
development of the State. Throngs of students crowd
class-rooms and laboratories to the utmost limit, despite

A PHOTOGRAPH BY LANGE

ON THE CAMPUS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA.

THE EASTERN SHORE 85
the many temporary buildings recently erected. The
University has grown six fold in the past twelve years.
Harvard alone among American universities outnum
bers it in undergraduates. Well may California boast
of the fact that in proportion to population more
students are receiving a college education within her
confines than in any other State in the union! Plans
are now being made for a magnificent group of per
manent university buildings, and the first of the series,
the Hearst Mining Building, is in course of erection.
Mere numbers count for little save as an index of
the desire for higher education. It is the high stan
dard, the progressive spirit, the ideals of scholarship
that are in evidence which means so much for the
future of San Francisco and of California. It is the
presence of such men as Benjamin Ide Wheeler, a
Greek scholar and writer of wide reputation before
he became so forceful a power in Berkeley as presi
dent of the University, of George Holmes Howison,
one of the deepest philosophic minds of the age as the
students of the older centers of learning attest, and of
the memory of the illustrious dead — ^John and Joseph
Le Conte and Edward Roland Sill — these men and
their co-workers are indeed the crowning glory of
Berkeley! The college town has also for many years
been the home of William Keith who has drawn the
chief inspiration for his matchless pictures from the
oaks, the hills, and the bay of this well loved region.

SOUTH OF SAN FRANCISCO

CCUPYING as it does the end of a
peninsula flanked by ocean and bay,
San Francisco has but one direction
for expansion, but one outlet by land
— to the southward. Here extend the
hills and valleys of San Mateo County
with well-kept farms and prosperous
villages and towns. Here is Burlingame, where so
many San Franciscans of wealth and taste have built
country homes, adding to the charm of nature the arts
of the architect and landscape gardener. There are
miles of level park-like valley land here where graceful,
wide-spreading oaks beautify the plain, revealing be
tween their masses of verdure vistas of blue mountain
ranges. In the canons of these mountains, and even
up on some of the heights where the salt breeze and
fog drift in from the sea, are superb forests of red
wood, I recall with peculiar delight the stage ride
over the mountains from Redwood City to La Honda,
down into the deep dark glade where the solemn shafts
of the forest rise like worshipers of the light.
In the warm valleys of San Mateo County, shel
tered from the ocean wind, are the market gardens for
supplying San Francisco with vegetables, and flower
gardens fof providing the wealth of bloom and frag
rance which makes the city florist shops the delight of
all who enter or even pass their doors. The Crystal
Springs Lakes and San Andreas reservoir in the
mountains of this district are the sources of San Fran
cisco's water supply, enough, with other available
springs, to furnish water to a million people.
In one of the broad sheltered valleys of this beau
tiful country of oaks and vineyards lies the Stanford

SOUTH OF SAN FRANCISCO 87
University, The inspiring example of a multi
millionaire devoting his entire fortune to founding a
university in memory of his only son, and the subse
quent devotion of his widow in carrying out in evety
detail the wishes of its founder, has made the Uni
versity world famous. Its beautiful Spanish archi
tecture, fitting so well the site, with groups of low, tile-
roofed buildings around an inner and outer quadran
gle, has done much to create an atmosphere for the
University, and its president, David Starr Jordan, has
shaped its work on broad and noble lines. From an
initial class of four hundred and sixty-five students, the
attendance has grown in ten years to thirteen hundred.
The presence of two great Universities within a radius
of thirty miles of San Francisco, with distinctive ideals,
with strong individual presidents, the one emphasizing
the scientific spirit of investigation, the other the Greek
spirit of culture, but both broad and liberal in their
views, is one of the great influences, nay rather the
great influence in shaping the future of San Francisco.
The rivalry in football and athletics, in oratory and
scholarship, between the two universities, keeps both
on their mettle. Each helps the other, and both work
for what is highest and best in the life of the State.
From Stanford University and the academic town
of Palo Alto close to it, a ride of a few miles on the
train takes the traveler to San Jose at the head of San
Francisco Bay, This city is fifth in population in
California, and is noted for its park-like streets shaded
by spreading foliage trees or ornamented with rows
of palms, its many substantial buildings and general
air of prosperity and thrift. It may well appear so
with the great fruit country that surrounds it, where
some of the finest prune orchards of the State are to
be found, as well as acres and miles of other varied
deciduous fruits, all cultivated to the last degree of
perfection. A daily stage connects San Jose with the Lick
Observatory on Mount Hamilton, where, with the aid

