LIV.
UNDERGROUND IN SAN FRANCISCO.
CHINESE OPIUM DENS.—PISCO.—EXPERIMENTS IN LIQUORS.—SATURDAY NIGHT AMONG THE CHINESE.—COCOMONGO.—MURDERER’S ALLEY.—CHINESE MUSIC.—THE THEATRE.—BETEL AND ITS USE.—THE BARBARY COAST.—CHEAP LODGING-HOUSES.—A DYING VICTIM.—A DEN OF THIEVES.—“THE SHRIMP.”—UNDER THE STREET.—A REPULSIVE SPECTACLE.—OPIUM SMOKING.—ITS EFFECTS.—SAMSHOO.—ITS PREPARATION AND QUALITIES.—INTRODUCTION TO AN OPIUM DEN.—THE OCCUPANTS.—EXPERIMENT ON A SMOKER.—HOW TO SMOKE.—TRYING THE DRUG.—MESCAL.—GOING HOME.—TRYING A SEWER.—A COUNTRYMAN’S DRINK.
Underground life, of a peculiar and picturesque character, can be seen in San Francisco, in the parts of the city where the Chinese most do congregate. Soon after my arrival there, two of my friends, whom I will call the Doctor and the Colonel, invited me to a nocturnal visit to the Celestials. I accepted with alacrity, and, dressed in my poorest and oldest clothes, met my friends at the appointed hour in theAltaoffice. Macrellish and Woodward gave us their benediction, and we set out on our journey.
“The best thing we can do,” said the doctor, “is to lay in a stock of some powerful disinfectant, or neutralizer, before we start; the stench in some of those underground China kennels is something frightful.” I suggested carbolic acid. “Not strong enough!” said the doctor, shaking his head, doubtfully. The colonel forced two long streams of smoke from his cigarito through his nostrils, stroked his long mustache thoughtfully, and suggested,—
“Pisco?”
“What is Pisco?” I demanded.
“That settles it, my friend; you have a new experience before you, and we will fall back on Pisco!” said the colonel.
DRINKING “PISCO” (PERUVIAN BRANDY) IN A SAN FRANCISCO SALOON.
DRINKING “PISCO” (PERUVIAN BRANDY) IN A SAN FRANCISCO SALOON.
EXPERIENCE WITH PISCO.
“You will be in luck if you don’t fall back on the sidewalk after you have drank it!” growled the doctor.
The colonel took my arm, and as we went down towards Montgomery Street, proceeded, in a confidential manner, to enlighten me on the subject of Pisco. It is really pure, unadulterated brandy, distilled in Peru, from the grape known as Italia, or La Rosa del Peru, and takes its name from the port of Pisco in which it is shipped. It is perfectly colorless, quite fragrant, very seductive, terribly strong, and has a flavor somewhat resembling that of Scotch whiskey, but much more delicate, with a marked fruity taste. It comes in earthen jars, broad at the top, and tapering down to a point, holding about five gallons each. We had some hot, with a bit of lemon and a dash of nutmeg in it, at a marble-paved and splendidly-decorated saloon, near the corner of California and Montgomery Streets. The first glass satisfied me that San Francisco was, and is, a nice place to visit, and that the doctor and the colonel were good fellows to travel with. The second glass was sufficient, and I felt that I could face small-pox, all the fevers known to the faculty, and the Asiatic Cholera, combined, if need be.
The colonel rolled me a cigarito, and insisted on my smoking it. I did my best, choked myself with the fine tobacco, let the paper wrapper unroll, burned my fingers, and failed ignominiously. I was glad to see that, while he pitied me, he did not wholly despise me. These Californians have an appreciably large share of liberality in their composition, and will pardon your ignorance on almost any given specialty of their state, provided you don’t claim that you have something very nearly as good “at the East.” That assumption they cannot, and will not, tolerate on the part of anybody, and I don’t so much blame them, after all.
