When we have once sated ourselves with the general effect, there still remains a number of details, picturesque, interesting, or quaint. There is the Golden Gate Park, the cypresses and eucalypti at one end of which testify to the balminess of the climate, while the sand-dunes at its other end show the original condition of the whole surface of the peninsula, and add to our admiration of nature a sense of respectful awe for the transforming energy of man. Beyond Golden Gate Park we reach Sutro Heights, another desert that has been made to blossom like the rose. Here we look out over the Pacific to the musically named Farralone Islands, thirty miles to the west. Then we descend for luncheon to the Cliff House below, and watch the uncouth gambols of hundreds of fat sea-lions (Spanish lobos marinos), which, strictly protected from the rifle or harpoon, swim, and plunge, and bark unconcernedly within a stone's throw of the observer. The largest of these animals are fifteen feet long and weigh about a ton; and it is said that certain individuals, recognisable by some peculiarity, are known to have frequented the rocks for many years. On our way back to the lower part of the city we use one of the cable-cars crawling up and down the steep inclines like flies on a window-pane; and we find, if the long polished seat of the car be otherwise unoccupied, that we have positive difficulty in preventing ourselves slipping down from one end of the car to the other. By this time the strong afternoon wind[29] has set in from the sea, and we notice with surprise that the seasoned Friscans, still clad in the muslins and linens that seemed suitable enough at high noon, seek by preference the open seats of the locomotive car, while we, puny visitors, turn up our coat-collars and flee to the shelter of the "trailer" or covered car. As we come over "Nob Hill" we take in the size of the houses of the Californian millionaires, note that they are of wood (on account of the earthquakes?), and bemoan the misdirected efforts of their architects, who, instead of availing themselves of the unique chance of producing monuments of characteristically developed timber architecture, have known no better than to slavishly imitate the incongruous features of stone houses in the style of the Renaissance. Indeed, we shall feel that San Francisco is badly off for fine buildings of all and every kind. If daylight still allows we may visit the Mission Dolores, one of the interesting old Spanish foundations that form the origin of so many places in California, and if we are historically inclined we may inspect the old Spanish grants in the Surveyor-General's office. Those of us whose tastes are modern and literary may find our account in identifying some of the places in R.L. Stevenson's "Ebb Tide," and it will go hard with us if we do not also meet a few of his characters amid the cosmopolitan crowd in the streets or on the wharves. At night we may visit China without the trouble of a voyage, and perambulate a city of 25,000 Celestials under the safe guidance of an Irish-accented detective. So often have the features of Chinatown been described—its incense-scented joss-houses, its interminable stage-plays, its opium-joints, its drug-stores with their extraordinary remedies, its curiosity shops, and its restaurants—that no repetition need be attempted here. We leave it with a sense of the curious incongruity which allows this colony of Orientals to live in the most wide-awake of western countries with an apparently almost total neglect of such sanitary observances as are held indispensable in all other modern municipalities. It is certain that no more horrible sight could be seen in the extreme East than the so-called "Hermit of Chinatown," an insane devotee who has lived for years crouched in a miserable little outhouse, subsisting on the offerings of the charitable, and degraded almost beyond the pale of humanity by his unbroken silence, his blank immobility, and his neglect of all the decencies of life. And this is an American resident, if not an American citizen! If the reader is as lucky as the writer, he may wind up the day with a smart shock of earthquake; and if he is equally sleepy and unintelligent (which Heaven forefend!), he may miss its keen relish by drowsily wondering what on earth they mean by moving that very heavy grand piano overhead at that time of night.
"Two-thirds of them come here to die, and they can't do it." This was said by the famous Mr. Barnum about Colorado Springs; and the active life and cheerful manners of the condemned invalids who flourish in this charming little city go far to confirm the truth concealed beneath the jest. The land has insensibly sloped upwards since the traveller left the Mississippi behind him, and he now finds himself in a flowery prairie 6,000 feet above the sea level, while close by one of the finest sections of the Rocky Mountains rears its snowy peaks to a height of 6,000 to 8,000 feet more. The climate resembles that of Davos, and like it is preëminently suited for all predisposed to or already affected with consumption; but Colorado enjoys more sunshine than its Swiss rival, and has no disagreeable period of melting snow. The town is sheltered by the foothills, except to the southeast, where it lies open to the great plains; and, being situated where they meet the mountains, it enjoys the openness and free supply of fresh air of the seashore, without its dampness. The name is somewhat of a misnomer, as the nearest springs are those of Manitou, about five miles to the north.
Colorado Springs may be summed up as an oasis of Eastern civilisation and finish in an environment of Western rawness and enterprise. It has been described as "a charming big village, like the well-laid-out suburb of some large Eastern city." Its wide, tree-shaded streets are kept in excellent order. There is a refreshing absence of those "loose ends" of a new civilisation which even the largest of the Western cities are too apt to show. No manufactures are carried on, and no "saloons" are permitted. The inhabitants consist very largely of educated and refined people from the Eastern States and England, whose health does not allow them to live in their damper native climes. The tone of the place is a refreshing blend of the civilisation of the East and the unconventionalism of the West. Perhaps there is no pleasanter example of extreme social democracy. The young man of the East, unprovided with a private income, finds no scope here for his specially trained capacities, and is glad to turn an honest penny and occupy his time with anything he can get. Thus there are gentlemen in the conventional sense of the word among many of the so-called humbler callings, and one may rub shoulders at the charming little clubs with an Oxford-bred livery-stable keeper or a Harvard graduate who has turned his energies toward the selling of milk. Few visitors to Colorado Springs will fail to carry away a grateful and pleasant impression of the English doctor who has found vigorous life and a prosperous career in the place of exile to which his health condemned him in early manhood, and who has repaid the place for its gift of vitality by the most intelligent and effective championship of its advantages. These latter include an excellent hotel and a flourishing college for delicate girls and boys.