88 SAN FRANCISCO AND THEREABOUT
of the second most powerful telescope in the world, a
small band of devoted astronomers have made some of
the most important discoveries of modern times in the
investigation of the heavens. Work of far-reaching
importance has been done here on the finding and
observing of double stars, on photographing nebulae,
in spectroscopic astronomy, the detection of comets,
and in many other fields of research. The stage ride
of twenty-seven miles to the observatory is over a typical
section of the Coast Mountains, the view ever enlarg
ing until the topmost point is reached with its almost
unparalleled expansiveness of outlook. The whole
snowy range of the Sierras extends far off across the
broad plains of the Sacramento and San Joaquin.
Mount Diablo, and Mount Tamalpais lie to the north,
and past Loma Prieta to the southward the ranges of
southern Monterey County are visible. San Fran
cisco Bay, the fertile Santa Clara Valley with its set
tlements, its orchards and cultivated fields, and many
near canons and wrinkled hills are below us. What
sunsets one may view from this vantage point, followed
by a peep at some planet through the great glass, and
glimpses of that illimitable star world so wonderfully
revealed! Then there is the night stage ride down
the mountain, bowling around curves at a lively trot,
and descending into the darkness and solitude of the
canons !
I think of Mount Hamilton during the lovely
weeks of spring-time when baby-blue-eyes gladdened
the slopes, when shooting stars and scarlet larkspurs
and lupines were waving in great masses of radiant
bloom, when the birds were singing and courting, and
the lonely mountain where man holds communion
with the stars, thrilled with that loving touch of
nature which makes all the world akin.

INNER QUADRANGLE OF STANFORD UNIVERSITY.

FROM A PHOTOGRAPH BY TrBBETS

ABOUT MOUNT TAMALPAIS
T was wet on Washington's Birthday
and the wind whistled merrily over
the Bolinas Ridge as four jolly tramps
swung down the crest in full view of
the miles of thundering surf from
Point Reyes to Ocean View. They
drew up at the door of Constantine's
Tavern amid the spruce trees, and uttered a wild war
whoop. Why any mortal man should have thought
of building an inn in that remote spot on the stage
road from Ross Valley to Bolinas, and still more why
any other mortal men should have thought of walking
ten miles on a rainy winter afternoon to get there, is
one of those mysteries that passeth understanding.
But the ceanothus bushes were abloom in the chap
arral, the manzanita bells were coming forth on the
gnarly red-stemmed shrubs, hound's tongue and tril-
lium and violet were putting forth timid petals in the
rain and the birds were making holiday in those lovely
wooded glades of oak and spruce. It was enough!
Mine host Constantine, surnamed the Old Pirate,
who had concocted stews on the ferry boat for many a
year, was there with his good wife to receive us, and
as soon as the wet boots and clothes were steaming by
the big open fire we sat down to the festive board and
devoured plates of inimitable chowder a la Constan
tine, savory chicken and the many other Greek dishes
he proudly set before us, swapping yarns the while
with our host and entertaining his festive goat while
the master's back was turned. We slept in one of his
cabins before a rousing fire, lulled to sleep by the rain
drops trickling in through his leaky ceiling, A twenty