It was Saturday evening, and the streets were crowded, Montgomery and Kearney Streets swarming, as you may say, with people, well dressed, sociable, orderly, and satisfied with themselves and the rest of mankind. Suddenly the colonel remembered that the wine called Cocomongo, from the vineyardof that name, near San Bernardino, Southern California, was one of the specialties of a saloon which we were passing at the moment, and we went in and had some.
COCOMONGO.
It was a warm, fruity wine, of a dark-amber hue, very strong, and withal palatable, which I did not find to be the case withallthe California wines that I tasted. We went up Washington Street to Murderer’s Alley, and turned down it, towards Jackson Street. “There is where the French woman was murdered in the night, within ten feet of where hundreds of people were coming and going all the time; and her murderer, after robbing the place, coolly washed his hands and face of the blood, and walked away. He was never discovered. Here, right where we stand, is where the Chinaman cut his runaway mistress open with a sword. I saw him hanged for it. And there is where the police shot—” I thanked my kind friend for this cheerful information, but suggested that it might be well to keep a little of it back for another time. It was not well to exhaust all the pleasant things of life at one sitting. The subject was obligingly changed.
I am satisfied that the name of the alley is well deserved and appropriate. Swarms of Chinese women, with almond eyes, baby faces, painted red and white in the most lavish manner, lips touched with vermilion, hair black and glossy, with a purplish tinge, like the wing of a raven, and clad in blue satin coats and pants, trotted along the alley, their curious wooden-soled, silk and bullion-embroidered shoes rattling like the hoofs of a flock of sheep as they went. Others tapped upon the window panes, to attract our attention as we passed. Before one house we saw “joss-sticks” burning, and the white cloth festooned over the door, and hanging down on either side, told that death was there. We heard the beating of gongs, the squeaking of one-stringed Chinese fiddles, the sharp notes of the kettle-drum and other discordant instruments, making music inside, and, as we passed, a woman, clad in blue and white, threw a bunch of lighted fire-crackers upon the doorstep, where they went off like a running fire of musketry, much to the edification of a gang of little pig-tailed, almondeyed boys,—“demi-Johns,” I think the doctor called them,—who were gathered around, chattering like so many magpies all the time, in their, to me, uncouth jargon. The Chinese is an ancient language, beyond a doubt; and I don’t see why it has not worn smoother by use in the hundred centuries or more since the “Central Flowery Empire” became “known and feared among the nations.”
A CHINESE THEATRE.—BETEL NUT.
On Jackson Street we stopped a few moments in front of the Chinese Theatre, listening to the unearthly din of gongs, which from time to time announced the change of scene, in a never-ending historical drama, and looking about for a special policeman to take us into an opium den. While we stood there, the colonel called our attention to one of the specialties of the fruit stall, at the entrance of the theatre. Among the dozen nameless prepared delicacies calculated to tickle the Celestial palate, and catch the Mongolian eye, was a row of little conical packages, of about one ounce weight each. These were composed of an outer wrapper of some kind of a queer leaf—I could not make out its exact character, but it was apparently that of a tree not native to America—enclosing two or three narrow slices of fresh cocoa-nut, a few thin slices of some fruit or nut resembling in appearance a fresh nutmeg, and about a teaspoonful of a pink-colored paste. A small bowl, filled with this pink paste, stood beside the packages, ready for use, and some of the nuts ready sliced, but not done up in packages, lay near it. The doctor explained that these packages were chewed by the Chinamen as some Caucasians chew tobacco. The chewing produces a lavish flow of saliva, and the chewer has the appearance of having his mouth full of blood, as if from bronchial hemorrhage.
The small nut was the famous “betel” (pronounced be-tel), and the principal ingredient of the paste was quick-lime. The betel is now raised in California. The colonel said he had always made it a rule to drink the peculiar drinks, and eat the peculiar delicacies, of every country he visited, and he had tried chewing the betel. It only made his gums sore, loosenedhis teeth a little, and gave him the heartburn. He could conscientiously recommend it as an experiment eminently worthy to be made by anybody in the interest of science, and thought I should try it by all means. I asked him if he had ever attacked a ready-made sausage in a cheap restaurant. He was forced to admit that his faith in human nature, broad and liberal as it is, had never made him equal to the attempt. I told him that in that case he was only a dabbler in the wide field of science, and until he had entered deeper, he was unfit to give advice to others on the subject.
