San Francisco.—The Golden State.—San Francisco Bay.—Golden Gate.—Conquest of California by Fremont, 1848.—Discovery of Gold.—Rush to the Mines, 1849.—"Forty-niners."—Great Rise in Provisions and Wages.—Miners Homeward Bound.—Dissipation and Vice in the City.—Vigilance Committee.—Great Influx of Miners in 1850.—Immense Gold Yield.—Climate.—Earthquakes.—Productions.—Irrigation.—Streets and Buildings.—Churches.—Lone Mountain Cemetery.—Cliff House.—Seal Rock.—Theatres.—Chinese Quarter.—Chinese Theatres.—Joss Houses.—Emigration Companies.—The Chinese Question.—Cheap Labor.—"The Chinese Must Go."—Present Population and Commerce of San Francisco.—Exports.—Manufactures.—Cosmopolitan Spirit of Inhabitants.
San Francisco.—The Golden State.—San Francisco Bay.—Golden Gate.—Conquest of California by Fremont, 1848.—Discovery of Gold.—Rush to the Mines, 1849.—"Forty-niners."—Great Rise in Provisions and Wages.—Miners Homeward Bound.—Dissipation and Vice in the City.—Vigilance Committee.—Great Influx of Miners in 1850.—Immense Gold Yield.—Climate.—Earthquakes.—Productions.—Irrigation.—Streets and Buildings.—Churches.—Lone Mountain Cemetery.—Cliff House.—Seal Rock.—Theatres.—Chinese Quarter.—Chinese Theatres.—Joss Houses.—Emigration Companies.—The Chinese Question.—Cheap Labor.—"The Chinese Must Go."—Present Population and Commerce of San Francisco.—Exports.—Manufactures.—Cosmopolitan Spirit of Inhabitants.
San Francisco is situated on the best harbor which our Pacific Coast affords, a little below the 38th parallel of latitude, and about a degree further south than St. Louis, Cincinnati and Washington. It is the western terminus of the Central Pacific Railroad, American gateway to Asia and the far East.
As the traveler proceeds thitherward from the Valley of the Mississippi, on descending the western slopes of the Sierras, he finds himself fairly within the Golden State; and in more senses than one does California deserve that name. If it be the summer season the very air seems filled with a golden haze. In leaving the mountains all freshness is left behind. Trees and fields are yellow with drouth, which lasts from April to November. Dense clouds of dust fill the air and settle upon everything. Whole regions, by the means ofextensive and destructive mining operations, have been denuded of all verdure, and lie bare and unsightly, waiting until the slow processes of time, or the more expeditious hand of man, shall reclaim them. But mines have now given place to vast grain and cattle farms or ranches; and great fields of golden grain and the cattle on a thousand hills are on either side of the track. If it be later or earlier in the year there is a wealth of bloom such as is never dreamed of in the East. The ground, sometimes, as far as the eye can reach, is brilliant with color, a golden yellow the predominating hue. In the rainy season the Sacramento valley, the occasional victim of prolonged drouth, is sometimes visited by a freshet, which carries destruction with it; a mountain torrent, taking its rise near the base of Mt. Shasta, and fed by the snows of the Sierras, it is fitful in its demeanor. It finds its outlet through San Francisco Bay and the Golden Gate to the Pacific.
San Francisco is on a peninsula which extends between the bay of that name and the ocean. Its site is nothing more than a collection of sand hills, which, before the building of the city, were continually changing their positions. The peninsula is thirty miles long and six wide, across the city, which stands on the eastern or inner slope.
San Francisco Bay is unsurpassed in the world, except by Puget Sound, in Washington Territory, for size, depth, ease of entrance and security. The entrance to the bay is through a passage five miles in length and about two in width, with its shallowest depth about thirty feet at low tide. Rocks rise almost perpendicularly on the northern side of the entrance, to a height of three thousand feet. A lighthouse is placed on one ofthese, at Point Bonita. Fort Point, a fortress built on solid rock, commands the entrance from the south, and beyond it, until San Francisco is reached, are a series of sand dunes, some of them white and drifting and others showing green with the scant grass growing upon them. The entrance to the bay is called the Golden Gate, a name applied with singular appropriateness, since through its portals have passed continuous streams of gold since the discovery of the latter in 1848. Strangely enough, the name was given before the gold discovery, though at how early a date there seems no means of knowing. As far as can be ascertained, it first appears in Fremont's "Geographical Memoir of California," published in 1847. Six miles eastward from its entrance the bay turns southward for a distance of thirty miles, forming a narrow peninsula between it and the ocean, on the northeastern extremity of which the city is built. It also extends northward to San Puebla Bay, which latter extending eastward, connects by means of a narrow strait with Suisun Bay, into which the Sacramento River discharges its volume of water. These three bays furnish ample and safe harborage for all the merchant fleets of the world.
San Francisco Bay is about forty miles in length, its widest point being twelve miles. At Oakland, directly east of San Francisco, it is eight miles in width. Alcatraz Island, in the centre of the channel, six miles from the Golden Gate, is a solid rock rising threateningly above the water, and bristling with heavy artillery. It is sixteen hundred feet in length, and four hundred and fifty feet in width. Angel Island is directly north of Alcatraz, and four miles from San Francisco, contains eight hundred acres, and is also fortified. Midwaybetween San Francisco and Oakland is Yerba Buena, or Goat Island, which, too, is held as a United States military station. Red Rock, Bird Rock, the Two Sisters, and other small islands dot the bay.
In 1775 the first ship passed the portals of the Golden Gate, and made its way into the Bay of San Francisco. This ship was theSan Carlos, commanded by Caspar De Portala, a Franciscan monk and Spanish Governor of Lower California, who set out on a voyage of discovery and exploration. The same man had six years previously visited the sand hills of the present site of San Francisco, being the first white man to set his foot upon them. Portala named the harbor San Francisco, after the founder of his monastic order, St. Francis. A mission was founded there six years later, on the twenty-seventh of June, by Friars Francisco Paloa and Bonito Cambou, under the direction of Father Junipero Serra, who had been commissioned by Father Portala as president of all the missions in Upper California. This was the sixth mission established in California, and up to the year 1800 the Fathers labored with great zeal and industry, had established eighteen missions, converted six hundred and forty-seven savages, and acquired a vast property in lands, cattle, horses, sheep and grain. Presidios or military stations were established for the protection of these missions, and the Indians readily submitted themselves to the Fathers, and acquired the arts of civilization.
The Franciscan friars continued complete sovereigns of the land during the first quarter of the present century, and increased in worldly goods. Mexico became a republic in 1824, and in 1826 considerably curtailed their privileges. In 1845 their property was finally confiscated and the missions broken up. Thepriests returned to Spain; the Indians to their savagery; and only the crumbling walls of their adobe houses, and their decaying orchards and vineyards, remained to tell the tale of the past history of California. From that period until 1847 California was a bone of contention between Mexico and the United States, her territory overrun by troops of both nations. On the sixteenth of January, 1847, the Spanish forces capitulated to Fremont, and peace was established.
