Читать книгу By the Golden Gate - Joseph Carey - Страница 10

San Francisco—Her Hills—Her Landscapes—Population of Different

Decades—The Flag on the Plaza in 1846—Yerba Buena its Earliest

Name—First Englishman and First American to Build Here—The Palace

Hotel—The Story of the Discovery of. Gold in 1848—Sutter and

Marshall—The News Spread Abroad—Multitudes Flock to the Gold

Mines—San Francisco in 1849.

As we stand on the deck of the bay steamer and are fast approaching the San Francisco ferry-house which looms up before us in dignity, we look out on a great city with a population of 350,000 souls, and we observe that it is seated on hills as well as on lowlands. Rome loved her hills, Corinth had her Acropolis, and Athens, rising out of the Plain of Attica, was not content until she had crowned Mars' Hill with altars and her Acropolis with her Parthenon. Here in this golden city of the Pacific the houses are climbing the hills, nay they have climbed them already and they vie in stateliness with palaces and citadels in the old historic places which give picturesqueness to the coast lands of the Mediterranean. There is indeed in the aspect of San Francisco, in her waters and her skies, and all her surroundings, that which recalls to my mind landscapes and scenery of Italy and Greece and old Syria. Yonder to the northeast of the city is Telegraph Hill, 294 feet high, a spot which in the olden days, that is, as far back only as 1849, was wooded. Now it is teeming with life, and it looks down with seeming satisfaction on miles and miles of streets and warehouses and dwellings of rich and poor. But there are not many poor people in this Queen City. In all my wanderings about the city for a month, I was never accosted by a professional beggar. Everybody could find work to do, and all seemed prosperous and happy. Off to the west, serving as a sentinel, is Russian Hill, 360 feet high. It is a striking feature in the ever-expanding city, and it is a notable landmark for the San Franciscan. In the southeastern part of the city is Rincon Hill, 120 feet in height, attracting to itself the interest of that part of the population whose homes are in its shadow. There are other hills of lesser importance as to altitude, but over their tops extend long streets and broad avenues lined with the dwellings of a contented and thrifty people. The business blocks and hotels, the printing houses and railway and steamship offices, the stores and art galleries, the places of amusement and lecture halls, the stores and shops, the homes and the churches, fill all the spaces between those hills in a compact manner and run around them and stretch beyond them, and at your feet, as you stand on an eminence, is a panorama of life which at once arrests your attention and enchains your mind. It was all so different fifty or sixty years ago. According to the census returns the population of San Francisco in 1850 was 34,000. In 1860 there was a gain of 22,802. In 1870 there were in the city 149,473 souls; while in 1880 there was a population of 233,959 including 30,000 Chinese. The census of 1890 gives an increase of 64,038 during the decade, and the last enumeration shows that there has been a gain of 44,785 in the ten years. If the towns across the bay and northward, as well as San Mateo on the south, which are as much a part of San Francisco as Brooklyn and Staten Island are of New York, there would be a population of more than 450,000. The growth, as will be seen, is steady, and San Francisco offers to such as seek a home within her borders, all the refinements and comforts of life, all that ministers to the intellect and the spiritual side of our nature as well as our social tastes and desires.

There can be no greater contrast imaginable than that between the San Francisco of 1846, when Commodore Montgomery, of the United States sloop of war Portsmouth, raised the American flag over it, and the noble city of to-day. And no one then in the band of marines who stood on the Plaza as the flag was unfurled to the breeze by the waters of the Pacific, in sight of the great bay, could have dreamed of the golden future which was awaiting California—of the splendour which would rest on little Yerba Buena in the lapse of time. Yerba Buena was the early name of the settlement. This was applied also, as we have learned, to Goat Island. The pueblo was then insignificant and apparently with no prospect of expansion or grandeur. There were only a few houses there, chiefly of adobe construction, clustering about the Plaza. The Presidio, west of the stray hamlet, and the Mission Dolores, to the southwest, were all that relieved a dreary landscape beyond. There were the hills covered with chaparral and the shifting sands all around, and far to the south, where now are wide streets and great blocks of buildings. The ground sloped towards the bay on the east, and a cove, long since filled in, which bore the name of Yerba Buena, extended up to Montgomery street. The population of the town was less than a hundred; there was hardly this number in the Presidio, and not more than two hundred people were connected with the Mission Dolores. In 1835 Captain William A. Richardson, an Englishman, the first foreigner to enter the embryo town, erected a tent for his residence; and on July 4th, 1836, the second house was built at the corner of Clay and Dupont streets. The story runs that the first American to build a house in San Francisco proper was Daniel Culwer, who also founded Santa Barbara. This pioneer was born in Maryland in 1793, and died in California in 1857. He lived long enough to see the greatness of the city assured. But on that day when he finished his modest house on the corner of New Montgomery and Market streets, he little thought that in after years there would spring up, as if by magic, under the skillful hands of the Lelands, famous in San Francisco as in Saratoga in the olden days, the magnificent Palace Hotel, with its royal court, its great dining halls, and its seven hundred and fifty-five rooms for guests, rivalling in its grandeur and its luxurious appointments the palaces of kings.