I declined the prepared betel, lime, cocoa-nut and leaf, but took a bit of the sliced betel plain, and chewed it. It had a slightly astringent effect on the mouth, and though without any very strongly perceptible flavor, soon produced a slight choking sensation in the throat, and a rather strongly marked palpitation of the heart. I don’t think I like betel. It is evidently an “acquired taste,” as the Englishman remarked about wild turkey, when a party of western practical jokers played off buzzard on him for the noblest bird of the American forest.
“THE BARBARY COAST.”
They said that the officers had all gone over upon the “Barbary Coast”—another of San Francisco specialties—as there had been a shooting scrape over there. We went on through Dupont Street, to that part of Pacific Street known as the Barbary Coast. The locality is the favorite resort of the dregs of the population of the Golden City—thieves, robbers, prostitutes, and loafers of the very lowest class, and of every color and nationality represented on the earth, Africa, Asia, all Spanish America, the West Indies, the islands of the Pacific, all Europe and North America, having each contributed its quota to make up the mass of vice, crime, and utter rottenness which surges up and down that horrible “coast.” It well deserves its name.
We met the officers coming back with their prisoner, a drunken loafer from Australia, who was making night hideous with his yells as they hustled him along towards the calaboose, followed by a motley crowd, whose aimless curiosity led them to rush along pell-mell in their wake.
One of the specials, whom my companion familiarly addressed as “Shrimp,”—probably on account of his elephantine proportions,—consented to come back and pilot us to our destination as soon as the party reached the calaboose. Meantime we went into a Spanish cigar shop, bearing the high-sounding and pœtical name “La Flor de la Mariposa,” literally “The Flower of the Butterfly,” and bought some villanous cigars, the colonel and the proprietor becoming involved in an animated dispute in Spanish over the revolt against the Juarez government in Mexico.
Out on the street once more, the colonel wanted us to go through the dens on the “coast.” He would take us to the “Bull Run,” the “Cock of the Walk,” the “Roaring Gimlet,” “Hell’s Kitchen,” and a few similar resorts, and convince me that we had nothing like them in New York. Rather than make the visit, I conceded all he claimed as to the superior and in fact unapproachable depravity of this part of San Francisco; and we retraced our steps to Jackson Street, where, in the heart of the Chinese quarter of the town, we found our officer, and set about the work of investigation, for which we had started out in the early part of the evening.
A DANGEROUS LOCALITY.
“Better go down and see how some of these people live, before you go to see how they die,” said the officer, leading the way into a dark passage running from the streets into the centre of the block. We stumbled along the passage for some fifty feet or more, and came to a rickety, dirty stairway, which we descended, feeling our way along step by step, until we stood in a court-yard surrounded with high brick buildings on all sides. We could see nothing round us for the moment; but the stench was almost overpowering, and the chattering, which was going on in all directions, convinced us that we were in a locality literally swarming with the lowest class of the Mongolian population. The officer struck a match against the wall, and with it lighted a piece of candle, which he drew from his pocket. Immediately curious faces peeped out at us from behind old gunny-sacks, which took the place of windows and doors in the low basement walls, and a dozenor two dirty, dilapidated, demoralized looking Celestials came out from different corners, and stood with their hands in their pockets, regarding us with evident suspicion as unauthorized intruders.
A DEN OF THIEVES.
“This is a regular den of thieves. Not a single one of these fellows works at any honest trade for a living. They are the bummers and outcasts of Chinadom,” said the officer. “Here, Sam Yap, you dirty rascal, have you robbed anybody’s hen-roost yet to-night?—I suppose not, though; they don’t generally get out at that kind of business until along just before morning, when the streets are almost deserted, and they can move about without much danger of being overhauled and searched. All these fellows are on it, but this one is the worst in the deck. I have had him up at least twenty times, and the next time I am going to vag him. Yes, I am, you bloody old chicken murderer!” said he, holding the candle up to his face that we might all get a good look at him. It must be admitted that it was not a prepossessing face.
