I can't tell of Golden Gate Park, with its beautiful drives, its statuary, museum, its herds of buffaloes and deer; of the Presidio, the Government reservation of over 1,500 acres, which has been beautified until it may be included among the parks of San Francisco.
CHINATOWN,
covering twelve squares of the city, where nobody lives but Chinese, is a place of great interest. Many visitors employ guides and take in the town at night, which, I am told, is the best time to see it at its worst. Horrid tales are told of underground opium dens, where victims of the drug, of all colors, congregate; of the gambling hells, and the Chinese lotteries. Two Chinese landed in 1848; in 1850 there were 450; in 1852 10,000 landed in one month. They were welcomed at first. They are the best of laborers, but they soon began to supplant white labor. It was discovered also that they did not come with their families, to make this country their home. They keep what they make and return with it to China—they even send the bones of their dead back to the Celestial Empire. By law, they have been prohibited from coming to this country for some years. The years of the first Exclusion Act are now about out, and one of the biggest questions, in the minds of Californians is, the new Exclusion Law. The Labor party is very strong in the State, and the politicians dare not antagonize it. It is a serious problem. If the Chinese would come like the people of other nations and bring their families and settle in the country, their enemies would be robbed of their strongest argument. No exclusion laws are thought of against the people of other nations, even though they supplant, in many lines, the American laboring man.
THE UNITED STATES MINT.
"The biggest mint in the world," the fellow said, is a place where one can feel mighty rich for a little while. Visitors are received at regular hours, bunched and put in charge of a guide who shows them through. One can see the money in every process of manufacture. I was impressed with the fact that two dies stamp $40,000 in $20 gold pieces in ten minutes and that the coinage is about $30,000,000 a year. I saw only one greenback and one copper while I was in San Francisco. Only gold and silver are used.
JAMES LICK
was an old pioneer—a machinist and a bachelor. He used his immense wealth in beautifying the city and benefiting his fellow men. The Pioneers' Building he gave, leaving it richly endowed. Here are gathered all the curios of the early times and from the fund is supported old and disabled pioneers. He gave to the city a great bath house, where any one can bathe without cost; $400,000 of his money went into the California Academy of Science.
The Lick Observatory, near San Jose, crowning the summit of Mount Hamilton, 4,250 feet above sea level, his greatest benefaction, I could only read about. The bequest amounted to $7,000,000, and the telescope alone cost $55,000. This is indeed the biggest telescope in the world.
THE STANFORD UNIVERSITY
at Palo Alto, only a few miles away from San Francisco on the Coast Line, I could easily have seen in passing, but it escaped me. It is named for Leland Stanford, Jr., for whom it will be a perpetual monument. He was the only child, and the parents devoted the whole of their princely fortune to the erection and endowment of this great school. I saw the palatial home of the widow in San Francisco. This school and the State University at Berkeley, certainly offer great advantages to the young men and women of California—they are both co-educational.