Peculiarities of American Cities

Their chief town and ecclesiastical capital was located on the eastern bank of the river Jordan, between Lake Utah, a beautiful body of fresh water lying to the southward, and Great Salt Lake, lying twenty miles to the northward. The new settlement was eleven hundred miles west of the Mississippi, and six hundred and fifty miles east-northeast of the then scarcely heard of city of San Francisco. Its site extended close up to the base of the great mountains on the north, while to the southward its view spread over more than a hundred miles of plain, with a range of rugged mountain peaks, snow-capped and bold, lying beyond. A grander outlook could scarcely be imagined.

In the laying out of the city the fact was kept in view that it was for a people of workers, each one of whom must be self-sustaining. In truth, the great success of these people is due to the fact that no class of drones has been recognized and provided for. All, from the highest to the lowest, were expected to work, church officials as well as laymen; and prosperity has attended industry, as it always does. The wilderness and solitary place were glad for them, and the desert was made to rejoice and blossom as the rose; and a mighty nation within a nation has been built up in the valley of Utah, protected by its mountain fastnesses. The Mormons have become a strong and prosperous people, and have not only possessed themselves of Utah, but have sent out colonies to Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Wyoming, Idaho and Arizona, which have prospered and increased, until they now practically control those Territories.

It is not my province to speak of the Mormons from either a religious or political standpoint. Their material prosperity one cannot fail to see, and a truthful historian must note it. The "City of the Saints," as Salt Lake City is sometimes called, is doubly interesting, from its history and from its peculiar features, so unlike those of any other city. The streets are one hundred and twenty-eight feet wide, crossing each other at right angles, an eighth of a mile apart, each square thus formed containing ten acres. Each square is divided into eight lots, measuring ten by twenty rods, and containing one-fourth of an acre. Several of the squares in the business quarter of the town have been cut across since the original laying out, forming cross streets. The streets are lined with trees, while streams of running water course down each side of every street, being brought from the neighboring mountains, ten thousand feet high, furnishing a pure water supply, and irrigating the gardens. Almost every lot has an orchard of pear, apple, plum, apricot, and peach trees, and Utah furnishes large quantities of fresh and dried fruit for the eastern markets. Apricots, which in the east are almost unknown, sometimes grow as large as eastern peaches, from six to eight inches in circumference. Locust, maple and box-elder are the favorite shade trees, and these grow luxuriantly. When, however, their roots strike soil from which the alkali has not yet been washed, their leaves turn from a dark green to a sickly yellow. But irrigation washes out this alkali, and the trouble from it grows less every year.

Salt Lake City is divided into twenty wards, nearly every one of which has a square. Every ward has its master, who superintends the public improvements, and sees that every man does his share without shirking. The houses are generally of adobe (sun-dried bricks), though a few of the newer business blocks are handsome and commodious stone structures. Most of the dwelling houses are small, and but a single story in height, having separate entrances when there is more than one wife in the family. The city is not an imposing one. The wide streets, large grounds around each dwelling, and low, small houses, give it more the appearance of an overgrown village than that of a city. Nevertheless, it cannot be denied that the plan upon which it is built secures to its inhabitants the maximum of comfort, health and cleanliness. There are no narrow and stifling streets, overshadowed by tall buildings; no dirty alleys; no immense crime and pestilence-breeding tenement houses. Each little dwelling has its garden and orchard, securing to each family the blessings of fresh vegetables and fruit, and making each in a measure self-dependent. The air is pure, blowing down the valley from the mountain heights; and no foul vapors from half protected sewers or reeking courts poison it.

The chief business thoroughfares are Main and Temple streets. The former is entirely devoted to trade, while church edifices are found in the latter. The Tabernacle is, of course, the most prominent object which meets the eye of the traveler as he arrives in Salt Lake City, standing out, as it does, in all its huge proportions, surrounded by the tiny homes of the people. It is on Temple street, in the heart of the city, and is entirely without architectural beauty, its predominant features being its hugeness and its ugliness. It is an enormous wooden structure, oval in form, with an immense dome-like roof, supported by forty-six sandstone pillars. It will seat fifteen thousand persons, and is used for the services of the church, lectures and public gatherings. It contains one of the largest organs in America. It is inclosed within a high wall, and a little to the east of it, within the same inclosure, are the foundations of a new temple, estimated to cost ten millions of dollars, but which will not probably be finished for many years to come. An inferior adobe building, also within the walls, is the celebrated Endowment House, where are performed those sacred and mysterious rites of the Mormon Church which no Gentile may look upon, and where the Saints are sealed to their polygamous wives.

On South Temple street, east of the Tabernacle, is the group of buildings known as Brigham Block, inclosed, like the former, by a high stone wall, and comprising the Tithing House, the Beehive House, the Lion House, the office of the Deseret News, and various other offices and buildings. The Beehive House and the Lion House constituted the residences of the late Brigham Young and eighteen or twenty of his wives. A handsome structure nearly opposite, the most pretentious structure in Salt Lake City, and known as Amelia Palace, was built by Brigham Young, for his favorite wife, Amelia. The theatre is a large building with a gloomy exterior, but handsomely fitted up inside. It is a favorite resort of the Saints, who make it a source of innocent recreation, and entertain no prejudices against it, permitting their wives and children to appear upon its boards. One of the daughters of Brigham Young was at one time an actress at this theatre.