He then went to one of the openings in the wall, and pulling back the screen of old bagging, showed us a party of ten or a dozen such fellows gathered around a low table of rough boards, playing dominoes for “copper cash,” as the brass coin of China, the value of which is one tenth of a cent of our money, is commonly designated. They stopped a moment, and looked up suspiciously at us, and then at a sign from the officer, whom they appeared to recognize, went on with the game. They played it rapidly, with all sorts of exclamations and facial contortions for accompaniments. The dominoes are the same as ours, but they play the game quite differently. I don’t know exactly how it is done, but they seemed to win and lose rapidly. In the centre of the court there was a small brick building, which seemed to be the receptacle of all the filth from the neighborhood. It did not seem to have any connection with the street sewer, or if it had any, it was choked up, for the planking around was literally floating in the foul liquid from it, which oozed up between the cracks at every step as we walked over it, giving off a stench, which,in any other city of Christendom would breed a pestilence in twenty-four hours.
IN A CHINESE HOUSE.
Behind this, near the opposite wall, we stumbled upon a bundle of filthy rags, which turned partially over as the foot of our guide came in contact with it. The officer held down his candle, and on examination we found that within the rags there was a human being, a man in the last stage of consumption, induced, no doubt, by opium smoking. He could not or would not answer our questions, and his glazed vacant eyes showed that death was close at hand to claim him. He was lying on the wet, dirty boards, without even a blanket under him, and had undoubtedly been placed there to die, having no friends, and belonging to neither of the “Six Companies” with which all prosperous or even partially respectable Chinese in California are connected. The officer turned his head over, and called our attention to the fact that his queue had been cut off, which showed that he had been convicted of theft at some time, and was thenceforward debarred from respectable Chinese society, doomed to associate only with the pariahs of his race.
We had seen enough, more than enough, in fact, of this neighborhood, and our guide led us out to the street by the way we came.
The Shrimp said that there was another place just above, on the same street, which he wanted us to visit before we went into a first-class opium house. We went with him to a large four-story building, which appeared to be divided into apartments of the smallest dimensions, in which the Chinese swarmed like bees in a hive. He said that there were over six hundred persons, all of the poorer class, sleeping in this single building every night. In front of the building was a narrow opening in the sidewalk, with a stairway just sufficiently wide to allow one person at a time to descend into the subterranean regions below. Down this he dived like a rat into his hole, calling out to us to follow and look sharp for our heads. The caution was not unnecessary, as I soon found to my cost. At the bottom of the stairs he lighted his candleagain, and passing through a low opening in the wall, showed us the way under the street.
A HORRIBLE DEN.
Here, congregated in total darkness, were some twenty of the poorest class of Chinese stowed away for the night. Some were lying on piles of old rags, evidently picked up by the chiffonniers in their daily rounds, and put aside for this purpose, as having no commercial value, and of no use otherwise. Some were lying on rude benches knocked together from pieces of dry goods boxes, and one, who evidently held a higher position than his fellows, probably a man who had at some time drawn a twenty dollar prize in a lottery, or had a run of luck at the game of “Tan,” was stowed away in a bunk in a kind of alcove formed by an arch in the wall, before which was hanging an old tattered chintz curtain. He had an old blanket over him, and was doubtless looked upon with envy and hatred as a “bloated aristocrat” by his less fortunate fellow-citizens. We could hear the ceaseless tramp of the crowd on the sidewalk, and from time to time the rattling of the carriage wheels over the rough cobbles above our heads.
The atmosphere was that of a charnel-house, thick with noisome exhalations from the foul and rotting rags, and the fouler persons, of the denizens of this worse than Black Hole of Calcutta. Water dripped from the roof constantly, and the walls were covered with mould and great patches of thick, oozy slime. What a place for a human being to sleep in and die in! In the five minutes we were there our clothes became clammy from the foul moisture. What must be the condition, physical and mental, of that poor wretch stretched in the rags in yonder muddy corner?
