FRESCOES FROM FRISCO.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XIII, Issue 4480, 23 March 1876, Page 1 (Supplement)

FRESCOES FROM FRISCO.

X.— ' .Impression—and. that in.thc "very jaws of the Golden Gate—was' thact_it might be m - f la9tMr;^he :j ligh^. t and ri baffliQg airs ? wHch~ had toyedlwitK '* us/pllotless;and benighted outside,' anctiiad hearly' : laid ua on the .shaUows, pilot himself when*" He. did' arrive^!for• Haying)decoyed usinto what eeemed at one moment about to become the gate; of- of Hell—to r some, of us, there'they left us to the mercy of the tide, which, swept us into a hollow of the steep wall oh'the left, where, as a last resource, we"*' let go- the anchor" within five hundred',feet; of the dark hill— the most objectionable form the long-desired terra Jirma'eonld have assumed, fie had to set all sail in order to drag ourselves off to a safer distance. My next First Impression, was that.our .British skipper "was more American than the Americans who .boarded'us—the pilot, the newsmen, and the butcher. ! My third First Impression was a sen sation —-a bodily one—produced by the vagaries of two currents of air, which appeared to have come to blows in striving for the* mastery. One seemed to come directly from the mouth of a seven times heated furnace, the other "direct from the North Pole. Both pressed upon me and passed over me in so searching a manner, that they may have been the spirit hands of some* departed Custom-house officer whose earthly beat had been aboard the Chiua boats. ' ' - i My first peep at the city, or that part of. it turned towards the stranger who enters at the Golden Gate, did hot impress me favourably —a congregation of shanties piled on a bare hilL In fact I may 6ay at once'.thatyou can get no general view of "San Francisco at all, and that no partial view'does it justice, mercy, moreover; being what it requires. ' Pulling from the stairs, I was struck (but escaped without injury) by the forests- of unbarked piles (by which I mean piles with the bark on) supporting the long .series. of wooden wharves.. .These have an unsubstantial, makeshift appearance, but are perfect hives of industry above, and Chinese orchestras of'noise. Down upon us,'from many and many an iron stern, looked the familiar letters' *'.Liverpool,", and .occasionally " Leith," and "London,"and "Boston," and "New York," . ,~ j , • The impression received on gaining the level of the dry world - is that you are in a "live city." Ear and eye both called upon to do" a' heavy'business;"" Powerful steam whistles are cpnversinjg.lpudly in a language of their own, some laying,down the law a little too decidedly, others objecting with *11 the energy and freedom of speech character-f istic of a; free country, one or two moaning dismally, two or three shrill with delight at the prospect of i getting out into the bay, all helping to produce' a satahic'confusion and ceaseless alternation, and. everlasting determination to have, the last word, which would do credit to- a steam rookery. • Then there is the thunder'of heavy wheels, and the iron tread of splendid teams of two and four most docile and intelligent horses, many of them managed solely with the lash of the lips. These mingle with the feverish rush* of steam through.the palpitating-valves ;of the steam winches and ther general cry ': and din of a busy- port. The, people are.all.and always in a hurry—everything that'.moves appears to be hurrying up.. Leaving the wharves,<and passing into the streets, the woodenness of the city impressed itself upon me. " Wooden houses, wooden roads, wooden side-walks— latter nearly impassable owing to the'mountains and barricades of merchandise which repose upon them, and various transient items of the same on their passage, from store to truck or waggon. The horses,"""too, stand on the side-walks where the road is paved with stone j (and there is 'too much of'the show-yardy order . "around" to prevent them hammering their-shoes off), this being their way of . illustrating the teaching of our own childhood that— I - Satan finds some mischief still ' r ' • ' For idle-rijoo/s to do. . I 'Business, business, business! dollars, dollars, " dollars ! is the cry everywhere ;' and I everywhere some more evidence of individual 1 enterprise and success than of efficient general Municipal Government. The city is as poorly lighted as it is badly paved. The Gas Company is a monopoly, and rules the city with a rod of darkness. No gas when there's a moon in the Almanac. Happy thought for a cloudy night: Take your almanac. At the best of times this feudal gas system keeps its foot on the necks of .the benighted and enslaved people, especially in the suburbs, frequented by hoodlums, burglars and their victims, where the formula for lamplighting seems to be the national but unsatisfactory Epluribus unum. The general Post-office—my firstresort—is a very dingy and : most unmonumental—except as a relic of the good old times —edifices ; but a new one is about to rise, and one of the wonders of this wonderful city is the rapidity with which large and elaborate buildings of stone and iron are hurried .up and fixed. i. I must certainly not omit from my First Impressions, that of the cosmopolitan character of the multitude which in all quarters throngs its streets, and of the Babel of languages which greet your ear as you . jostle your way along them. English, American, Irish,. German, French, Spanish, Dutch, Scandinavian, Italian, Russian, Turk, Chinese and Greek, all clang and clash in the universal common cry and struggle for gain; but my first impression was, and my matured impression is, that the two words you hear most frequently are dollars and God-damn. I am sorry to say that the only expression which rivals these in frequency | of utterance is the startling ana very awful "By G—!" It is as common as a Frenchman's " Mon DieuJ" These are; the wave-tops of the flood of profanity which soak, and inundate, and swamp this city. Little children, five or six years' old, heap full-grown curses on each other's curly heads, and {[send each other off their toy "expresses" straight to H—— 1 It makes one wince to hear it. But no one cares. It has been said to me by an American, and I begin to believe it, " There is no home teaching in this country, sir, as a rule." Parents send their children to the Sunday-schools, and think they have discharged their duty. My first impression of Young America is, from my old-fashioned point of view of course, not a good one. But the fault is Old Americans—meaning the parents. A curious and novel spectacle was the long, low, beetle-like cars, which crawl for five cents a fare along the principal routes of the city. They are' as cheap and convient as they are slow and odd. Flies and cabs are luxuries. My present impression is that my First Impressions, so far as I intend ; to express them here, are at an end.' My last 1 First Impression was made upon a springbed, under the roof of my severe New England landlady, who guessed and reckoned to such an extent that I was kept awake wondering how I had managed to accomplish so much talking during tne past 30 years with such a limited use of those two American auxiliary verbs. A Strangeb.