Читать книгу Forty Thousand Miles Over Land and Water - Ethel Gwendoline Vincent - Страница 12

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I think we never felt more dirty or forlorn in our lives than on that bright morning when, crossing the bay in one of the palatial Oakland ferry steamers, sitting in the deck saloon, we were surrounded by a crowd of smartly-dressed "Frisco" ladies, particularly humiliated by the appearance of two of our fellow-travellers in the cars, in fresh morning toilettes. A bitter east wind was blowing in our teeth, and raising the muddy waters of the bay into "white horses," and the town with its straight lines running perpendicularly up the hill, showing the division of the streets into regular blocks, looked bleak and grey under the wintry sky.

We could not help being struck by the wonderful precision with which they run these enormous ferry-boats into a dock, fitted with exact nicety to their dimensions, rarely "bumping" against the floating piles, which, however give slightly to a pressure on either side as required.

As your foot is set on the wharf, an army of hotel "touts" besiege you, ready to devour you and your small hand-baggage, and it is with difficulty, and only after some display of firmness and decision, that you are allowed to select the natural choice of a first visit to San Francisco—the Palace Hotel. Rejecting the omnibus or large yellow coach, we took a carriage, to be as quickly as possible installed in a charming suite of rooms; all our possessions, from which we have been so long separated, once more gathered around us—luxury again after the four days of heat and discomfort in "the cars."

We have all heard so much, and for so long of "The Palace," that it is hard to be disenchanted. When the hotel was first built, it was a marvel of magnificence, but since then others as beautiful, as gigantic, as costly, have sprung up, by the side of which its celebrity is paling. The arches and white pillars repeat themselves seven times one above the other, round the four sides of the covered courtyard, and when lighted in the evening by the single pendant electric light, form a very brilliant and pretty sight. The attendance, as might be expected, is only moderate, increasing the feeling ever present of being only a unit among the host of visitors. You have the option of the American or European system, and there is an excellent restaurant, but the courtyard, the piazza, the long corridors leading to the ladies' entrance and waiting-rooms, are filled with groups of men lounging and hanging about; it is, in fact, a general meeting-place for the citizens, which renders it unpleasant for ladies. The rooms are not numbered according to floors, but the hotel is divided into blocks, called according to the street towards which it faces, and each block, with its separate lift and numbering, forms a house of itself.

It may be mentioned in passing that the proprietor, Mr. Sharon, is at present defendant in a tremendous divorce case, which has been occupying the court and local press for the last eighty days; the leading counsel on either side is a "colonel" for the petitioner, and a "general" for the respondent. We spent the afternoon in wandering about among the splendid stores, and in re-hatting C., who was much reduced by the loss of one hat in the early days of our travels, and by the collapse of the remainder in the railway accident. At first surprised by the beautiful furs and sealskin paletots of the ladies we met in the streets, we soon understood the wisdom of their winter wraps when at four o'clock we were driven home by the cold wind, and raw sea fog, hanging about the city.

Sunday, August 24th. Palace Hotel, San Francisco.—We arrived in church in time for the second lesson, having met with a shake of the head, and in one case an honest confession "that he never went to church," in answer to our inquiries for Trinity Church.

We made an unsuccessful attempt to reach Cliff House by the Cable Cars in the afternoon. An expedition there is the favourite Sunday amusement. You go out, over the bleak downs, along the edge of the cliffs, to the small hotel, where a few seals are to be seen disporting themselves on the rocks beneath, sounding their monotonous "bark" or call. The wind was blowing in our faces, and the mist driving before us, and at last, as we seemed about to penetrate into a cloud which had descended on the further hill, we called a halt, as we were passing a return car. We had seen part of one of the pretty suburbs that are San Francisco's greatest attractions, where the villas of her Bonanza or railway kings centre—men whose fortunes were made in the gold beds of the tributaries to the San Joaquin and Sacramento rivers, barely forty years ago. Then San Francisco was but a village of shanties which they called "Yerba Buena" or good hut, and the "hoodlum" element predominated, traces of which are still to be found but too frequently in many of the low quarters of the city. Not so very long ago it was necessary to carry a revolver about. It was worn daily as a matter of course, and an unintentional raising of the hand to the place where it was secreted might prove fatal, causing an opponent to draw his under suspicion, and in supposed self-defence.

There are many evident traces of the quick rise to wealth that has been the ordinary lot of the inhabitants of the city. You notice it particularly in the extraordinary number of jewellers' stores, and the display of diamonds, in the expensive upholsterers, with their superb if gaudy furniture, in the marvellous curios of Chinese and Japanese art, that here find a ready sale.

Disgusted with the climate of San Francisco, we fully expected to be told the usual story about "phenomenal weather." Every one has observed how exceptional the weather generally is when they happen to visit a certain place. But no, we found it is the rule here for the bright, sunny mornings to change to cold wind and sea fog in the afternoon throughout the summer months. During the winter the climate is warm and equable, and it therefore possesses the advantage of having no great extremes throughout the year.

Monday, August 25th. San Francisco.—A morning of indecision, angry agents, each "touting" for their route, a hurrying about from one office to the other.