AMONG THE OPIUM SMOKERS.
“And the wheels go over my head,And my bones are shaken with pain,For into a shallow grave they are thrust,Only a yard beneath the street;And the hoofs of the horses beat, beat,Beat into my scalp and my brain,With never an end to the stream of passing feet.* * * * * * *“O, me! why have they not buried me deep enough?Is it kind to have made me a grave so rough,Me, that was never a quiet sleeper?May be still I am but half dead;Then I cannot be wholly dumb;I will cry to the steps above my head,And somebody, surely, some kind heart, will come,To bury me, bury me,Deeper, ever so little deeper.”
“And the wheels go over my head,And my bones are shaken with pain,For into a shallow grave they are thrust,Only a yard beneath the street;And the hoofs of the horses beat, beat,Beat into my scalp and my brain,With never an end to the stream of passing feet.* * * * * * *“O, me! why have they not buried me deep enough?Is it kind to have made me a grave so rough,Me, that was never a quiet sleeper?May be still I am but half dead;Then I cannot be wholly dumb;I will cry to the steps above my head,And somebody, surely, some kind heart, will come,To bury me, bury me,Deeper, ever so little deeper.”
“And the wheels go over my head,
And my bones are shaken with pain,
For into a shallow grave they are thrust,
Only a yard beneath the street;
And the hoofs of the horses beat, beat,
Beat into my scalp and my brain,
With never an end to the stream of passing feet.
* * * * * * *
“O, me! why have they not buried me deep enough?
Is it kind to have made me a grave so rough,
Me, that was never a quiet sleeper?
May be still I am but half dead;
Then I cannot be wholly dumb;
I will cry to the steps above my head,
And somebody, surely, some kind heart, will come,
To bury me, bury me,
Deeper, ever so little deeper.”
I wonder if there was ever a Tennyson of Celestial literature, and if he ever read anything like the above, and recalled it to mind, as he lay cowering and grovelling through the long hours of the dreary night, in the depths of this living tomb!
Out on the street once more, and we lost our guide, who was called off by a loud whistling for aid, from some other officer over on the Barbary Coast. My companions fell in with a Chinese merchant with whom they were acquainted, and we went with him to his store on Dupont Street. He gave us some scalding hot black tea in little China cups, and offered to help us in any way he could. O, yes, of course he was acquainted with the location of many “opium houses;” the Chinese quarter is full of them! Opium smoking is the great curse of China, and four fifths of the Chinese in San Francisco indulge in it to a greater or less extent. Some use it merely as a sedative, and in moderate quantities. Others use it as commonly as American tobacco chewers use the nicotian weed, consuming a dollar and a quarter’s worth every day, and being more or less under the influence of it all the time. The poorer class of opium smokers patronize the opium lodging-houses, where they frequently sleep all night, paying fifteen cents for a few grains of prepared opium and a raised couch to lie on, while inhaling the smoke and sleeping off its effects.
EFFECT AND EXTENT OF OPIUM SMOKING.
Perhaps a quarter of the whole number of opium smokers use it to the extent of producing stupefaction habitually; these are all old smokers. The habit grows upon one steadily, and it soon becomes a terrible tyrant. When once the habit has become fixed upon a man, there is no possibility of its being thrown off. He daily requires more and more of the drug, while his strength slowly fails him; his appetite for ordinary food disappears; he becomes lean and attenuated;his brain becomes so affected, that it refuses to act unless the stimulant is furnished, and sooner or later consumption sets in, and the victim dies by inches, as it were, sometimes suffering horribly, while at others he is hardly conscious of suffering at all.