The growth of San Francisco was very rapid after the discovery of gold. The population immediately leaped into the thousands. California was the goal of the gold-seeker, the El Dorado of his quest. Men in search of fortune came from all parts of the world to the Golden West. It was on the 19th of January, 1848, that gold was discovered. The story reads like a romance. Captain John Augustus Sutter, who was born in Baden, Germany, February 15th, 1803, after many adventures in New York, Missouri, New Mexico, the Sandwich Islands, and Sitka, at last found himself in San Francisco. From this spot he crossed the bay and went up the Sacramento River, where he built a stockade, known as Sutter's Fort, and erected a saw mill at a cost of $10,000, and a flour mill at an outlay of $25,000. Here in 1847 he was joined by James Wilson Marshall, born in New Jersey in 1812. Marshall was sent up to the North Fork of the American River, where at Coloma he built a saw mill. This was near the center of El Dorado county, and in a line northeast from San Francisco. The mill, in the midst of a lumber region, was finished on January 15th, 1848, and everything was in readiness for the sawing of timber, which was in great demand in all the coast towns and brought a high price. The mill-race, when the water was let into it, was found too shallow, and in order to deepen it Marshall opened the flood gates and allowed a strong, steady volume of water to flow through it all night. Nature, aided by human sagacity, having done her work well, the flood gates were closed, and there in the gravel beneath the shallow stream lay several yellow objects like pebbles. They aroused curiosity. The miller took one and hammered it on a stone. He found it was gold. He then gave one of the "yellow pebbles" to a Mrs. Wimmer, of his camp, to be boiled in saleratus water. She threw it into a kettle of boiling soap, and after several hours it came out bright and shining. It is yellow gold, California gold, there can be no mistake! Next, we see Marshall, all excitement, hastening to Sutter's Fort, and informing his employer, in a mysterious way, that he has found gold. Sutter goes to the mill the next day, and Marshall is impatiently waiting for him. More water is turned on, and the race is ploughed deeper, and more nuggets are brought to light. It is a day of supreme joy. The excitement is great. Even the waters of the American River seem to "clap their hands" and the trees of the wood wave their tops in homage and rejoice. At the foot of the Sierras is the hidden treasure, which will thrill the civilised world when it hears the tidings with a new joy, which will bring delight beyond measure to thousands of adventurers, which will enrich some beyond their wildest dreams, and which will prove the ruin of many an one, wrecking, alas! both soul and body. Sutler's plan was to keep the wonderful discovery a secret, but this was impossible. Even the very birds of the air would carry the news afar to the coast in their songs; the waters of mountain streams running down to the Sacramento River and on to San Francisco Bay and out to the Pacific Ocean through the Golden Gate would bear the report north and south to all the cities and towns, to Central and South America, to China and Japan, to Europe and more distant lands; and the wings of the wind would serve as couriers to waft the story across the Sierras and the Rocky Mountains and the plains, till the whole world would be startled and gladdened with the cry, Gold is found, gold in California! One of the women of Sutler's household told the secret, which was too big to be kept in hiding, to a teamster, and he, overjoyed, in turn told it to Merchant Smith and Merchant Brannan of the Fort. The "secret" was out in brief space, and like an eagle with outspread wings, it flew away into all quarters of the globe. Poor Sutter, strange to say, it ruined him. The gold seekers came from the ends of the earth and "squatted" on his lands, and he spent all the fortune he had amassed in trying to dispossess them. But his efforts were unavailing. The laws, loosely administered then, seemed to be against him, and fate, relentless fate, spared him not. Almost all that was left to him in the end was the ring which he had made out of the lumps of the first gold found, and on which was inscribed this legend: "The first gold found in California, January, 1848." It tells a melancholy as well as a joyous tale, in it are bound up histories and tragedies, in it the happiness of multitudes, and even the fate of immortal souls! The California legislature at length took pity on Sutter, and granted him a pension of $250 per month, on which he lived until he was summoned, at Washington, D.C., on June 17th, 1880, by the Angel of Death, to a land whose gold mocks us not, and where everyone's "claim" is good, if he be found worthy to pass through the Golden Gate. Marshall, too, died a poor man, August 8th, 1885, having lived on a pension from the State of California, which also has seen fit to honour his memory, as the discoverer of gold, by erecting a monument to him at Coloma, the scene of the most exciting events in his life. The names of these two men, however, will endure in the thrilling histories of 1848 and 1849, as long as time lasts—for all unconsciously they set the civilised world in motion, gave new impulse to armies of men, spread sails on the ocean, filled coffers with yellow gold, and added new chapters to the graphic history of San Francisco and many another city. When the tidings of the discovery of gold reached the outside world thousands on thousands set their faces towards the El Dorado of the Pacific slopes. There were many new Jasons. The Golden Fleece of the sunny West was beckoning them on. New Argos were fitted out for the new Colchis. The Argonauts of 1849 were willing to brave all dangers. It is Joaquin Miller who sings—