On South Temple street, opposite the Tabernacle, is the Museum, containing interesting products of Mormon industry; specimens of ores from the mines of Utah, and precious stones from the desert; a fair representation of the fauna of the Territory; relics of the mound builders; articles of Indian use and manufacture, and other curiosities, which the visitor may behold on the payment of a small admission fee. The City Hall, which is at the present time used by the Territorial Government, is a handsome building, erected at a cost of sixty thousand dollars. In its rear is the city prison. A co-operative store in successful operation will be found occupying a handsome building on East Temple street. The Deseret National Bank, at the corner of East Temple and South First streets, is also a fine building. The two principal hotels of Salt Lake City are the Walker House, on Main street, and the Townsend House, at the corner of West Temple and South Second streets. With all its quaintness and want of resemblance to other cities, it has adopted the system of horse cars, which run on the principal streets, and make all parts of the city accessible.

About one mile distant from the city are the Warm Springs, issuing from the limestone rock at the foot of the mountains. The water of these springs contains lime, magnesia, iron, soda, chlorine, and sulphuric acid, and their temperature is lukewarm. A bath in them is delightful, and beneficial, if not prolonged. Private bathing apartments are fitted up for the use of bathers. A mile further north are the Hot Springs, also strongly sulphurous, and with a temperature of over 200°. Eggs may be boiled in these springs in three minutes, ready for the table. The water from these springs forms a beautiful lake, called Hot Spring Lake, which practically destroys all agriculture and vegetation for hundreds of yards within the vicinity. Strange as it may seem, the hot water does not prevent the existence of some kinds of excellent fish, among which have been seen some very fine, large trout.

The population of Salt Lake City is something over twenty thousand persons, of whom about one-third are Gentiles and apostate Mormons. This population is made up of all nationalities, apostles and missionaries being continually sent out to nearly every part of the civilized world, to make proselytes, and bring them to the fold. These converts to the faith are usually from the lower classes, ignorant and superstitious; and as a consequence the intellectual and social standards of Salt Lake City are not high. But with their new faith these people acquire habits of industry, if they never possessed them before; and the conditions of the city are favorable for growth in certain directions. Their children are educated and brought up to a higher position than that occupied by their parents; so that whatever may be our opinion as to the advantages or disadvantages, from a religious point of view, in their conversion to the Mormon faith, materially, intellectually and socially they have many of them undoubtedly made a change for the better. They are taken away from the stationary conditions of life in the old world, and transplanted into a new and growing country, where there is plenty of room and incentive for progress and expansion. Though the first generation do not always avail themselves of this room, nor even the second, to its fullest extent, ultimately these people will come to compare favorably with other classes of American citizens.

The completion of the Union Pacific Railroad, although it deprived the Mormons of that isolation which they sought, has been of vast benefit to them in material ways. It is said that when the city was first settled the whole community could not have raised one thousand dollars in cash. And up to the completion of the railroad nine-tenths of the business of the Mormon people was conducted on a system of barter. A writer thus facetiously describes the condition of things at that period: "A farmer wishes to purchase a pair of shoes for his wife. He consults the shoemaker, who avers his willingness to furnish the same for one load of wood. He has no wood, but sells a calf for a quantity of adobes, the adobes for an order on the merchant, payable in goods, and the goods and the order for a load of wood, and straightway the matron is shod. Seven watermelons purchased the price of a ticket of admission to the theatre. He paid for the tuition of his children seventy-five cabbages per quarter. The dressmaker received for her services four squashes per day. He settled his church dues in sorghum molasses. Two loads of pumpkins paid his annual subscription to the newspaper. He bought a 'Treatise on Celestial Marriage' for a load of gravel, and a bottle of soothing syrup for the baby with a bushel of string beans."

There are not the most harmonious relations existing between the Mormon and Gentile people of Salt Lake City. Each regards the other with suspicion. The former look upon the latter as hostile to their faith, and determined to destroy it. The Gentiles regard certain practices of the Mormons with abhorrence, and themselves as at heart rebellious to the government to which they have been compelled to submit. The leading papers of the two factions are very hostile, and keep alive the feeling of antagonism.

Lying between two prominent mountain chains, the chief city in a vast valley which the enterprise of man has demonstrated to be fertile; furnishing a depot of supplies, and a mart and shipping place for produce and manufactures; Salt Lake City is destined to become an important point in the western section of our country. Her future is assured, even though the people who founded her, together with the faith to which they cling, should disappear from the face of the earth, and be forgotten, like the lost tribes of Israel, which they believe themselves to represent. Essentially American in all her features – since no city of the Old World, either ancient or modern, furnishes a prototype – and in her very plan including certain sure elements of success, as our Western States and Territories become filled up with a thriving and industrious people, she will find herself the natural centre of a vast agricultural and mining population, and continue to increase in importance and prosperity.

CHAPTER XXXIII.

SAN FRANCISCO

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 of extensive 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 of these, 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. Midway between 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 the San 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. The priests 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. In February 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 got that money yet. I worked hard for it, and the devil can't get it away. But the two thousand 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.