Presently he said, "Men don't often speak of these things to each other, but I feel the beauty of it. Nights when the vessel is moving so fast, I come and watch here for hours and hours, and dream over it." When I thought about it afterward, I wondered how he could know that the way to answer my fear was to show me what was so beautiful. I was not afraid any more, whatever the vessel did.
Those three days and nights of lonely watching, floating about in the Straits, must have been a great experience to him, and made him different from what he would otherwise have been; certainly different from most men.
Before sunrise, yesterday morning, we passed the "Seal-Rocks;" as the light just began to reveal a little of the dark, dreamy hills on each side of the long, beautiful entrance to the harbor. A flood of light filled it as we entered, and it must have looked just as it did when it was first named the "Golden Gate." All along, for miles, the water throws itself up into the air, and falls in fountains on the rocky shore. I cannot conceive of a more beautiful harbor in the world; and, as we were two or three hours in coming from the sea up to the city, we had time enough to enjoy it.
The southern headland of the entrance is Point Lobos (Punta de los Lobos, Point of Wolves); the northern, Point Bonita (Beautiful Point).
March 25, 1875.
We could never have stepped out of our wilderness into a stranger city than this. From the variety of foreign names and faces that I see in the streets, I should think I were travelling over the whole world. On one side of us lives a Danish family, on the other a French. I walk along and look up at the signs,—"Scandinavian Society;" "Yang Tzy Association of Shanghae;" "Nuevo Continente Restaurant Mejicano;" "Angelo Beffa, Helvetia Exchange," with the white cross and plumed hat of Switzerland. One street is all Chinese, with shiny-haired women, and little mandarins with long cues of braided red silk. The babies seem to be dressed in imitation of the idol in the temple; their tight caps have the same tinsel and trimmings, and the resemblance their little dry faces bear to it is very curious.
Next to "Tung Wo," "Sun Loy," and "Kum Lum," come "Witkowski," "Bukofski," "Rowminski,"—who keep Russian caviar, etc. Some day, when we feel a little tired of our ordinary food, we think of trying the caviar, or perhaps a gelatinous bird's nest, for variety.
Besides the ordinary residents, we meet many sailors from the hundreds of vessels always in the harbor,—Greeks, Lascars, Malays, and Kanakas. Their picturesque costumes and Oriental faces add still more to the foreign look of the place.
In the midst of the greatest rush and confusion of one of the principal business streets, stands a man with an electrical machine, bawling in stentorian tones, "Nothing like it to steady the nerves, and strengthen the heart,"—ready, for a small fee, to administer on the spot a current of greater or less intensity to whoever may desire it. The contrast is most ludicrous between the need that undoubtedly exists for some such quieting influence, and the utter inefficacy of it, if applied, under such circumstances.