The importation of opium into the Pacific states amounts to millions annually, and the great bulk of it is consumed in smoking by the Chinamen. The women never smoke it; are not allowed to visit the opium houses, in fact. The wealthier Chinamen have accommodations for opium smoking in the upper or back rooms of the buildings which they occupy as stores and dwellings, and do not associate with the common herd who patronize the public opium dens. One Chinese friend thought it a very bad thing, this opium smoking, but admitted that he occasionally took a whiff at it himself, when he felt unsettled, and wanted to quiet his nerves for a night’s sleep.
DRINKING SAMSHOO.
While we were talking, the colonel suggested that I was a stranger, and had never tasted “Samshoo.” Our merchant friend at once took down a curious looking black bottle,—something like those that Curacoa comes in, wound with some kind of straw string from top to bottom, and having a label in white and vermilion, with Chinese characters,—drew the cork, and poured out a quantity of a dark-brown liquor, something like arrack in appearance, into a little china bowl, which he passed to me, assuring me that it was a very superior article, and pressing me to drink it.
I tasted it, and found it not very strong, but with a curious flavor, something between old Madeira wine and bottled ale, with a marked unpleasant smell, as of decaying vegetable matter. What is it made from? “Licey!” was his prompt response. The doctor explained that it was distilled from rice—mainly the cold rice and refuse from the restaurants, he said—flavored and colored with dried peas, or some similar fruit, and strengthened and enriched with a fine old nutty taste by the addition of a piece of fat roasted pork before bottling. The Chinese consider this a great luxury, and have their private stocks of it, which they regard with asmuch pride as is felt by a fine old English gentleman for his cellar of “old crusted port; vintage of 1803.” A little of it satisfied me. I think the taste for it must be an acquired one.
Some months afterwards I drank some samshoo, in Northern China, that was far worse than that furnished to me in San Francisco. It was served hot, in small glasses about as large as a thimble. It burned like nitric acid; and I half believed that I had swallowed a torch-light procession with all its lamps trimmed and blazing. I was dining with a Chinese official, and the etiquette of the occasion required me to swallow the vile stuff. By the time I had disposed of a gill or so, my head felt like the paddle-box of a steamer, and my throat was as raw as a freshly cut beefsteak. No more samshoo for me, if you please.
Our new-found friend gave us a card, on which he wrote some characters in Chinese by way of an introduction, and pointed out the entrance to an opium house on the other side of the street. We went over and found the establishment located on the second story adjoining a Chinese restaurant. The proprietor of the house, or “gentlemanly clerk,” looked at our card, and at once offered us the hospitalities of the place.
It was, of course, a very poor place, but he would do the best he could for us. There were half a dozen small rooms on the one floor, divided by rough partitions. We entered one of them, and found three raised platforms or beds, with bamboo framework; and in place of our usual mattress, a flat surface of braided cane, like one of our cane-seated chairs, on which to sleep. This is the usual bed of the Chinaman. He does not fancy spring mattresses, curled hair, or feathers to repose upon, and instead of stripping himself and crawling under a pile of woollen blankets, as we do, he lies down in his ordinary clothing, and rarely has anything else over him, unless it is a single blanket when the weather is unusually cool, or the room is open and subject to drafts. He does not destroy his lustrous black hair by burying his head in a hot feather or curled hair pillow, as we do, but has a block of wood or a cylindrical pillow, of braided cane open atboth ends for ventilation, which he places just under the top of his neck. This keeps him from becoming bald-headed, and is uncomfortable enough to make him an early riser; but like all other systems, it has its disadvantages. In time it throws his neck out of line, giving it a permanent forward bend, not graceful in itself, and rather unpleasant for an outside barbarian to look upon. When he travels he usually carries his favorite pillow with him, and at his death his head rests upon it in his coffin.
OPIUM SMOKERS IN BED.
Two of the beds in this room were occupied when we came in, the other was vacant. On one a Chinese was stretched at full length upon his back, in utter unconsciousness; his eyes were wide open, but apparently receiving no impression from the objects before them, and there was a vacant, meaningless smile upon his sallow countenance. His opium pipe or stick lay on the couch beside him, having fallen from his hand, and near his head stood the small, nut-oil lamp, with a glass cover like an inverted tumbler with a hole in the bottom, the tiny taper burning low in the socket.