90 SAN FRANCISCO AND THEREABOUT
mile tramp to Olima on the morrow was one succession
of splendid views of forests and mountains, with the
ocean far below.
The whole Marin County peninsula is a great
natural park with villages and pastoral country inter
spersed. Would that it might be reserved as such for
all time! In its sheltered valleys grow the noble red
woods, the sublimest of forest trees save only their com
peers of the Sierras. In the secluded Redwood
Canon they still stand in their pristine glory — stately
shafts of majestic proportion lifting high their ever
green foliage. Mill Valley shelters much charming
second growth redwood where simple cottages nestle
amid the trees. Most unique of these are the Japanese
houses built by Mr. George T. Marsh.
From this point the mountain railroad zigzags
up Mount Tamalpais. After leaving the shade of the
redwood and the fragrant laurel dells, it turns and
twists up the mountain side, coiling in a double bow
knot, curving and winding along ledges in search of
a uniform grade. The view broadens below — first the
bay with indentations and peninsulas, islands and dis
tant hills. The city comes in view across the Golden
Gate, and presently the ocean is sighted. As the stout
little oil engine pushes us still higher, we see the twin
peaks of Mount Diablo looming up nobly to the east
ward back of the Berkeley Hills. Far to the south
east swells Mt. Hamilton on a high ridge, where the
great eye of the world watches silently the other
spheres. To the northward, fifty miles away, we see
Mount St. Helena grimly rising. The train takes us
to the comfortable Tamalpais Tavern from which
point the summit is distant but a ten minutes' walk.
The wind rushes wildly over the ridge. At our feet
stretches the ocean, with the Farallone Islands seem
ingly close at hand. Turning we look down on the
broad expanse of the bay, on hills and mountains, towns
and cities. This varied view of land and sea, com
passing a hundred miles of the most diversified land-

MOUNT TAMALPAIS.

FROM A PHOT'ORAPH BY LANGE

ABOUT MOUNT TAMALPAIS gt
scape of California, must be seen many times to be
thoroughly appreciated. Sunrise over the San Joa
quin Valley; the red orb dipping down into the fiety
band on the ocean ; moonlight, and the witchety of the
fog, when the beholder sits like an eagle on his crag
and sees the tumultuous cloud-floor spread below — all
these are but passing phases of the splendors of nature
which may be seen from this great watch tower of the
Pacific. At foot of the mountain, nestling amid the valleys
or in cosy nooks on the bay shore, are many charming
suburbs of San Francisco. San Rafael is the largest
of these and is frequented by many people of wealth as
well as by a numerous population of moderate means.
Sausalito, on the shore, is a meeting place for yachts
men, while Belvedere is famed for its night water car
nivals. Both towns have many picturesque houses on
hillsides overlooking the bay. A half-hour's ride on
the ferty takes the suburbanite from San Francisco
to his home. There he may enjoy nature, forgetting
the cares of business and the stress and strain of the city,
calmed by the expansive view of bay and distant hills,
and enlarged in spirit by communion with the beauties
far spread at his feet.

THROUGH THE GOLDEN GATE

AN FRANCISCO occupies the strat
egic post of the world commerce of
the twentieth centuty. "Westward the
course of empire takes its way" was a
prophecy which has already found
fulfillment. The Pacific is the new
theatre for the enacting of the drama
of the nations. From time immemorial the world
has been divided into the East and West, the former
of hoar antiquity, conservative, profound, teem
ing with people, the latter ever young, ever new, fol
lowing in the march of time, progressive, expanding,
peopling new wildernesses, restlessly searching for
new worlds of hand or brain to conquer. From time
immemorial the West has thriven upon the commerce
of the East. Phoenecia, Athens, Alexandria, Rome,
Venice, Spain, Holland, England, each in turn has
waxed fat and opulent on the commerce of the Orient.
It was in the search for the Spice Islands that America
was discovered. It was in the determined effort to
find a more direct route between Europe and the Indies
that most of the future exploration of America was
pushed. It is with the same determination to sweep
away evety obstacle, however monumental, which sep
arates the Occident from the Orient, that the United
States has undertaken the prodigious task of building
the Isthmian Canal.
After all these centuries of effort, a great city has
been reared upon the outposts of the western world
with a free sweep of sea off yonder to China. The
tidal wave of civilization has rolled around the globe.
The West has reached its limit, and to go beyond

