Chapter 9
chapter nine of east by west by henry w lucy this librivox recording is in the public domain recording by ruth golding chapter nine by the golden gate grapes at fivepence a pound are an early and satisfactory indication that we have left the bare brown sierras behind us and have reached a valley land flowing with milk and honey honey is mentioned here only because it belongs to the quotation I suppose it is made somewhere in the States, but I have not met with it on any table, nor anywhere seen a beehive. But milk is abundant, and of a quality unknown in London. At the roadside station, where grapes at fivepence a pound were dispensed by a benevolent negro wearing a snowy white apron,
Milk stood in jugs on a table, in company with most excellent custard and apple tarts, large, flat and round. The milk having been standing half an hour, there was an inch of thick cream at the top, and what followed did not seem to have suffered from this concentration. Five bence a glass was the price of the milk, but that had evidently less reference to its
intrinsic value than to the habitude in this neighbourhood of regarding ten cents as the lowest denomination of coin in which it is possible to deal. Everything costs ten cents, the grapes by the pound, the custard and apple pie by the slice, and the milk by the glass. In England, fivepence for a glass of milk taken in a country place might be regarded as dear, but in a lordly california it was really a condescension on the part of the benevolent negro and his family to take so small a coin
two days later in san francisco one and eightpence was demanded and promptly paid for two glasses of thin milk and two half rolls of plain bread in truth the united states is the dearest country in the world to travel in i have made a careful computation and find that a dollar nominally valued at four shillings will buy of the necessaries and luxuries of life exactly as much as a shilling will in england money is easily made here wages are high profits are large and the country is full of men grown suddenly rich a dollar here or there is a matter not worth the expenditure of time for its consideration it is a broad significant fact that a five cent piece value twopence ha'penny is practically the lowest coin current in the states and that it will sometimes buy for you what a penny would bring in a more effete country there are of course cents but except to buy stamps and in new york an evening paper you might as well be without them where the currency practically begins in everyday life is with the quarter value one shilling
with these liberally dispensed on the slightest provocation one can get along comfortably through the little needs and services of the day last night strolling about the town i stopped to hear a street hawker who with leathern lungs and considerable humour was disposing of his wares he was selling a parcel of plated jewellery and a pack of cards the price being half a dollar during the time i stood by he found at least twenty customers no hawker in his senses would get up in the streets of london or any other large english town and attempt to sell things which he valued at two shillings sixpence would be a pretty high figure for such an audience as he would gather and a penny a still more popular sum yet here in this californian crowd two shillings were handed up almost as rapidly as he could pocket them this is all very well for the californians but for slow-witted englishmen a too rapid succession of experiences is apt to stun an english gentleman in the city took his wife for a walk in the chinese quarter
in a neat little cafe the lady drank a cup of tea for which one dollar was demanded after this the gentleman thought he would have his hair cut on returning to his hotel he sent for the barber who cut his hair shaved shampooed him and charged him two dollars and a half it is true that in this case the gentleman was what the late mr g p r james was wont to call a belted earl but making due allowance for that fact ten and sixpence for cutting and shaving seems dear san francisco has sown its wild oats of forty-nine and is now one of the most staid cities in the states the newspapers are quite tame as compared with the smaller sheets published east for days and even weeks there has been no shooting nor even any holding up on the day of my arrival i had what promised to be an opportunity of being present at a shooting match a domestic institution which had hitherto eluded personal observation
like mr charles russell who in his journeying over the states has been just outside of four railway accidents i have been just too soon or too late for shootings whether retail in drinking saloons or wholesale in railway cars boarded in the dead of the night here was a chance not to be missed the two men standing in the crowded streets glared into each other's eyes like wild beasts they cursed and swore and threatened and then just where the pistol should have come in one doubled his fist and in commonplace english fashion knocked the other down that was scarcely worth travelling six thousand miles to see and must have spoken sadly to some veterans of the deterioration of the famous old mining camp the star of mining empire has moved north and east montana and colorado now take the place that california once held in the mining world there are still rich mines in the state though their names are not known in the english market
when we get a find a californian said to me with engaging frankness i guess we keep it and work it ourselves the good-looking bogus mine does just as well for export on one of the spurs of the sierra nevada above sacramento gold mining of curious fashion is visibly in progress the rocks are not worth approaching in regular mining fashion there is gold in them but it must be got cheaply to pay so the miners convoy the mountain streams condense their force into hoses and bringing these to bear on the mountain sides literally wash away the rock you can see it as you pass on the railway grey or rich red according to the formation of the stone but everywhere with a curiously pained surprised air as of an old gentleman who has had his wig suddenly and unaccountably snatched off disclosing bare places of course the aspect of the country is ruined wherever it has been played upon by this titanic hose