The other Chinese, who was well dressed, and probably a merchant or manufacturer of the second class, was just preparing to indulge in his nightly dissipation. He did not appear to relish our intrusion, but said nothing, and went on with his smoking. Each guest who pays his fifteen cents receives from the clerk in attendance a small oyster or clam shell, on which there is a little dab of prepared opium, in a semi-fluid condition, resembling, in appearance, thick treacle or partially dissolved “stick licorice,” such as we used to buy with our odd pennies at the grocery store at the corner, in the happy days of youth, when we had a terrible cold, and obtained permission to remain at home from school and indulge in the luxury of medicine of our own choice. A slender bamboo stick about three feet in length, hollow down nearly to the largest end, where a little tunnel-shaped brass bowl is inserted, which is the usual opium pipe, a bit of wire about a foot in length, and a nut-oil lamp such as I have described, are also given him, and his “outfit” is complete.
The man who was about to indulge in the luxury stretched himself at full length on the couch, turned on his left side, placed the end of the wire in the opium, twirled it around so as to take up a mass about the size of an ordinary garden pea, formed the mass with his finger into a ball, held the end of the bamboo pipe to his mouth, placed the brass bowl at the other end against the flame of the lamp, slipped the ball of opium off the wire dexterously into the bowl, and as it burned he inhaled the smoke slowly into his lungs, allowing it to escape in little jets at long intervals from his nostrils.
DREAMS CAUSED BY OPIUM.
By the time he had taken the third or fourth whiff he was evidently affected. His eyes began to grow dull, his breathing was slow and heavy, and his grasp on the pipe relaxed little by little. In two or three minutes his muscles appeared to relax, his head fell back, and he was in a condition half sleep, half stupor. The doctor explained that the effect of this first smoke would wear off in half an hour or so, when the man would repeat the dose once or twice, and finally become wholly insensible for several hours. We spoke to him, but he did not answer, and it was hard to tell whether he was really unconscious of our presence or merely indifferent to it. It is asserted that the opium smoker sees nothing of what is going on around him, but revels in the most blissful creations of the imagination, his soul sailing away, as it were, from the dull and common-place surroundings of his body, to walk hand in hand with the “black-eyed girls in green” through the fair gardens, among the palm groves, by the banks of the rivers of Paradise. I said as much: the colonel characteristically denounced this practical version of the matter as “all blamed stuff, rot, and humbug. It makes them drunk, just simply blind, stupid drunk, and nothing else!” He had tried it and knew. The doctor said one dose would not produce any serious effects, and against my better judgment I permitted them to persuade me into making the experiment.
The landlord started off to bring my allowance of opium, lamp, pipe, etc., and the colonel improved the opportunity to illustrate his theory that the opium smoker is not absolutelyinsensible to pain, like the patient who inhales chloroform, but simply too drunk to resent the imposition which produces it. Tearing off a little slip of cane from the edge of one of the couches, he went up to the wholly insensible customer on the couch, and inserting it in his nostril twirled it swiftly around. A sharp sneeze and a convulsive winking of the dull eyes followed, but no other movement was made by the sleeper. “There, you see now that I am right! If he had taken chloroform he would not even sneeze; his nerves would be utterly incapable of receiving a sensation.”
WAKING THE WRONG PASSENGER.
Turning to the other customer, who now lay like a log on his couch, he drew his penknife, opened it, then, changing his mind, put it back, and taking a pin from his vest, inserted it quickly in the calf of his victim’s leg. The other leg, which was hanging half over the side of the couch, straightened out with a quick, convulsive movement, and the toe of the heavy felt and wooden-soled shoe on the foot came in contact with the colonel’s shin with a vicious energy, which sent him dancing back to the doorway with a remark which did not sound like a blessing, just as the proprietor came in with the opium and its accessories. “Why the —— don’t you make your customers take their boots off when they go to bed?” the colonel demanded savagely of the smiling and obsequious master of the house, as he rubbed his shin and cast a glance of hatred at the recumbent form of the lodger who had proved such a poor subject for experiments. “Me no shabbee!” was the non-committal reply.
