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Show 114 WESTERN WILDS. year. Northward they are caught by the higher mountains, and the rain- fall increases; till at last, entangled amid the sub- ranges of Or-egon, they shower almost constantly from October till May. I like San Francisco for its variety. If one don't enjoy staid American society, there are French, Italian, and Spanish quarters, and not far off Kanakas, and ever- present Chinese. Society is in a transition state. This is a land of the beggar and the prince. The oppressive land monopoly which was fixed upon California by Mex-ican policy, the wonderful fluctuations in mining property, and the daring speculations of its business men, have given over the wealth to a few hands. There seems to be no well defined middle class. Public taste inclines to the showy ; for wealth and fashion naturally outran culture in a community which, in twenty years, rose like another Venice, from the salt marsh and sand- hill to unmeasured opulence. The city is strangely picturesque and interesting. On the west side of the bay and facing the east, the business blocks cover the flat along the water front and extend a little way up the slope ; thence the residences and public buildings continue to rise in terraces, to the very summit of the ridge a spur of Monte Diablo. " With this slope and its sandy soil, it is of necessity clean and Tree from malaria. The ocean fogs are bracing to some constitutions, death to others. No man can reason beforehand as to how they will affect him ; they refuse to follow a priori rules. The first San Francisco was built almost entirely of wood, and vanished one day in a sweeping fire. The second was built in a rather fragile manner with more solid materials; the frequent fires finally cured the first fault, and the earthquakes fright-ened them out of the second. In one year the city had eleven " shakes." The Chinese, seen in every part of California, are never out of sight in the city, of which they constitute one- sixth of the population. Some twenty squares along Dupont Street are given up to them, the locality appropriately known as " Barbary Coast." We found it settled so thickly that it seems scarcely possible human beings could exist so, and could scarcely repress a feeling of fear as we plunged into the dark alleys lined by little cubby- holes, and alive with yellow women. But our guide assures us we are always safe here; " though," he adds, " I can't give you any such promise two squares from here, among the whites." This suggests the " hoodlum," or young rough, which San Francisco has in fearful abundance. Of course my resident friends took me to the Chinese Theater, where we witnessed part of a play representing some marvelous inci-dents in the career of Rip Sah, or some other old humbug, whose |