worse still from a practical point of view the debris washing down is filling up the sacramento river and making the people of sacramento exceeding wild what business have you up there they angrily ask the miners what are you doing down there the miners carelessly reply the question of right has been referred to a court of law and a very knotty question it will prove for the judges the old miners of forty-nine who wore flannel shirts boots innocent of blacking and pistols always loaded have departed from san francisco as completely as the dutch have died out from new york but their successors are as ready as capable and as enterprising there are some giants of finance and engineering who dwell in palaces at san francisco all self-made men and in the first generation honestly proud of this distinction the coming generation born into their inheritance are steadily and determinately striding into other grooves wherein their sons and daughters will carelessly slide
kid gloved with dresses from paris coats and boots from england and with some secret scorn for the rough-handed hard-headed men who founded their fortunes and for the stout dames their grandmothers who took in washing if there were an american mr smiles he would find in san francisco stirring material for fresh volumes illustrative of self-help the history of the making of the central pacific railroad has yet to be told it would be difficult to find a story fuller of pluck and skill of successful battling with apparently insuperable obstacles human and divine the career of mr crocker supplies a narrative which is the story of half a dozen of the richest men in california he began life and to his great honor is not chary of the reminiscence as a laborer in a mine marrying in his own station of life when opportunity came he seized it by the hair with both hands and beginning to prosper in small ways went on to greater deeds till to-day he is a tenfold millionaire ranking high even in the scale of california
working in conjunction with four or five men of his own standing they control all the public works and possibilities of making money in the state they build railways found steamship lines work mines own banks and monopolize financial transactions in which they add to their millions whilst the public is more or less well satisfied with its bargain if they chose to fight each other there would be a struggle worthy of the gods and the public would benefit they know better than that they join their forces and pool their earnings the english reader of american newspapers will constantly find references to some man or some combination obtaining a control of a railway system a bank or some commercial undertaking or public concern the millionaires of san francisco working amicably in the task of milking of the common cow have obtained the control of everything within reach in the state
people grumble but what can they do the combination is perfectly legal though it has some awkward resemblance to a knock-out at an auction it is open for an outsider to bid and the highest bidder buys but it would be hard to compete with a millionaire it is hopeless to cope with half a dozen making common cause and opening a common purse they are not only rich but they retain the sagacity and the boldness that made them rich and their purse apart they would be tough customers to deal with their latest feat in a local way dealt with the street tramways that are the wonder and the pride of san francisco watching their time they swept down on the market street route they bought it up with a cheque for one million eight hundred thousand dollars now they have floated on a trustful public bonds for three million showing on this single transaction a profit of one million two hundred thousand dollars
the system of street tramways in vogue here seems to me to solve the question of motive power for this kind of traction recent experiments with a view to introduce the cable cars in the highgate road have made halliday's system partially at least known in london san francisco is its birthplace and here it is working with the greatest ease and the fullest measure of public benefit the suburbs of san francisco stretched themselves over steep hills which it would seem were inaccessible by ordinary modes of locomotion but land grew increasingly dear in the neighbourhood of the city these hills once clambered are salubrious and afford splendid views they were accordingly built upon and men and horses laboriously crawled up the heights necessity here proved the mother of invention and as there was in existence no convenient way of getting up these terrible stairs the cable street tram had its birth there is something eerie at first sight of these heavily laden cars running up a grade of one in five at the rate of seven miles an hour and without any visible means of propulsion
there is neither smoke of engine nor clatter of horse-hoof on the highway at a central spot the steam-engine hauls on the endless cable the cable itself is buried underneath the track along which the trams pass and only careful inspection can guess at any means of communication between it and the car as far as the public who pay their twopence ha'penny for a ride are concerned there is nothing but a comfortably seated car moving smoothly along iron rails faster than a handsome cab which can be pulled up to a dead stop in half the space of time required by an ordinary tram and which will go up hill or down dale with equal facility the original cost of the machinery is considerable but it is also the last there being no charges for horse renewals and very few for road maintenance
i was told that the cable cars here earn a ten per cent dividend and judiciously pay eight whilst with the advance of civilization and the effacement of the rough pioneers by the new generation who ape the manners of london society many of the former characteristics of san francisco have disappeared the city retains a notable one in the matter of earthquakes having peacefully gone to bed at midnight we were awakened an hour later by an unmistakable shaking of the gigantic structure known as the palace hotel the building rocked in a painfully distinct manner as if the god thor walking past to take his early bath in the pacific had placed his hand on the cornice of the roof and playfully shaken the house there are various estimates of the duration of the shock to my mind the impression conveyed was that it lasted whilst you could count ten and that it ceased as suddenly and as absolutely as it had commenced