THROUGH THE GOLDEN GATE 93
means to cross the international date line into the East.
So intent has San Francisco been upon the petty local
problems which environed her that she is only now
awakening from her lethargy to realize the pre
eminence of her position. Standing upon the rim of
the western world, the Orient is before her. She com
mands the shortest route to the East, seldom blocked by
winter storms, and commerce will always go that way.
It is the law of following the line of least resistance.
Even when the Isthmian Canal is finished, passengers,
mail and all perishable freight will go by the quickest
way, and the enforced reduction in railroad rates will
more than offset any loss of freight business to San
Francisco. The railroads are alive to their opportunities in
overland traffic. They have so reduced the time that
mail and passengers are now carried from ocean to
ocean in a little less than four days. The terrors of the
desert are set at naught by the triumphs of engineering.
Vast sums of money are today being applied to the im
provement of road-beds, the straightening of curves,
lowering of grades and modernizing of equipment on
the transcontinental lines. Instead of the Northwest
Passage, for which the mariners of old sought in vain,
applied science has given us the overland passage. So
rapid has been the increase of freight business during
the past year that the railroads are hard put to sup
ply cars to handle it. The Sunset Limited train runs
daily now instead of twice a week, to accommodate the
increasing travel. Other railroad lines are seeking en
trance to San Francisco from the East. New steam
ship lines are bringing hither the produce of many
shores — of Alaska and South America, Oceanica and
Australasia, the Philippines, Japan and China. There
were but three regular steamship lines plying between
San Francisco and foreign ports in 1895 as against
twelve lines today, and the foreign export business has
grown from a tonnage of something over fifteen million
pounds in that year to over two hundred million pounds

94 SAN FRANCISCO AND THEREABOUT
in 1 901. Our merchants are filling orders for Siberia
and New Zealand. Korea and South Africa are being
brought within the scope of our commercial enterprise
as well as the various countries of Europe.
The great triangle of the Pacific is destined to
have its lines drawn between Hong Kong, Sydney and
San Francisco. Of these three ports, Hong Kong will
have China behind it, Sydney, Europe, and San Fran
cisco, America; and with America for a backing, San
Francisco can challenge the world in the strife for
commercial supremacy. In the midst of this great
triangle lie Hawaii and the Philippines. From the
days of Magellan's immortal voyage to the time of
Dewey, the Spanish stronghold in the Pacific remained
unshaken save by internal dissensions. Today America
is roused to a new charge, and if only the love of liberty
which has so long thrilled the nation can remain the
dominating spirit in our disposition of these populous
islands, we shall have a stronger hold upon the vantage
ground on the outposts of the Orient than could ever
be gained by force of arms. If we are bound to these
people by ties of mutual interest, the islands will be
to us a source of legitimate profit and a link in the
chain of commerce with the Orient, but if we seek to
rule them with a master hand, they will become a drain
on our pockets and a potent factor in lowering our
national tone. The future of San Francisco is deeply
concerned in this matter, and the present drift of events
seems happily in the right direction.
While San Francisco is thus indebted to its com
manding position as toll taker on the world's high
way, the city, in common with all California, is also
favored by isolation. Between the snowy crests of the
Sierra Nevada Mountains and the ocean, is a strip of
land of extraordinaty fertility. Here grow the larg
est forest trees of the world, the largest fruits, the most
abundant crops. Water, in some parts of this region,
must be artificially brought to the land, but irrigation
is at once the oldest and the newest method of assuring

FROM A PAINTING BY YELLANO IN THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA ART GALLERY
THE ROAD OF PASSAGE AND UNION BETWEEN TWO HEMISPHERES.