The question under consideration was an expedition to the Yosemite Valley. A telegram from New York confirmed the date of the 30th as the arrival of the mails and the departure of the Pacific Mail Steamboat, the Australia, for New Zealand. This left us exactly four days in which to carry out the expedition, one and a half to go into the valley, the afternoon there, and two days to come out again. I confess now that it is all over, that it was a mad idea to think it practicable. Five years ago I had heard my first description of this wonderland, and been seized with an unreasoning desire to see it. All through the continent I had been hurrying and pushing on, particularly towards the last, chafing feverishly against the delays caused by our mishaps on the railways; fearful lest time should fail us at the last for the Yosemite Valley. Was it to be so after all? It was just possible. My earnest entreaties prevailed, and we went.

Miller, generally considered the popular agent, and supported by the powerful influence of the chief clerk of the Palace, drew us out programme No. 1, returning us to San Francisco on Saturday morning in time to catch the steamer. Walton, the rival agent, drew us out programme No. 2, which possessed the advantage of bringing us back on Friday evening, the day before the departure of the steamer. Miller said Walton was underhorsed and undertimed; Walton read us out a letter from an Englishman praising his route and saying he had found Miller "an unmitigated liar." We went to Miller's office, and as we turned the corner were pounced upon by Walton. This might have lasted out the day had we not trenched matters, by deciding to go into the valley by Miller's route, and come out by Walton's, who solemnly promised to stake his reputation on bringing us back on the Friday evening. I packed all our luggage in the morning in readiness to be sent down to the wharf, arranged our cabin boxes for the voyage, and, taking only hand-bags, we started on the expedition.

Mr. Lee, a fellow-traveller, and with whom we became friendly during the long day spent together in the Desert at Grand Junction, came with us; to add greatly to our pleasure by his uniform Irish cheerfulness and imperturbable good temper, under the most trying circumstances.

The first stage of the journey was made in the train, sleeping in the Pullman Car, which was slipped at 11 p.m. and left standing on the rails all night. At 4 a.m. the next morning, we hurried across in the grey dawn to the inn opposite for breakfast. We looked critically at the coach and team of six horses that were standing ready at the door. The vehicle perhaps might be more properly described as a large red char-à-banc swung on leathern straps, with a cover overhead. Later on in the morning we blessed that cover, not only for its grateful protection from the sun, but for the support that its upright iron stanchions afforded us. We clung to them convulsively, for to say that we jolted and bumped would be to give no adequate idea of the violent exercise we went through. We collided with one another, and slipped up and down the seat, we were thrown up in the air to come down again with a thud that jarred the whole system. In vain we grasped the front seat, or clung round the iron standards, planting the feet firmly on the footboard, determined not to go up with the next bound of the coach. It was all to no purpose, and by the end of the first hour we were sore and aching, looking at each other in blank dismay, with the knowledge of the seventy miles' coaching to be gone through that day. I remember that it was our shoulder-blades that suffered most, and that it was impossible to keep the air cushions we tried, as a relief, in their place. It was not the pitching of the coach, though we often saw it rise up above the leaders and then descend till the wheelers were visible again, that we dreaded, but the large stones over which the wheels passed with a relentless jar which communicated itself to the whole nervous system.

But the most trying thing of all was the dust, which under the twenty-four hoofs of our six horses, rose in clouds around us. Sometimes for a moment we were so enshrouded as to be invisible to each other, and then as it cleared off, and we drew breath freely again, mouth and nostril were full of the fine sand which we tasted and smelt. It was, too, of a peculiar red colour, imparting its ruddy tinge to everything we wore; in fact, our things never recovered that expedition, and for long afterwards, notwithstanding the vigorous brushings, which I gave with an unstinting hand on our return, we used to detect its traces and say, "Some of the Yosemite dust!" A soft woollen shawl which we had with us, absorbed such an immense quantity, that it even now responds to a gentle shake by giving forth a little cloud of dust. We used to arrive each night at our destination enshrouded in a film of the same, and there was difficulty amongst the passengers in claiming their small hand-baggage from amongst a pile of dust-smothered luggage.

We began our journey by crossing over a flat plain, and our curiosity was excited by a wooden aqueduct running parallel with the road. We kept it in sight for many miles, and never really lost it throughout the whole day, passing it again late in the afternoon. It was a plane or wooden trough, constructed on a slight incline, filled with a stream of water, flowing at the rate of five miles an hour, and down which lumber was floated a distance of seventy miles. This ingenious contrivance is the means of utilizing much of the splendid timber that lies rotting in the mountain forests, useless because of the enormous labour and expense of transporting it to the abode of man. Several experiments were necessary before the "flume" was perfected, the V shape being adopted, as it was found in the square troughs that the lumber in floating down would be driven transversely, and so occasion a block. We presently exchanged the prairie-like plain for a more hilly country abounding in a stunted undergrowth of dwarf oak, cork, myrtle, and ilex trees, freely interspersed with large masses of rock, in such isolated positions, that we could not help wondering how they ever came there. The blue range of mountains that we were to cross later in the afternoon were becoming more distinct. At a very early hour in the morning the sun had become powerful; we were hungry after our five o'clock breakfast, depressed at the prospect before us, and by eleven o'clock, when we made our first halt to change horses, we had reached a pitch of great misery.