there was a distinct movement outward of the building a fierce rattling of the windows a rushing noise in the air then the house settled back the rattling ceased the stillness of the night resumed its sway and everything was as if the earthquake had not been one other strange matter was the unhesitating certainty with which strangers wholly unfamiliar with the phenomenon knew what it was you may take your first terrapin without knowledge or suspicion that you have entered upon a new and distinct phase of gastronomy but there's no mistaking your first earthquake it being one of the few matters in which knowledge comes without experience society in san francisco as far as i was privileged to mix in it is of a hearty hospitable order the older simpler habits of the pioneers leavening the affectations of the younger branches of the family who after the discovery of the bonanza or other big boom went off to visit london and the city they call
i noted the disappearance of those titles which formerly indicated the yearning of the republican mind for social distinction in all san francisco i did not meet a single judge and only one colonel this was a bullet-headed young man with a moustache inadequate for military training who was noteworthy in other ways as a type of the new social birth now in steady progress in san francisco the colonel is a well-meaning smart young fellow with a keen eye to business ludicrous only in the thirst for some means of presenting himself to the public other than as plain mister who goes down to an office sits on a stool and looks after railways mines and common workaday things of that kind it would be hard to give up this occupation since it brings in dollars by the thousand and sometimes by the half million but out of office hours it would be nice to wear tight trousers and a coat of military cart and to strut about as nearly as possible in the style of the officers up on the reservation so one morning by some mysterious birth process
colonel was introduced to san francisco which receives him with good-natured laughter and kindest forbearance of the little foible as wealth grows this type flourishes and thus an aristocracy grows up out of the rank luxury made possible by the labor and inspiration of the men who came here any time during the last thirty-five years with all their worldly goods in their wallet as yet no great harm is done san francisco is still too practical and too busy money-making to be seriously influenced by the colonel type it is too busy even to drive with great regularity through the park out to the beach or round through the military reservation which is a pity for there are few cities whether in the old world or the new that have a fairer possession the reservation is an enclosed track of ground open to the public and much frequented since the roads are in excellent condition and skilfully graded
when we drove through a gang of military prisoners were at work surrounded by a cordon of watchful sentries musket on shoulder the officers quarters are very prettily situated forming rows of rustic cottages with bright flower gardens and trimly kept lawns of freshest green these oases of green lawn are very striking at this season of the year trees and vegetation alike are at their utmost gasp for existence it is months since rain fell and what were green fields in the spring are now bare patches of brown earth with here and there hapless tufts of hay showing themselves it is hard to believe looking down a far-reaching stretch of brown scorched earth that in the spring this is a bank bright with lupine and other wild flowers but such is the case and so will it be again when the rain comes in the officers quarters and by all the magnificent houses on knobbs hill and in van ness avenue the lawns are kept ever green by a pretty and useful device which though not unknown is not common in england
this is a movable fountain consisting of an upright iron pipe fed by an india-rubber hose at the top there is a horizontal arrangement of small pipes perforated after the manner of a rose in a water-can these revolve with the force of the water projected through them and diffuse a fine soft shower of rain when one section of the lawn is sufficiently watered the fountain is moved to another it can be lifted with one hand so the rain is always falling and the grass ever blooming the park was originally a waste of sandhills outside it the sandhills reassert their supremacy and lead down to the sea by rich masses of yellows and brown it is a favourite expedition both for strangers and citizens to drive out to cliff home and watch the seals playing on the rocks they are always there floundering up or slipping off with a plunge into the cool depths and incessantly grunting there is one habitue of vast proportions in whom popular fancy traces resemblance to general butler
as we sat and watched a fisherman's boat slowly paddled past the cluster of brown rocks and with excited cries the seals slid off into the sea it was pretty to see old ben butler slightly turning his stupendous carcass so as to bring his weather-eye to bear upon the cause of the disturbance when he saw what it was he gave a little grunt settled himself in a more comfortable position and lazily watched the flutter among the younger members of the community beyond the grunt ben offered no remark audible on shore but when he resettled himself others preparing to move resumed their places and some of those excitedly swimming round the edge of the rocks returned reassured it was evident that on the rock in the far west as in massachusetts in the far east there was a general impression that ben butler might be safely trusted to look after himself
all day whilst the sun shines the seals play here to the north stands tamilpais with wreath and white mist at its feet and its head clothed in purple and golden brown reaching far up in the blue sky by here stands the golden gate and beyond it the pacific breaking in white surf on the shore to the southward and to the westward nothing between us and asia but a wilderness of blue water chapter nine