With the exception of the Mission Dolores, there was no settlement at San Francisco until 1835, when a tent was erected. A small frame house was built the following year, and on the fifteenth of April, 1838, the first white child was born. The population of San Francisco, then known as Yerba Buena, in 1842 was one hundred and ninety-six persons. In 1847 it had increased to four hundred and fifty-one persons, including whites, Indians, negroes and Sandwich Islanders. In March, 1848, the city contained two hundred houses, and eight hundred and fifty inhabitants. In November of the same year, the first steamer, a small boat from Sitka, made a trial trip around the bay. In this year the first public school and the first Protestant church were established.
This year marked the great era in the history of San Francisco. In the fall of 1847, Captain John A. Sutter, a Swiss by birth, who had resided in California since 1839, began erecting a saw mill at a place called Colorna, on the American River, a confluent of the Sacramento, about fifty miles east of the city of that name. James W. Marshall, who had taken the contract for erecting the mill, was at work with his men cutting and widening the tail-race when, on January eighteenth, 1848, he observed some particles of a yellow, glittering substance. InFebruary specimens of these findings were taken to San Francisco, and pronounced to be gold. The truth being soon confirmed, the rush for the gold fields commenced. People in all sections of California and Oregon forsook their occupations, and set out for the mines. The news spread, increasing as it went; until the reports grew fabulous. Many of the earliest miners acquired fortunes quickly, and as quickly dissipated them. The journal of Rev. Walter Colton, at that time Alcalde of Monterey, contains the following paragraph, under date of August twelfth, 1848:—
"My man Bob, who is of Irish extraction, and who had been in the mines about two months, returned to Monterey about four weeks since, bringing with him over two thousand dollars, as the proceeds of his labor. Bob, while in my employ, required me to pay him every Saturday night in gold, which he put into a little leather bag and sewed into the lining of his coat, after taking out just twelve and a half cents, his weekly allowance for tobacco. But now he took rooms and began to branch out; he had the best horses, the richest viands, and the choicest wines in the place. He never drank himself but it filled him with delight to brim the sparkling goblet for others. I met Bob to-day, and asked him how he got on. 'Oh, very well,' he replied, 'but I am off again for the mines.' 'How is that, Bob? you brought down with you over two thousand dollars; I hope you have not spent all that; you used to be very saving; twelve and a half cents a week for tobacco, and the rest you sewed into the lining of your coat.' 'Oh, yes,' replied Bob, 'and I have gotthatmoney yet. I worked hard for it, and the devil can't get it away. But the twothousand dollars came aisily, by good luck, and has gone as aisily as it came!'"
Reports of the new El Dorado reached the States, and during 1849, from Maine to Louisiana came the gold seekers. From every country in Europe, from Australia and from China, additions were made to the throng of pilgrims, who, by the Isthmus, around the Horn, across the seas, and by the terrible journey overland, all rushed pell mell up the Sacramento, stopping at San Francisco only long enough to find some means of conveyance. We have no space to tell the story of that time. Men came and went. Some made fortunes. Others returned poorer than they came. Many who attempted the overland route left their bones bleaching on the plains. Some went back to their homes, and others remained to become permanent citizens of California. What the F. F. V.s are to Virginia, and the Pilgrim Fathers to Massachusetts, the "Forty-niners," a large number of whom still survive, will be, in the future, to California.
During 1848 ten million dollars' worth of gold had been gathered on the Yuba, American and Feather rivers. The city of San Francisco had, in January, 1849, two thousand inhabitants, and these were in a hurry to be off to the mines as soon as the rainy season was over. Ships began to arrive from all quarters, and July of that year found the flags of every nation floating in the bay. Five hundred square-rigged vessels lay in the harbor, and everybody was scrambling for the mines. These multitudes of people, though they thought only of gold, yet had to be fed, clothed and housed after a fashion. There were no supplies adequate to the demand, and provisions went up to fabulous prices. Apples sold for from $1 to $5 apiece, and eggs at the same rates.Laborers demanded from $20 to $30 for a day's work, and were scarcely to be had at those figures. The miners probably averaged $25 a day at the mines, though some were making their hundreds. But at the exorbitant prices to be paid for everything, few were able to lay up much money.
Late in the year of 1849 the reaction came. The steamers were filled with downcast miners, thankful that they had enough left to take themselves home. Others having acquired something, stopped at San Francisco, and plunged into the worst forms of dissipation. The city during this and the following year held a carnival of vice and crime. Women there were few or none, save of the worst character, and gambling dens, dance houses, and drinking hells flourished on every street. In 1850 a Vigilance Committee was organized by the better class of citizens, which soon exercised a wholesome restraint upon the criminal classes. In the same year California was admitted to the Union without the preliminary of a Territorial Government, and San Francisco was chartered as a city. Courts were established, and the lawless community came under the dominion of law and order.
By this time the great haste which seized everybody in his eagerness to obtain gold and return home to enjoy it, had somewhat subsided. Men began to realize that there were other means of making money besides digging for it. Gardens were planted and orchards set out, and it was discovered that the apparently barren soil of the State would yield with a fruitfulness unparalleled in the East. San Francisco began to be more than a canvass city. Mud flats were filled in and sand hills leveled, houses, hotels and stores erected, and a wild speculation began in city property. Lots which a fewdays before had been purchased for two or three thousand dollars, were held at fifty thousand dollars. A canvas tent, fifteen by twenty feet, near the plaza, rented for forty thousand dollars per annum. The Parker House, a two-story frame building on Kearney street, also near the plaza, brought a yearly rent of one hundred and twenty thousand dollars. Board in a hotel or a tent was eight dollars per day, and provisions were proportionately high. To build a brick house cost a dollar for each brick used. Twenty-seven thousand people arrived in San Francisco, by sea or land, during 1850. In 1853 thirty-four thousand gold seekers returned home, the yield of gold that year having been $65,000,000, the largest annual yield of the State. The imports of San Francisco in the same year were over $45,000,000. As early as this period it was the third city in tonnage entrances in the United States, New York and New Orleans alone exceeding it. In 1856 the bad state of public affairs again necessitated the interference of a Vigilance Committee, but since that time the city has been orderly.
