The total disregard of the marriage tie by the majority of the men of California puts the husband, who is foolish enough to take his wife with him to that county, in a painful and embarrassing position. Should the wife be pretty, she is the more liable to the persecution of attentions which will shock her if she be virtuous, and flatter her into sin if she is not. She is surrounded at once by hosts of men, who spare neither money, time, nor art to win her affections from her husband. What wonder if they often succeed?
Female virtue or chastity, in the conventional sense of the word, is known to every one, who is familiar with the internal history of society, to be a very complex idea. There are women who are chaste only for want of the opportunity to be otherwise. There are others who are kept chaste by the force of public opinion, the dread of exposure, and the general fear of consequences; while a third class preserve their persons untainted by an innate purity of soul, which shrinks instinctively from all indelicacy, and feels contaminated by an unclean thought, and degraded by a lustful look. It is not our business to inquire into the relative proportion of women embraced in these three classes. It is enough to know that they exist, to appreciate the effect which the society of California will exert upon them.
As for the first class, it is not necessary to speak of them. They fulfil their shameful destiny every where, and California only ripens their depravity a little earlier. It is the second class who suffer chiefly from the peculiar moral atmosphere of the land of gold. In the Atlantic States, hedged in by a healthy public opinion, guarded by jealous laws, flattered into chastity by the respectful attentions which that virtue ever commands, they might retain to their dying day that physical purity which satisfies the great majority of husbands. In California, however, these restraints are all removed. Public opinion arrays itself on the side of vice; the laws are powerless to punish the sins of impurity; and all the attentions the women receive are based upon the hope of their ultimate fall. How are such women to resist? Cut loose at once from all those restraints which kept them in the right way, will they not dart off into the devious paths of error and of sin? It is impossible that it should be otherwise; and the man who would keep faithful to himself a wife of this type in California, must have wealth enough to gratify her most extravagant whims, time to devote exclusively to watching her, eyes keener than those of Argus, and cunning sharper than that of Vidocq.
The third class—of whom, I regret to say, I have met with but few in the Eureka State—have also peculiar trials to undergo. Society in that country is a reproduction, on a large scale, of the morals of the courts of Charles II of England and Louis XV of France. Vice only is esteemed and lauded, virtue is treated as an idle dream, an insulting pretence of superiority, or a stupid folly beneath the notice of men of sense. People do not believe in it—they scorn it, they insult it; they consider it a mere avaricious attempt to dispose of venal charms above their market value, so that the chaste woman has not only to suffer the persecution of insulting proposals, but the doubt of that virtue which repels her pursuers, and the sneers and scandal of a depraved and debased community.
Many women, of conceded respectability in California, seem to have come out there for the exclusive purpose of selling their charms to the highest bidder. Others, of more honest hearts, have fallen victims to the peculiar seductions of the place, but I must be allowed to pay a tribute to the sex, even in this its degenerate condition. Paradoxical as the statement may sound, it is rigorously true that these very women have improved the morals of the community. Any one who, like myself, has had the opportunity of seeing California before and after the advent of these women, must have been struck with the decided improvement in society since their arrival. They have undoubtedly banished much barbarism, softened many hard hearts, and given a gentleness to the men which they did not possess before. What, then, might we not expect from an influx of the chaste wives and tender mothers that bless our other sea-board?
CHAPTER IV.
SAN FRANCISCO.
We will now pay our respects to the occidental metropolis of the United States, sometimes honored with the title of the Queen City of the Pacific.
It has not been more truthfully remarked that Paris is France, than that San Francisco is California. This is the grand mart in which all the travel, news, capital, business, and, in fact, every species of interest or employment that belongs to the State is concentrated—the nucleus around which every plan and project must first be developed before it can receive life, vigor, system and order. It is the fountain-head of all the tributaries of trade and traffic that flow through the State—the great trestle-board or chart of operations to which all the journeymen repair for designs and instructions to pursue their labors. It is the supreme tribunal and regulator of affairs—the heart, the life, and the stay of the State. Contrary to the general rule, in this case the city supports the country, instead of the country nurturing and sustaining the city; and this will continue to be the case so long as the country is under the necessity of importing whatever she requires for use. Until she becomes the producer of the bulk or major part of that which she consumes, San Francisco will retain this ascendency. Every important movement, whether of a public, private, political or commercial character, receives its impetus from this point; and owing to its advantageous geographical position, and the facilities and accommodation offered for shipping, I think it may be safely said that San Francisco will be a great city, although California can never become a great State.
In order to particularize a little, and to furnish the reader with a more systematic idea of the city, we will imagine ourselves in a vessel, some distance at sea, approaching the coast of California in about the lat. of 37° 45´ N. and lon. 122° 25´ W. This will bring us to the Golden Gate, the entrance to the harbor. This entrance is a narrow outlet, through which at least seven-eighths of the entire waters of the State find their way into the Pacific ocean. It can be so thoroughly fortified that no maritime expedition could ever force its way through it.
Passing through the Gate, we enter the bay, and find it to be one of the largest and finest in the world, dotted with several small islands, and abounding in excellent fish of every variety. Soon we arrive at Long Wharf; the steamer is run alongside, and we are in the Eldorado of modern times. Around us we behold an innumerable crowd of eager lookers-on, who have come down from the city to meet their wives, lovers, fathers, mothers, sisters, or brothers, as the case may be. The crowd is probably one of the most motley and heterogeneous that ever occupied space. It is composed of specimens of humanity from almost every clime and nation upon the habitable globe. Citizens from every State in the Union, North and South, Americans, French, English, Irish, Scotch, Germans, Dutch, Danes, Swedes, Spaniards, Portuguese, Italians, Russians, Poles, Greeks, Chinese, Japanese, Hindoos, Sandwich Islanders, New Zealanders, Indians, Africans, and hybrids—all stand before us. We see all grades and conditions, all ages and sexes, all colors and costumes, in short, a complete human menagerie.