No fence enclosed this weird spot. The sand sifted into it and through it and out on the other, side; it made graves and uncovered them; it had ever a new surprise for us. We boys haunted it in ghoulish pairs, and whispered to each other as we found one more coffin coming to the surface, or searched in vain for the one we had seen the week before; it had been mercifully reburied by the winds. There were rude headboards, painted in fading colors; and beneath them lay the dead of all nations, soon to be nameless. By and by they were all carried hence; and those that were far away, watching and waiting for the loved and absent adventurers, watched and waited in vain. A change come o'er the spirit of the place. The site is now marked by the New City Hall—in all probability the most costly architectural monstrosity on this continent.
"From grave to gay" is but a step; "from lively to severe," another,—I know not which of the two is longer. It was literally from grave to gay when the old San Franciscans used to wade through the sandy margin of Yerba Buena cemetery in search of pleasure at Russ' Garden on the mission road. It flourished in the early Fifties—this very German garden, the pride and property of Mr. Christian Russ. It was a little bit of the Fatherland, transported as if by magic and set down among the hillocks toward the Mission Dolores. Well I remember being taken there at intervals, to find little tables in artificial bowers, where sat whole families as sedate, or merry, and as much at ease as if they were in their own homes. They would spend Sunday there, after Mass. There was always something to be seen, to be listened to, to be done. Meals were served at all hours, and beer at all minutes; and the program contained a long list of attractions,—enough to keep one interested till ten or eleven o'clock at night.
I can remember how scanty the foliage was—it resembled a little the toy-villages that are made in the Tyrol, having each of them a handful of impossible trees that breathe not balsam, but paint. I remember the high wind that blew in bravely from the sea; the pavilion that was a wonder-world of never-failing attractiveness; and how on a certain occasion I watched with breathless anxiety and dumb amazement a man, who seemed to have discarded every garment common to the race, wheel a wheelbarrow with a grooved wheel up a tight rope stretched from the ground to the outer peak of the pavilion; and all the time there was a man in the wheelbarrow who seemed paralyzed with fright,—as no doubt he was. The man who wheeled the barrow was the world-famous Blondin.
Russ Gardens, 1856
Another sylvan retreat was known as "The Willows." There were some willows there, but I fear they were numbered; and there was an al fresco theatre such as one sees in the Champs-Elysées; indeed, the place had quite a Frenchy atmosphere, and was not at all German, as was Russ' Garden. French singers sang French songs upon the stage—it was not much larger than a sounding-board.
An air of gaiety prevailed; for I imagine the majority of the habitués were from the French Quarter of the city. Of course there were birds and beasts, and cages populous with monkeys; and there was an emeu—the weird bird that can not fly, the Australian cassowary. This bird inspired Bret Harte to song, and in his early days he wrote "The Ballad of the Emeu";
O say, have you seen at the willows so green,
So charming and rurally true,
A singular bird, with the manner absurd,
Which they call the Australian emeu?
Have you
Ever seen this Australian emeu?
I fear the poet was moved to sarcasm when he sang of "the willows so green, so charming and rurally true." Surely they were greener than any other trees we had in town; for we had almost none, save a few dark evergreens. Well, the place was charming in its way, and as rurally true as anything could be expected to be on that peninsula in its native wilderness. The Willows and Russ' Garden had their day, and it was a jolly day. They were good for the people—those rural resorts; they were rest for the weary, refreshment for the hungry and thirsty—and they have gone; even their very sites are now obliterated, and the new generation has perhaps never even heard of them.