The site of San Francisco was fixed by chance. More desirable places might have been selected, but the influx of miners dropped upon the first spot convenient for them to land, from which to start post-haste to the mines, and that spot is indicated by the present city. Owing to its location its climate is not in all respects desirable. The general climate of the coast is tempered, both in summer and winter, by a warm ocean current, which, flowing northward along the coast of China and Siberia, takes a turn to the south when it reaches Alaska, and washes the western coast of the continent of America. It is so warm that it produces a markedeffect upon this coast, just as the Gulf Stream tempers the climate of the British Islands. But it has been sensibly cooled by its proximity to Arctic seas, and so sends cool breezes to fan the land during the heat of summer. These summer sea breezes rushing through the narrow opening of the Golden Gate become almost gales, and bring both cold and fog with them. The air of winter is mild and spring-like. This is the rainy season, but it does not rain continuously. It is the season of verdure and growth, and frosts are both slight and infrequent in the latitude of San Francisco. Not a drop of rain falls during the summer. The mornings are warm and sometimes almost sultry; but about ten o'clock the sea breeze springs up, growing more violent as the day advances, and frequently bringing a chilly fog with it, so that by evening men are glad to wrap themselves in overcoats, and women put on their cloaks and furs. The sand, which is still heaped in dunes to the westward of the city, and lies upon its vacant lots, is lifted and whirled through the air, falling almost like sleet, and stinging the faces of pedestrians.
Thunder storms are of rare occurrence at San Francisco, but earthquakes are exceedingly frequent. Probably not a year elapses in which slight shocks are not felt in the State. Sometimes these shocks extend over vast areas, and at other times are merely local. On October twenty-first, 1868, a severe earthquake occurred at San Francisco, swaying buildings and throwing down numbers in process of erection. The houses of the city are mostly built with a view to these disturbances of nature. The dwelling houses are seldom more than two and one-half stories in height, while the blocks of thebusiness streets do not display the altitude of structures in the eastern cities.
The climate is so mild and so favorable that the productions of California embrace those of both temperate and semi-tropical latitudes. The sand hills of San Francisco were found, with the help of irrigation to produce plentifully of both fruits and flowers, and the suburbs of the city display many greenhouse plants growing in the open air. Roses bloom every month in the year, and strawberries ripen from February to December. In San Francisco the mean temperature in January is 49° and in June 56°. The average temperature of the year is 54°.
The California market, between Kearney and Montgomery streets, extending through from Pine to California streets, displays all the fruits, vegetables and grains of the northern States, raised in the immediate neighborhood of the city, while oranges, lemons and pomegranates are sent from further south. The tenderer varieties of grapes flourish in the open air, and the State produces raisins which command a price but little below those of Europe. The thrift of the fruit trees of California is most remarkable. Most trees begin bearing on the second year from the slip or graft, and produce abundantly at three or four years of age. Their growth and the size of their productions are unequaled on the continent. The above mentioned market is one of the sights of the city, and should not be missed by the visitor.
Irrigation has been found necessary to render the sand hills about San Francisco productive, and windmills have become familiar objects in the landscape, their long arms revolving in the ocean breeze, while littlestreams of water trickling here and there vivify the earth. As a result, though trees are scarce, what few there are being mostly stunted live oaks, whose long roots extend down deep into the soil, there are flowers everywhere. On one side of a fence will be a sand-bank, white with shifting sand, on the other, flourishing in the same kind of soil, will be anal frescoconservatory, brilliant with color and luxuriant in foliage.
Montgomery street is the leading thoroughfare, broad and lined with handsome buildings. Toward the north it climbs a hill so steep that carriages cannot ascend it, and pedestrians make their way up by means of a flight of steps. From this elevation a fine view is obtained of the city and bay. Kearney and Market streets are also fashionable promenades, containing many of the retail stores. The principal banks and business offices are found on California street, and the handsomest private residences are on Van Ness avenue, Taylor, Bush, Sutter, Leavenworth and Folsom streets, Clay street Hill and Pine street Hill. The city extends far beyond its original limits, having encroached upon the bay. Solid blocks now stand where, in 1849, big ships rode at anchor. It is laid out with regularity, most of its streets being at right angles with one another. The business streets are generally paved with Belgian blocks or cobble stones, and most of the residence streets are planked. The city does not present the handsome and showy architecture of many cities of the east, though here and there are fine edifices. It is yet too new, and too hurriedly built, to have acquired the substantiality and grandeur of older cities. Between fine brick or stone structures several stories high are sandwiched insignificant wooden houses of only two stories, the relics of a past which isyet exceedingly near the present. The public buildings, especially those belonging to the United States, are fine.
The City Hall will, when finished, be surpassed by few structures in the country. The Palace Hotel, at the corner of Market and New Montgomery streets, is a vast building, erected and furnished at a cost of $3,250,000. It is entered by a grand court-yard surrounded by colonnades, and from its roof a birds-eye view of the whole city can be obtained. Baldwin's Hotel, at the corner of Marshall and Powell streets, is another palatial structure, costing a quarter of a million more, for building, decorating and furnishing, than the Palace Hotel. The Grand Hotel, Occidental, Lick House, Russ House and Cosmopolitan are all established and popular hotels.
The largest and finest church edifice on the Pacific Coast is that of St. Ignatius, Roman Catholic, in McAlister street. The finest interior is that of St. Patrick's, also Roman Catholic, in Mission street between Third and Fourth. The First Unitarian church, in Geary street, is one of the finest churches in the city, remarkable for the purity of its architectural design and the elegance of its finish. The Chinese Mission House, at the corner of Stockton and Sacramento streets, will prove interesting to strangers. The Roman Catholics, who number among their adherents all the Spanish citizens, make no concealment of their intention to gain a majority of the population. But though they are a power in the community, and have many churches, the different Protestant sects are largely represented. Indeed, San Francisco is thoroughly tolerant in matters of religion. Not only do Catholics and Protestants find their own appropriate places of worship, but the Jewshave two Synagogues, and the Chinese Buddhists three Temples or Joss Houses.
There is but one road leading out of the city, but within the city limits there are many modes of conveyance. Cars propelled by endless wire cables, which move along the streets without the assistance of either horse or steam power, intersect the city in every direction. Omnibuses run out on the Point Lobos road to the Cliff House; and he who has not ridden or driven thither and watched the seals on Seal Rock, has not seen all of San Francisco. This is the one excursion of the city; its one pet dissipation. Everybody goes to the Cliff. A drive of five or six miles, on a good road, over and through intervening sand hills, brings the visitor to the Cliff House. This road leads by Laurel Hill, or as it was formerly called, Lone Mountain Cemetery, two and one-half miles west of the city, within whose inclosure a conical hill rises to a considerable height above the surrounding level country. On its summit is a large wooden cross, a prominent landmark, and within the cemetery are several fine monuments, conspicuously that of Senator Broderick, and a miniature Pantheon, marking the resting place of the Ralston family. The Lone Mountain possesses an unrivaled outlook over city, bay, ocean and coast range.