"Full were they

Of great endeavour. Brave and true

As stern Crusader clad in steel,

They died afield as it was fit—

Made strong with hope, they dared to do

Achievement that a host to-day

Would stagger at, stand back and reel,

Defeated at the thought of it."

There were three ways of reaching the gold fields. Men could travel across the plains in the traditional emigrant wagon. It was a weary, lonely journey, life was endangered among hostile Indians, and happy were those who at last were strong enough to toil in the mines. Alas, too many fell by the way and left their bones to bleach in arid regions. It is the experience of life. We have our object of desire. We often come short of it. Ere we reach the goal we perish and the coveted prize is forever lost. Not so is it to him who seeks the Gold of New Jerusalem. The Gold of that land is good, and all who will can find it and enjoy it.

Another way was by the Isthmus of Panama, and then up the coast in such a ship as one could find. It was the least toilsome journey and the shortest, but still attended with hardships. Many fell a prey to wasting fevers which burn out one's life, and so never reached the destined port of San Francisco, through which they would pass to the gold fields.

The longest way was around Cape Horn. Still there were those who took it, even if months, five or six, it might be, were consumed in the journey. The gold they sought would compensate them at last. These too had to encounter storms, face probable shipwreck or contend with grim death. Many who sold all to equip themselves, who turned away from home and kindred, for a time they thought, to enrich themselves, who would surely return to their loved ones with untold treasure, never fulfilled their desire. Some perished in the voyage, others died in San Francisco, and were laid to rest till the final day in her cemeteries by the heaving ocean. Such as reached the mines did not always gain the gold they coveted. There were those who were fortunate, who made a success of life, who realised their day dreams; and some of these returned to the old home, to the waiting parents, to the longing wife and children. Some with their gold settled in San Francisco and sent for their kindred. And what happy meetings were those in the years of gold mining, when ships coming from many lands, from American and foreign ports, brought to the city through the Golden Gate the beloved ones whose dear faces had ever been an inspiration to the toilers in darkest hours! Methinks the meetings of loved ones parted here, on the shores of the crystal sea, will compensate for all life's labours and trials. Yes, if we only have the true treasures, the true gold of the Golden City.

In those days of 1848 and 1849 and during 1850 and 1851, San Francisco—on which we are now looking, the stately, comely city of to-day, was a city of tents in a large measure. Ships were pouring out their passengers at the Long Wharf. They would tent for a time on the shore, then hurry off to the mines. In those days you could meet in the streets men of various nationalities. Here were gold seekers from New England and old England, from our own Southland and the sunny land of France and Italy, from Germany and Sweden and Norway, from Canada and other British possessions, from China and Japan. And it was gold which brought them all here, the statesman and the soldier, the labouring man and the child of fortune, sons of adversity and sons of prosperity, rich and poor, lawyers, doctors, merchants, sailors, scholars, unlettered—all are here for gold. Such is the San Francisco of those early days. It is a romance of reality, of the Golden West!