THROUGH THE GOLDEN GATE 95
a harvest. All ancient civilizations were in countries
which depended upon artificially watered crops, and
California is but another instance where histoty is
repeating itself.
Beyond this garden, for hundreds of miles to the
eastward stretches a desert, or, more properly speak
ing, an arid region of alkali plains and sage-brush hills
which can probably never support a dense population.
Thus are we of the Coast cut off from kinsmen of the
East and Middle West. Trains may speed their fast
est with mail and freight. Books and magazines may
come pouring in upon us in a deluge from New York
and Boston, but the physical barrier remains, Cali
fornia, cosmopolitan though it be, thrilling with the
same patriotic pride and enthusiasm as the East, is still
intensely self reliant. It does not hang upon the opin
ions of Eastern oracles but makes its own standards.
One has but to be inoculated with the California fever
by a year's residence to become an enthusiastic victim
for life. There is a largeness of horizon here un
known to the Easterner. City men go out on summer
outings to climb lofty mountain peaks that would ap
pall a tenderfoot. The stern grandeur of the ocean
shores and the vast horizon of Sierra peaks leave their
impress upon the race that dwells in such an environ
ment. Much has been said and written of the climate of
California, but it still remains a fruitful theme. With
in the radius of a hundred miles are to be found all
sorts of climate, save the greatest extremes of the
tropics and Arctics, From the cool moist coast to the
dry heat of the interior means but the crossing of a spur
of the Coast Range. From the frostless lowlands to
a region of heavier snowfall than is found elsewhere
in the United States implies but the ascent by rail of
the Sierra Nevada Mountains. In the valleys, roses
and oranges; in the mountains, snow-shoes and ice
carnivals! The climate of San Francisco is uniform to a de-

96 SAN FRANCISCO AND THEREABOUT
gree that is equalled in few regions,* The summer
fogs temper the heat and make July and August as
comfortable as midwinter for work. The constant sea
breeze that sweeps over the hills all summer long on
its way to the hot interior valleys, carries away the
germs of disease and makes San Francisco an excep
tionally healthful city. Frost is rare in midwinter
and a flurty of snow falls only once in a few years,
melting almost ere it touches the ground. From June
to October scarce a shower moistens the ground, but
from November to May there are copious downpours,
interspersed with some of the loveliest days of the year.
The rainfall varies in amount from year to year, but
it is always welcome, since the stormiest of winter
weather means an ensuing summer of abundant crops.
Last winter, with a rainfall of twenty-one inches, was
an average season.
From my aerie amid the Berkeley Hills I look out
through the Golden Gate and see stately ships and
proud steamers coming and going; I can trace the long
line of overland trains speeding along the bay shore;
away yonder the city flecks the stubborn heights of
San Francisco. The whole great pageant of com
merce is in view afar off on the blue and purple relief
map of bay and mountains. The matchless gate of
gold is there glowing in the sunset. Over on La
Loma, but a stone's throw distant, stood Fremont when
he named that "road of passage and union between two
hemispheres" the Chtysopylae or Golden Gate,
Where could be found a more fitting highway for
the world commerce to travel, where a more sublime
portal whence the power and products of western civ
ilization should go forth to other shores of this vast

?The lowest temperature recorded by the weather bureau during thirty
years' observation, is 29° Far. The highest is 100°. The lowest mean
temperature for any month during this period was 46° and the highest 65°.
The mean temperature during these thirty years was lowest in December,
when it averaged 50°, and highest in September coming to 63°. In other
words, the variation of mean temperature from month to month during
thirty years has been only 13°.

THROUGH THE GOLDEN GATE 97
Pacific, and the stored wealth, art and industries of the
Orient be returned to enrich America? San Francisco,
founded by the Spanish padres who bore the cross to
the scattered Indian tribes of the wilderness, invaded
by a cosmopolitan horde from the four winds of the
globe, flocking at the cry of gold, developed by Amer
ican energy into the most important city of the Pacific
shore, has now taken a new impetus of growth and
has before it a more brilliant future than the most
sanguine of its founders dared anticipate. May that
largeness of public spirit, that breadth of view and
that readiness to co-operate in all that is good, grow
and develop until the community is able to fitly cope
with this empire of the Pacific sea and shores and
make it tribute to its genius !

Printed by The Stanley-Taylor Company, San Francisco.

YALE UNIVERSITY

!G5782b

^^v"

^1^

\ 4\

4

\ \

^,"1

^¦s.
\\
^^^^x:i¥
x-x X
X* *
¦^ X •- \'
\\\x ,^'>'* •¦
?-.',^
S, X<fX
l^x ^\
*\^ I
^ v\ ""Jt^N^
>¦ S..-V
x.\ ^^\-^
v'i-- v-^IX
•>*
':-A '
\
^>',x
*'l -r
¦• 1; 1
X V '"^
W^
s
K^-^^