The Cliff House is a large, low building, set on the edge of a cliff rising abruptly from the ocean, and facing west; and from it you have a grand view of the Golden Gate, while oceanward you strain your eyes to catch some glimpse of China or Japan, which lie so far away in front of you. But you see instead, if the day be clear, the faint but bold outlines of the Farallon Islands,and the white sails of vessels passing in and out of the Golden Gate.
Late in the year of 1876 I completed my horseback journey across the continent, dashing with my horse into the surf to the westward of the Cliff House. A long and wearisome, but at the same time interesting and reasonably exciting ride, was at an end, and after viewing San Francisco, I was free to enjoy those luxuries of modern civilization, the railway cars, on my homeward route.
SEAL ROCKS, FROM THE CLIFF HOUSE, NEAR SAN FRANCISCO.SEAL ROCKS, FROM THE CLIFF HOUSE, NEAR SAN FRANCISCO.
The Farallones de los Frayles are six islets lifting up their jagged peaks in picturesque masses out in the ocean, twenty-three and one-half miles westward of the Golden Gate. The largest Farallon extends for nearly a mile east and west, and is three hundred and forty feet high. On its highest summit the government has placed a lighthouse, and there the light-keepers live, sometimes cut off for weeks from the shore, surrounded by barrenness and desolation, but within sight of the busy life which ebbs and flows through the narrow strait which leads to San Francisco. These islands are composed of broken and water-worn rocks, forming numerous sharp peaks, and containing many caves. One of these caves has been utilized as a fog-trumpet, or whistle, blown by the force of the waves. The mouth-piece of a trumpet has been fixed against the aperture of the rock, and the waves dashing against it with force enough to crush a ship to pieces, blows the whistle. This fog whistle ceases entirely at low water, and its loudness at all times depends upon the force of the waves. The Farallones are the homes of innumerable sea birds, gulls, mures, shags and sea-parrots, the eggs of the first two being regularly collected by eggers, who make a profitable businessof gathering them at certain seasons of the year. In 1853 one thousand dozen of these eggs, the result of a three days' trip, were sold at a dollar a dozen. Gathering the eggs is difficult and not unattended by danger, as precipices must be scaled, and the birds sometimes show themselves formidable enemies. The larger island is also populated by immense numbers of rabbits, all descended from a few pairs brought there many years ago. Occasionally these creatures, becoming too numerous for the resources of the island, die by hundreds, of starvation. Though their progenitors were white, they have reverted to the original color of the wild race. The cliffs of these islands are alive with seals, or sea-lions, as they are called, which congregate upon their sunny slopes, play, bark, fight and roar. Some of them are as large as an ox and seemingly as clumsy; but they disport themselves in the surf, which is strong enough to dash them in pieces, with the utmost ease, allowing the waves to send them almost against the rocks, and then by a sudden, dextrous movement, gliding out of danger.
The Cliff House has also its sea-lions, on Seal Rock, not far from the hotel, and the visitors are never tired of watching them as they wriggle over the rocks, barking so noisily as to be heard above the breakers. Formerly numbers of them were shot by wanton sportsmen, but they are now protected by law. "Ben. Butler" and "General Grant" are two seals of unusual size, which appear to hold the remainder of the seal colony in subjection. If two begin to fight and squabble about a position which each wants, either "Ben" or the "General" quickly settles the dispute by flopping the malcontents overboard. The higher these creatures canwriggle up the rocks the happier they appear to be; and when a huge beast has attained a solitary peak, by dint of much squirming, he manifests his satisfaction by raising his small pointed head and complacently looking about him. As soon as another spies him, and can reach the spot, a squabble ensues, howls are heard, teeth enter into the contest, the stronger secures the eminence, and the weaker is ignominiously sent to the humbler and lower regions.
An early drive to and a breakfast at the Cliff House, with a return to the city before the sea-breeze begins, is the favorite excursion of the San Franciscan. The road passes beyond this hotel to a broad, beautiful beach, on which, at low tide, one can drive to the Ocean House, at its extreme end, and then return to the city by the old Mission grounds, which still lie in its southwestern limits. The Mission building is of adobe, of the old Spanish style, built in 1778. Adjoining it is the cemetery, with its fantastic monuments, and paths worn by the feet of the Mission fathers and their dusky penitents.
The largest and finest theatre of the city, and one of the finest in the United States, is the Grand Opera House, at the corner of Mission and Third streets. Four other theatres and an Academy of Music, furnish amusements to the residents of the city. Woodward's Gardens, on Mission street between Thirteenth and Fourteenth streets, contains a museum, an art galley, and a menagerie. There are also two Chinese theatres, one at 618 Jackson street, and the other at 625½ Jackson street.
The Chinese Quarter of San Francisco, which has become famous the world over, occupies portions of Sacramento, Commercial, Dupont, Pacific and Jackson streets. It is a locality which no stranger should fail tosee. Here he steps at once into the Celestial Empire. Chinamen throng the streets, dressed in their semi-American, semi-Asiatic costumes, the pig-tail usually depending behind, though sometimes it is rolled up, out of sight, under the hat. The harsh gutturals of the Chinese language, nearly every word ending in ng, are heard on every hand, mingled with the grotesque pigeon English. The signs exhibit Chinese characters, and the stores and bazaars are filled with Chinese merchandise.
Women are scarce in this quarter, and only of the courtezan class; but here and there one meets you, dressed usually in Chinese gown and trowsers, with hair arranged in the indescribable Chinese chignon, and carrying a fan—for all the world as though she had stepped off a fan or a saucer—and not more immodest in demeanor than the same class in our eastern cities. There are few or no Chinese wives in San Francisco. Chinese immigration takes the form of an immense bow, beginning at China, stretching to the Pacific coast of America, and retiring again to its starting point; for every Chinaman expects to return to his native land, either alive or dead. He does not take root in American soil. He comes here to make a little money, leaving his family behind him, and, satisfied with a very modest competence, returns as he came. If he dies here, his bones are carried back, that they may find a resting-place with those of his ancestors. Therefore the women imported are for the basest purposes.
But to return to this Chinese Quarter. Here is the old St. Giles of London, the old Five Points of New York magnified and intensified. Here congregate the roughest and rudest elements, and here stand, shamelessly revealed, crime and bestiality too vile to name. In one cellaris a gambling-hell, for John Chinaman's besetting weakness is his love of gambling. The mode of gambling is very simple, involving no skill, and the stakes are small; but many a Celestial loses there, at night, his earnings of the day. Near by is an opium cellar, fitted up with benches or shelves, on each of which will be found a couple of Chinamen lying, with a wooden box for a pillow. While one is preparing his opium and smoking, the other is enjoying its full effects, in a half stupor. The Chinese tenement houses are crowded and filthy beyond description, and the breeding places of disease and crime. They are scattered thickly throughout the quarter. Their theatres, of which there are two, already referred to, have only male performers, who personate both sexes, and give what seems to be passable acting, accompanied by the clash and clang of cymbals, the beating of gongs, the sounding of trumpets, and other disagreeable noises regarded by the Chinese as music. The entire audience are smoking, either tobacco or opium.