I lay down on the bed and placed myself in the orthodox position, the doctor resting himself at my head, and the colonel rolling a cigarito and settling down on the edge of the couch at my feet. The host prepared the opium, placed it in the pipe, presented the end of the stick to my lips, and told me, after his own fashion, to pull away. I pulled, and began choking and coughing. The first experiment was a dead failure; the next was more nearly a success, and I felt my head rapidly assuming the dimensions of a sugar-barrel while my body and legs appeared to be shrinking proportionately,all their bulk being drawn up towards and into my head. I felt as I imagine drowning people feel, and gasped convulsively for breath. I could not recognize anything around me for a moment, and then I saw the dark eyes and long mustachios of the colonel coming out of a cloud of smoke and making directly for me at lightning speed, like a hairy comet flying through the air. The idea flashed through my brain that he was about to burn a match under my nose, or commit some similar atrocity by way of an experiment “in the interest of science,” and as one struggling in a horrible nightmare I sprang off the bed, staggering around without being able to feel my feet under me, and groping blindly about for something to seize in order to steady myself.
EXPERIENCE OF A NOVICE.
There was a low, dull humming in my ears, a giddiness in my head, and a general sense of faintness and nausea pervading my entire system. “For God’s sake, take me out of this!” I cried, at last; and some time after I realized that I was being walked up and down the sidewalk, the doctor and the colonel supporting me on either side. My head was getting clearer, but I felt deadly ill. The faint, sickening odor of the opium fumes clung around me and oppressed me, and I said as much at last, as I leaned heavily against a lamp-post.
The colonel with his usual enthusiasm exclaimed, “O, yes, I see it; you want a good strong stimulant of some kind to help you get rid of it. Now, I know a Mexican over on the corner of Vallejo Street, who has got some double refinedMescal, which will dissolve a gun-flint in half an hour; one good drink of that will set you all right.”
“Not if I know myself aright!” I remarked, emphatically. “You are the most hospitable people I have ever fallen in with. Your good intentions are unbounded, and your kindness I never can forget, but I don’t want anyMescalto-night. I have made a sufficient number of new acquaintances for one evening. Pisco, Cocomongo, Betel, Samshoo, and Opium, are all very fine in their way, but the new things are crowding each other a little too fast. We will omit theMescalon this occasion; I want to go home!”
They called a hack, and we rode back to the Occidental in silence. This was my first experience in a San Francisco opium den.
It will also be my last!
Next morning the colonel called on me and said he had forgotten something—an opium den worse than the one we had seen.
“How’s that?” I asked.
LIVING IN A SEWER.
“Why,” said the colonel, “it is an opium den of a very romantic character. Some years ago the line of Jackson Street was changed by the city authorities, and it became necessary to build new sewers. The old sewer was given up, and in the new arrangements it was under some of the buildings occupied by the Chinese. They took possession of it, and hollowed out galleries on either side. The enterprising proprietors converted it into an opium palace, at the popular admission fee of two cents. The accommodations and odors are a hundred-fold worse than those of the place where we were last night. For two cents you can get smells enough to last you a lifetime. Do you want to go?”
I concluded that I wanted nothing more in the opium line, and declined to go. I may have been too fastidious, but I had not then travelled as much as I have in later years, and novices, you know, are inclined to be particular.
A sewer, whether abandoned or not, has few charms. At St. Louis there are, or were when I was last there, some of the smaller sewers that are so broken at their mouths, near the river’s edge, as to present the appearance of natural springs where the water oozes up through the sand. One day a gentleman was standing near one of these sewer mouths, when two countrymen came strolling along the bank, one of them thirty feet ahead of the other. As the foremost of the twain spied the water slowly pouring from the earth, he shouted to his friend,—
“Hullo, Jim; here’s another spring!”
“Well, Gaul darn it,” answered the other, “if tain’t no better water than the last we found I don’t want none of it.”