The night was dark in San Francisco—that city far away on the confines of the Pacific. And far other scenes and other deeds are witnessed there than it ever entered into the imagination of the dwellers on the Atlantic sea-board to conceive of. Description is at fault; words cannot paint the mingled web, and fancy has no colors sufficiently vivid to depict the peculiar state of society in the newly-risen metropolis of California. Naturalists describe the state of the world long before man became a dweller upon the earth, and the fossils which they procure tell of strange animals that once existed here unlike anything which the world now presents.
In Pacific street—named after the ocean that rolls her floods to the very doors of the Californian traders—there are several houses in which congregate the lower class of ruffians and pleasure-seekers, where the tamborene and fiddle are seldom allowed to rest, where the merry dance is kept up the live-long night by men of all nations, all complexions, and all professions. Here may be seen the Lascar, the Mulatto, the Chilean, the Brazilian negro, the Nantucket whaleman, the escaped convict from Botany Bay, the red-faced Englishman, the native of the soil, the Mexican; and every other class and nation is here represented. Men of standing, wealthy people here flock promiscuously with the lowest classes of all countries.
It was in one of these dance halls, where the usual throng was engaged in beating the floor with their feet to the tune of the most simple instruments of music. Now a tall smooth fellow of jet blackness asked a light-haired Yankee to touch glasses with him, while a little infirm man in a blue nankeen jacket, who had once been the mate of a ship, could find nothing better than to explain to a Chinese sailor, in one corner, the way in which a Turk’s head-knot was made upon a rope. But for the most part, boisterous mirth prevailed, some danced as if they had been bitten by a tarantula, while others roared out snatches from such songs as ears polite are not often saluted with.
Whatever was done was thoroughly done, done with a vengeance, without restraint and without fear of disturbing the neighbors.
On the night which we have mentioned, the noise and confusion was unusually great, the throng was more numerous than common from the fact that one watch was on shore from a whaleship in the harbor, and they had all blundered into this hall to drink and be merry.
‘Keep it up!’ cried one long-legged, broad-shouldered fellow, throwing up one of his feet to the very wall and then dancing with a violence that threatened to bring down the roof about his ears.
‘He’s a boatsteerer,’ said one of the ship boys—‘he’s great at striking a whale,’ and he gazed with admiration on this specimen of Nantucket enterprise.
‘Keep it up!’ shouted the boatsteerer making his long legs fly about the room as if he was under the influence of a galvanic battery.
‘Keep it up!’ screamed he again, as he caught a short Englishman by the arm and tried to inspire him with a portion of his own enthusiasm.
‘Yes, yes,’ said the Englishman, biting off the end of a tobacco plug, and walking off to the other side of the room to get out of the wind of those formidable legs.