The Joss houses, or temples of the Chinese, are more in the nature of club houses and employment bureaus, than of religious houses. The first floor contains the business room, smoking or lounging room, dining room, kitchen, and other offices, which are used by the Emigration Company to which the building belongs. The second floor contains a moderate-sized hall, devoted to religious rites. Its walls are decorated with moral maxims from Confucius and other writers, in which the devotees are exhorted to fidelity, integrity, and the other virtues. The Joss or Josh is an image of a Chinaman, before whom the Chinese residents of San Francisco are expected to come once a year and burn slips of paper. Praying is also done, but as this is by means of putting printedprayers into a machine run by clockwork, there is no great exhaustion among the worshipers.
The Chinese have no Sunday, and are ready to work every day of the week, if they can get paid for it. Their only holiday is at New Year, which occurs with them usually in February, but is a movable feast, when they require an entire week to settle their affairs, square up their religious and secular accounts, and make a new start in life. The Chinese have one saving virtue. They pay their debts on every New Year's day. If they have not enough to settle all claims against them they hand over their assets to their creditors, old scores are wiped out, and they commence anew.
The six Chinese Emigration Companies, each representing a Chinese province, manage the affairs of the immigrants with a precision, minuteness and care which is unparalleled by any organization of western civilization. Before the passage of the anti-Chinese law, when a ship came into port laden with Chinamen, the agents of the different companies boarded it, and each took the names of those belonging to his province. They provided lodgings and food for the new comers, and as quickly as possible secured them employment; lent them money to go to any distant point; cared for them if they were sick and friendless, and, finally, sent home the bones of those who died on American shores. These companies settle all disputes between the Chinese, and when a Chinamen wishes to return home, they examine his accounts, and oblige him to pay his just debts before leaving. The means for doing all this are obtained in the shape of voluntary contributions from the immigrants. These companies do not act as employment bureaus, for these are separate and thoroughly organized institutions.These latter farm out the work of any number of hands, at the price agreed upon, furnishing a foreman, with whom all negotiations are transacted, who, perhaps, is the only one speaking English, and who is responsible for all the work.
The English spoken by the Chinese is known as "pigeon English," "pigeon" being the nearest approach which a Chinamen can make to saying "business."
Most English words are more or less distorted. L is always used by them for r, mi for I, and the words abound in terminal ee's.
The Chinese problem is one which is agitating the country and giving a coloring to its politics. The Pacific States seem, by a large majority of their population, to regard the presence of the Mongolian among them as an unmitigated evil, to be no longer tolerated. Eastern capitalists have hailed their coming as inaugurating the era of cheap labor and increased fortunes for themselves. Hence the discussion and the disturbances. A lady who had made her home in San Francisco for several years past, says, in a letter to the writer of this article, "A person not living in California can form no conception of the curse which the Chinese are to this section of the world."
Yet without them some of the great enterprises of the Pacific coast, notably the Central Pacific Railroad, would have remained long unfinished; and they came also to furnish manual labor at a time when it was scarce and difficult to obtain at any price. The Chinaman is a strange compound of virtue and vice, cleanliness and filth, frugality and recklessness, simplicity and cunning. He is scrupulously clean as to his person, indulging in frequent baths; yet he will live contentedly with themost wretched surroundings, and inhale an air vitiated by an aggregation of breaths and stenches of all kinds. He is a faithful worker and a wonderful imitator. He cannot do the full work of a white man, but he labors steadily and unceasingly. He takes no time for drunken sprees, but he is an inveterate opium smoker, and sometimes deliberately sacrifices his life in the enjoyment of the drug. He is frugal to the last degree, but will waste his daily earnings in the gambling hell and policy shop. Scrupulously honest, he is yet the victim of the vilest vices which are engrafting themselves upon our western coast. Living upon one-third of what will keep a white man, and working for one-half the wages the latter demands, he is destroying the labor market of that quarter of our country, reducing its working classes to his own level, in which in the future the latter, too, will be forced to be contented on a diet of "rice and rats," and to forego all educational advantages for their children, becoming, like the Chinese themselves, mere working machines; or else enter into a conflict of labor against labor, race against race.
The latter alternative seems inevitable, and it has already begun. China, with her crowded population, could easily spare a hundred million people and be the better for it. Those one hundred million Chinamen, if welcomed to our shores, would speedily swamp our western civilization. They might not become the controlling power—the Anglo-Saxon is always sure to remain that—but as hewers of wood and drawers of water, as builders of our railroads, hands upon our farms, workers in our factories, and cooks and chambermaids in our houses, a like number of American men and women would be displaced, and wages quicklyreduced to an Asiatic level; and such a time of distress as this country never saw would dawn upon us.
There seems to be no assimilation between the Caucasian and the Mongolian on the Pacific slope. In the East an Irish girl recently married a Chinaman; but in San Francisco, though every other race under the sun has united in marriage, the Chinaman is avoided as a pariah. White and yellow races may meet and fraternize in business, in pleasure, and even in crime; but in marriage never. Chinamen rank among the most respected merchants of San Francisco, and these receive exceptional respect as individuals; but between the two races as races a great gulf is fixed. The Chinese immigrant takes no interest in American affairs. His world is on the other side of the Pacific. And the American people return the compliment by taking no interest in him. It is undeniable that, by a certain class of San Francisco citizens, popularly known as Hoodlums, the treatment of the Chinese population has been shameful in the extreme. A Chinaman has no rights which a white man is bound to respect. Insult, contumely, abuse, cruelty and injustice he has been forced to bear at the hands of the rougher classes, without hope of redress. He has been kicked, and cheated, and plundered, and not a voice has been raised in his behalf; but if he has been guilty of the slightest peccadillo, how quickly has he been made to feel the heavy hand of justice!
It seems a pity that before the cry was raised with such overwhelming force, "The Chinese must go!" some little effort had not been made to adapt them to Western civilization. They are quick to take ideas concerning their labor; why not in other things? We have received and adopted the ignorant, vicious hordesfrom foreign lands to the east of us, and are fast metamorphosing them into intelligent, useful citizens. We are even trying our hand upon the negro, as a late atonement for all the wrong we have done him. But the Indian and the Chinaman seem to be without the pale of our mercy and our Christianity. It might not have been possible, but still the experiment was worth the trying, of attempting to lift them up industrially, educationally and morally, to a level with our own better classes, instead of permitting them to drag us down. Returning to their own country, and carrying back with them our Western civilization, as a little leaven, they might have leavened the whole lump. It is too late for that now, and the mandate has gone forth: "The Chinese must go!" Considering all things as they are, rather than as they might have been, it is undoubtedly better so, and the only salvation of our Pacific States.
San Francisco had, in 1880, a population of 232,956. The commerce is very large, and must every year increase as the West is built up. The chief articles of export are the precious metals, breadstuffs, wines and wool. She has important manufactures, embracing watches, carriages, boots and shoes, furniture, iron and brass works, silver ware, silk and woolen. California seems peculiarly adapted to the silk industry, and her silk manufactures will probably assume marked importance in the future. The wonderful climate and unequaled productiveness are constantly attracting immigration, and the Pacific Central, which spans the continent, has vastly improved on the old methods of travel by caravan across the plains and over the mountains.
The population of San Francisco is cosmopolitan to the last degree, and embraces natives of every clime andnearly every nation on the globe. Yet in spite of this strange agglomeration she is intensely Yankee in her go-ahead-ativeness, with Anglo-Saxon alertness intensified. In fact, as San Francisco is on the utmost limits of the West, beyond which there is nothing but a vast expanse of water until we begin again at the East, so she represents the superlative of Anglo-Saxon enterprise and American civilization, and looks to a future which shall far outstrip her past.
First Visit to Savannah.—Camp Davidson.—The City During the War.—An Escaped Prisoner.—Recapture and Final Escape.—A "City of Refuge."—Savannah by Night.—Position of the City.—Streets and Public Squares.—Forsyth Park.—Monuments.—Commerce.—View from the Wharves.—Railroads.—Founding of the City.—Revolutionary History.—Death of Pulaski.—Secession.—Approach of Sherman.—Investment of the City by Union Troops.—Recuperation After the War.—Climate.—Colored Population.—Bonaventure, Thunderbolt, and Other Suburban Resorts.
First Visit to Savannah.—Camp Davidson.—The City During the War.—An Escaped Prisoner.—Recapture and Final Escape.—A "City of Refuge."—Savannah by Night.—Position of the City.—Streets and Public Squares.—Forsyth Park.—Monuments.—Commerce.—View from the Wharves.—Railroads.—Founding of the City.—Revolutionary History.—Death of Pulaski.—Secession.—Approach of Sherman.—Investment of the City by Union Troops.—Recuperation After the War.—Climate.—Colored Population.—Bonaventure, Thunderbolt, and Other Suburban Resorts.
My first visit to Savannah was made on the twenty-ninth of July, 1864, when I was brought there as a prisoner of war. I found the city with its business enterprises in a state of stagnation, and the streets thronged with soldiers in Confederate uniforms. About four thousand troops were doing garrison duty in the city, which was thronged with refugees, and the entire population was suffering from a paralysis of all industrial enterprises, and from the interruption of its commerce by the Federal blockade at the mouth of the river. Camp Davidson, where we were confined, was in the eastern part of the city, near the Marine Hospital, with Pulaski's Monument in full view, to the westward.
The camp was surrounded by a stockade and deadline, and the principal amusement and occupation of the prisoners was the digging of a tunnel which was to conduct them to liberty beyond the second line of sentinels, without the stockade. But our little camp, likeChicago, had a cow for an evil genius. This luckless creature broke through the tunnel, as it was nearing completion, and suddenly ended it and our hopes together.
The nearest Union forces were at Pulaski, at the mouth of the Savannah River, and Savannah was one of the most important military posts of the Confederate army. Our treatment at Camp Davidson was exceptionally kind and considerate, and the ladies of the city, in giving suitable interment to the remains of a Union officer who had died in the camp, proved themselves to be possessed of generous hearts. Therefore it was with regret that we received the order to leave Savannah for Charleston.
I next visited Savannah a few months later, when the war was drawing to a close, after General Sherman and his army had made their successful entrance into the town. On the sixteenth of December, myself and a companion found ourselves twenty miles from Savannah, after having been many weeks fugitives from "Camp Sorghum," the prison-pen at Columbia, South Carolina. We were on the Savannah River Road, over which Kilpatrick's Cavalry and the Fourteenth Army Corps had passed only a week before. Emboldened by our successes and hairbreadth escapes of three weeks, when we at last felt that deliverance was close at hand, we pursued our way, only to fall suddenly into the hands of the enemy. Hope deferred maketh the heart sick. But who shall describe the terrible sinking of the heart—the worse than sickness—when hope is thus suddenly crushed and turned to certain despair? Our second captivity was not, however, of long duration. Death was preferable to bondage under such masters. Taking our lives in our hands, a second escape was effected, and on December twenty-third, but two days after Sherman's occupancy of thecity, Savannah proved itself, indeed, a city of refuge. Union troops welcomed us with open arms, and we were soon despatched northward.
The traveler who visits Savannah to-day will view it under very different auspices. The white wings of peace have brooded over it for more than half a generation, loyalty has taken the place of treason in the hearts of her people, and prosperity is visible on her streets and wharves. Let him, if he can, approach the city from the sea, and by night. Fort Pulaski stands like a sentinel guarding the entrance to the harbor, the lighthouse upon the point keeping a bright eye out to seaward. As he glides up the river, which winds in countless lagoons around low sea islands covered with salt marshes, at last he will see in the distance the lights of the city set on a hill, and of the shipping at her feet. A distant city is always beautiful at night, though it may be hideous by daylight. Night veils all its ugliness in charitable shadows; it reveals hitherto unseen beauties of outline, crowns it with a tiara of sparkling gems, and enwraps the whole scene in an air of romance and mystery which is charming to the person of poetic nature. But whether seen by night or day, Savannah is indeed a beautiful city, probably the most beautiful in all the Southern States.
The Savannah River winds around Hutchinson Island, and the city is built in the form of an elongated crescent, about three miles in length, on its southern shore. It is on a bluff about forty feet above the stream, this bluff being about a mile wide at its eastern end, and broadening as it extends westward. Surrounding it are the low lands occupied by market gardens, for Savannah is a great place for market gardeners, and helps to supply the northern market in early spring.
The streets of Savannah are laid out east and west, nearly parallel to the river, with others crossing them at right angles, north and south. They are wide, and everywhere shaded with trees, many of the latter being live oaks, most magnificent specimens of which are found in the city. Orange trees also abound, with their fragrant blossoms and golden fruit, stately palmettoes, magnolias and oleander, rich in bloom, bays and cape myrtles.
The streets running north and south are of very nearly uniform width, every alternate street passing on either side of a public square, which is bounded on the north and south by narrow streets running east and west, and intersected in the centre by a wide street taking the same direction. These public squares, twenty-four in number, and containing from one and a half to three acres, are a marked feature of the city. They are placed at regular intervals, as already described, are handsomely inclosed, laid out with walks, shaded with evergreen and ornamental trees, and in the spring and summer months are green with grass. In a number of these are monuments, while others contain fountains or statuary. These squares or plazas are surrounded with fine residences, each having its own little yard, beautiful with flowers, vines, shrubbery and trees. In these premises roses thrive and bloom with a luxuriance unknown in the North, and the stately Camelia Japonica, the empress among flowers, grows here to a height of twelve or fifteen feet, and blossoms in midwinter. Savannah, the most beautiful city of the South, if not in the United States, is more like the wealthy suburb of some large city, than like a city itself. It is embowered in trees, which are green the whole year around; and shares with Cleveland, its northern rival in beauty, thesoubriquetof the "Forest City."
Forsyth Park, originally laid out in the southern suburb of the city, is now the centre of a populous quarter, abounding in handsome edifices. Many of the original trees, the beautiful southern pines, are left standing in this park, and other trees and shrubbery added. Sphynxes guard the Bull street entrance, and in the centre of the old park, which was ten acres in extent, is a handsome fountain, modeled after that in the Place de la Concorde, in Paris. This fountain is surrounded by a profusion of flowers, while shelled walks furnish pathways through the park. It has recently been increased in dimensions to thirty acres; in the centre of the new or western portion stands a stately monument in honor of the Confederate dead.
Pulaski Monument stands in Monterey Square, the first plaza to the northward of Forsyth Park. The steps of the monument are of granite, and the shaft of fine white marble, fifty-five feet high, surmounted by a statue of Liberty holding the national banner. This monument covers the spot where, in 1779, Count Pulaski fell, during an attack upon the city, while it was occupied by the British. In Johnson Square, the first square south of the river intersected by Bull street, is a fine Druidical pile, erected to the memory of General Greene and Count Pulaski. The corner-stone of this obelisk was laid in 1825, by Lafayette, during his visit to America.
Savannah was founded in 1733, by General James Oglethorpe, whose plan has been followed in its subsequent erection. Upon each of the twenty-four squares were originally left four large lots, known as "trust lots," two on the east and two on the west. We are told by Mr. Francis Moore, who wrote in 1736, that "the useof this is, in case a war should happen, the villages without may have places in town to bring their cattle and families into for refuge; and for that purpose there is a square left in every ward, big enough for the outwards to encamp in." These lots are now occupied by handsome churches, conspicuous public buildings, and palatial private residences, thus securing to all the squares a uniform elegance which they might otherwise have lacked.
Bay street is the great commercial street of the city. It is an esplanade, two hundred feet wide, upon the brow of the cliff overlooking the river. Its southern side is lined with handsome stores and offices. At the corner of Bay and Bull streets is the Custom House, with the Post Office in the basement. Its northern side is occupied by the upper stories of warehouses, which are built at the foot of the steep cliff fronting the river. These upper stories are connected with the bluff by means of wooden platforms, which form a sort of sidewalk, spanning a narrow and steep roadway, which leads at intervals, by a series of turns, down to the wharves below. Long flights of steps accommodate pedestrians in the same descent. The warehouses just spoken of are four or five stories high on their river fronts, and but one or two on the Bay.
One should walk along the quay below the city to gain a true idea of the extent of its commerce. Here, in close proximity to the wharves, are located the cotton presses and rice mills. Here everything is dirty and dismal, evidently speaking of better days. The beauty of the city is all above. The buildings are some of them substantially built of brick, but begin to show the ravages of time. There is an old archway, whichonce had pretensions of its own, but the wall has fallen away, and it is now an entrance to nowhere. Yet in spite of this general dilapidation, there is all the bustle and activity of a full commercial life. The wharves are piled with cotton bales, which have found a temporary landing here, awaiting shipment to the North, or perhaps across the sea. For Savannah is the second cotton port in the United States. But cotton is not its only export. It is the great shipping depot for Southern produce bound for Northern markets. Some sheds are filled with barrels of rosin, while great quantities of rosin litter the ground. From others turpentine in great quantities is shipped to various ports. The lumber trade of the city is immense, the pine forests of Georgia furnishing an apparently inexhaustible supply. The city is also in the centre of the rice-growing region, and sends its rice to feed the North. Steamships from all the Atlantic ports lie along its wharves, while those of foreign nations are by no means scarce. Vessels of too large a draft to lie alongside the wharves discharge and load their freight three miles below the city.
The view from the river front is over the river itself, filled with craft of all sorts, from the tiny ferry boat up to the immense ocean steamer, across to Hutchinson's Island and the Carolina shore. The island, which is two miles long by one wide, has upon it numerous lumber yards and a large dry dock. Rice was formerly cultivated upon it, but is now forbidden by law, because of its unhealthfulness. The river is about seven hundred and twenty feet wide in front of the city, with a depth of water at the wharves varying from thirteen to twenty-one feet. The portion of South Carolina visible is low and flat, dotted here and there with palmetto trees.There is little of the picturesque about this river view except the busy life, which keeps in constant motion.
Savannah has extensive railroad connection with all parts of the United States. She has direct communication by rail with Vicksburg on the Mississippi. She also offers an outlet, by means of railroads, for the products of Georgia, Florida, and portions of Alabama and Tennessee. She has unbroken railroad connection with Memphis, Mobile, Cincinnati, Louisville, and the principal commercial cities of the West and North. Her water communication is established with all the great Northern and Southern seaboard cities. Her harbor is one of the best and safest on the South Atlantic coast, and she is the natural eastern terminus of the Southern Pacific Railroad, being almost on the same parallel of latitude with San Diego, its western terminus.
The corporate limits of Savannah extend backward from the river about one and one-half miles, and embrace a total area of three and one-half square miles, but additions are fast being made to the southward, which will, in time, greatly extend its area, and add to the population, which, in 1880, was 30,681.
Savannah's history goes back to the early days of the colonies. Its site marks the first settlement in Georgia. General Oglethorpe, with a hundred and fourteen men, women and children, having landed at Charleston, in January, 1733, sailed from that port with a plentiful supply of provisions and a small body of troops for their protection, and landed on Yamacraw Bluff, on the Savannah River, eighteen miles from its mouth. On the bluff General Oglethorpe laid out a town and called it Savannah, and by the ninth of February the colony commenced the erection of buildings. The colony survived various haps and mishaps until 1776, when, in the War of the Revolution, the British attacked the city, but were repulsed. On December twenty-ninth, 1778, they made a second attack, surprised the American forces, who attempted to fly, but were mostly killed or captured. On the morning of October fourth, 1779, the American and French troops made a direct assault upon Savannah, attempting to take it from the British, but were obliged to retire with heavy loss. Count Pulaski, a Polish nobleman, who had been expatriated for participating in the carrying off of King Stanislaus from his capital, was wounded in this battle, and soon afterwards died. Pulaski Monument, as already stated, was erected on the spot where he fell.
Savannah received its city charter in 1788. In 1850 it had a little more than fifteen thousand inhabitants, and in 1860, 22,292. When Secession cast its shadow upon the sunny South, it fell like a pall upon Savannah, no less than upon the other Southern cities. All her business was suspended, and grass grew in her streets. On the northeast corner of Bull and Broughton streets stands the building known as Masonic Hall, where, on January twenty-first, 1861, the Ordinance of Secession was passed. On the sixteenth of March the State Convention assembled in Savannah, adopted the Constitution of the Confederate States of America, Georgia being the second State to adopt this Constitution without submitting it to the people. The mouth of the river was blockaded by United States gunboats, and all commerce prevented. On April fifteenth, 1862, Fort Pulaski was captured by the Federal troops, and great excitement prevailed in the city. Women andchildren left their homes, and property and furniture were sent into the interior.
During the following years a number of unsuccessful attempts were made by the Union naval forces to capture the city. In December, 1864, Sherman was making his famous march to the sea, and was steadily drawing nearer the city, while southern chivalry fled before him, and the now emancipated slaves gathered and rolled in his rear like a sable cloud. On the twentieth, heavy siege guns were put in position by his forces between Kingsbridge and the city; and General Hardee, suddenly awakened to a sense of the danger which menaced them, set his troops hurriedly to work to destroy the navy yard and government property; while the ironclads, the "Savannah" and "Georgia," were making a furious fire on the Federal left, the garrison, under cover of darkness and confusion, were being transported on the first stage of their journey to Charleston. Before leaving, they blew up the iron clads and the fortifications below the city. On the twenty-first, General Sherman received a formal surrender from the municipal authorities. On the following day, the twenty-second, he sent a dispatch to the President, presenting him, "as a Christmas gift, the city of Savannah." On December twenty-eighth, 1864, Masonic Hall, already historical, witnessed a gathering of loyal citizens celebrating the triumph of the Union army. Sherman, when he entered the city, encamped his forces on the still vacant "trust lots." This triumphant conclusion of Sherman's march from Atlanta broke the backbone of the Confederacy, and was the prelude to the downfall of Richmond and the surrender of Lee's army.
Prosperity eventually followed in the wake of peace. The blockade lifted, the deserted wharves were soon filled with the shipping of all nations. Her silent and empty streets grew noisy and populous with the rush of business, and Savannah is now one of the most prosperous of our Southern cities. Her architecture is not striking for either its beauty or its grandeur; nevertheless she has many fine public and private buildings. The City Exchange is one of the former, and it also possesses a historical interest, General Sherman having reviewed his troops in front of it in his investment of the city. From its tower the best view of the city and neighborhood may be obtained. The Court House, the United States and Police Barracks, Artillery Armory, Jail, Chatham Academy and St. Andrews' Hall, are all conspicuous buildings. The Georgia Historical Society has a large and beautiful hall, with a fine library and interesting relics. St. John's and Christ's Episcopal churches, the Independent Presbyterian Church, and the Roman Catholic Cathedral, are all striking edifices. Trinity Church, in Johnson Square, is near the spot where John Wesley delivered his famous sermons. Wesley visited Savannah in its early days, having been invited thither by Oglethorpe. At Bethesda, about ten miles from the city, where the Union Farm School is now located, was the site of the Orphan House established in 1740 by Whitefield, Wesley's contemporary and companion.
The benevolent, literary and educational institutions of Savannah are numerous and well sustained, some of them being among the oldest in the country. The Union Society, for the support of orphan boys, and the Female Society, for orphan girls, were founded in 1750.
Savannah is situated just above the 32d parallel of latitude, and possesses a mean temperature of 66° Fahr. Being within the influence of the Gulf Stream it enjoys all the mildness of the tropics in winter, while the summers are less oppressive than at New York or Washington. It is a favorite resort for northern invalids, being comparatively free from malarious fevers and pulmonary diseases.
Colored people abound in Savannah, constituting about three-eighths of the entire population. They do most of the menial work of the city, being laborers, waiters in the hotels and public houses, and stevedores upon the wharves. It is astonishing to see the number of colored men it takes to load and set afloat a steamship; and one of the last sights which meets the eye of the traveler and lingers in his memory, as he leaves the city by means of the river, is the long row of upturned black faces, most of them beaming with good humor and jollity, on the wharf, as the vessel casts off her lines and turns her head down stream.
Savannah possesses certain famous suburban attractions, without seeing which the traveler can scarcely say he has seen the city. In a bend of the Warsaw River, a short distance from its junction with the Savannah, and about four miles from the city, is the famous Bonaventure Cemetery. A hundred years ago this was the country seat of a wealthy English gentleman, who, upon the marriage of his daughter, made her a wedding present of the estate. The grounds were laid out in wide avenues, and shaded by live oaks, and the initials of the young bride and her husband were outlined with trees. In course of time the property was converted into a cemetery, and for many years has been devoted to that purpose.It is filled with monuments to the dead, some of them bearing historic names. Meantime the live oaks have grown to enormous dimensions, their gigantic branches meeting and interlacing overhead, forming immense arches, like those of the gothic aisles of some great cathedral, under and through which are visible bright vistas of the river and the sea islands lying beyond. The branches are fringed with pendants of the gray Spanish moss, yards in length, which sway softly in the breeze, and by their sombre color add to the solemnity of the scene. The steamers on the Sea Island route to Fernandina, Florida, pass Bonaventure, and afford glimpses of white monuments through the avenues of trees. Bonaventure is a favorite drive from the city, and is also reached by the horse cars.
Thunderbolt, so named, tradition tells us, because a thunderbolt once fell there, is a short distance from Bonaventure, down the Warsaw River, and is a popular drive and summer resort. A spring of water flows from the spot where the lightning is supposed to have entered the ground. Jasper's Spring is two and one-half miles west of the city, and is the scene of the exploit of Sergeant Jasper, who at the time of the Revolution succeeded, with only one companion, in releasing a party of American prisoners from a British guard of eight men. Another fashionable drive is to White Bluff, ten miles distant from the city. The latter, with Beaulieu, Montgomery and the Isle of Hope, furnish salt water bathing and delightful sea breezes for the summer visitors.
There is but one line of horse cars in the city, running on South Broad street, and then out the Thunderbolt road to Thunderbolt, Bonaventure, and the other suburban resorts. This company, we are told, has been soreckless in regard to the limitations of its charter, that the municipal government refuses to charter a second road. If our Northern cities were as scrupulous, we wonder where their many horse railroads would be!
Since the war Northern men and Northern capital have helped to build up the various interests of Savannah. Planing mills, foundries, flouring and grist mills, have been established, furnishing employment to a considerable number of workingmen. Old channels of commerce have been extended, and new ones opened; and the natural advantage of her position, added to the public spirit which her citizens manifest in the accomplishment of great enterprises of internal improvement, give a guarantee of increased prosperity in the future.