Denver, a near neighbour of Colorado Springs (if we speak more Americano), is an excellent example, both in theory and practice, of the confident expectation of growth with which new American cities are founded. The necessary public buildings are not huddled together as a nucleus from which the municipal infant may grow outwards; but a large and generous view is taken of the possibilities of expansion. Events do not always justify this sanguine spirit of forethought. The capitol at Washington still turns its back on the city of which it was to be the centre as well as the crown. In a great number of cases, however, hope and fact eventually meet together. The capitol of Bismarck, chief town of North Dakota, was founded in 1883, nearly a mile from the city, on a rising site in the midst of the prairie. It has already been reached by the advancing tide of houses, and will doubtless, in no long time, occupy a conveniently central situation. Denver is an equally conspicuous instance of the same tendency. The changes that took place in that city between the date of my visit to it and the reading of the proof-sheets of "Baedeker's United States" a year or so later demanded an almost entire rewriting of the description. Doubtless it has altered at least as much since then, and very likely the one or two slightly critical remarks of the handbook of 1893 are already grossly libellous. Denver quadrupled its population between 1880 and 1890. The value of its manufactures and of the precious ores smelted here reaches a fabulous amount of millions of dollars. The usual proportion of "million" and "two million dollar buildings" have been erected. Many of the principal streets are (most wonderful of all!) excellently paved and kept reasonably clean. But the crowning glory of Denver for every intelligent traveller is its magnificent view of the Rocky Mountains, which are seen to the West in an unbroken line of at least one hundred and fifty miles. Though forty miles distant, they look, owing to the purity of the atmosphere, as if they were within a walk of two or three hours. Denver is fond of calling herself the "Queen City of the Plains," and few will grudge the epithet queenly if it is applied to the possession of this matchless outlook on the grandest manifestations of nature. If the Denver citizen brags more of his State Capitol, his Metropole Hotel (no accent, please!), and his smelting works than of his snow-piled mountains and abysmal cañons, he only follows a natural human instinct in estimating most highly that which has cost him most trouble.
Mr. James Bryce has an interesting chapter on the absence of a capital in the United States. By capital he means "a city which is not only the seat of political government, but is also by the size, wealth, and character of its population the head and centre of the country, a leading seat of commerce and industry, a reservoir of financial resources, the favoured residence of the great and powerful, the spot in which the chiefs of the learned professions are to be found, where the most potent and widely read journals are published, whither men of literary and scientific capacity are drawn." New York journalists, with a happy disregard of the historical connotation of language, are prone to speak of their city as a metropolis; but it is very evident that the most liberal interpretation of the word cannot elevate New York to the relative position of such European metropolitan cities as Paris or London. Washington, the nominal capital of the United States, is perhaps still farther from satisfying Mr. Bryce's definition. It certainly is a relatively small city, and it is not a leading seat of trade, manufacture, or finance. It is also true that its journals do not rank among the leading papers of the land; but, on the other hand, it must be remembered that every important American journal has its Washington correspondent, and that in critical times the letters of these gentlemen are of very great weight. As the seat of the Supreme Judicial Bench of the United States, it has as good a claim as any other American city to be the residence of the "chiefs of the learned professions;" and it is quite remarkable how, owing to the great national collections and departments, it has come to the front as the main focus of the scientific interests of the country. The Cosmos Club's list of members is alone sufficient to illustrate this. Its attraction to men of letters has proved less cogent; but the life of an eminent literary man of (say) New Orleans or Boston is much more likely to include a prolonged visit to Washington than to any other American city not his own. The Library of Congress alone, now magnificently housed in an elaborately decorated new building, is a strong magnet. In the same way there is a growing tendency for all who can afford it to spend at least one season in Washington. The belle of Kalamazoo or Little Rock is not satisfied till she has made her bow in Washington under the wing of her State representative, and the senator is no-wise loath to see his wife's tea-parties brightened by a bevy of the prettiest girls from his native wilds. University men throughout the Union, leaders of provincial bars, and a host of others have often occasion to visit Washington. When we add to all this the army of government employees and the cosmopolitan element of the diplomatic corps, we can easily see that, so far as "society" is concerned, Washington is more like a European capital than any other American city. Nothing is more amusing—for a short time, at least—than a round of the teas, dinners, receptions, and balls of Washington, where the American girl is seen in all her glory, with captives of every clime, from the almond-eyed Chinaman to the most faultlessly correct Piccadilly exquisite, at her dainty feet. I never saw a bevy of more beautiful women than officiated at one senatorial afternoon tea I visited; so beautiful were they as to make me entirely forget what seemed to my untutored European taste the absurdity of their wearing low-necked evening gowns while their guests sported hat and jacket and fur. The whole tone of Washington society from the President downward is one of the greatest hospitality and geniality towards strangers. The city is beautifully laid out, and its plan may be described as that of a wheel laid on a gridiron, the rectangular arrangement of the streets having superimposed on it a system of radiating avenues, lined with trees and named for the different States of the Union. The city is governed and kept admirably in order by a board of commissioners appointed by the President. The sobriquet of "City of Magnificent Distances," applied to Washington when its framework seemed unnecessarily large for its growth, is still deserved, perhaps, for the width of its streets and the spaciousness of its parks and squares. The floating white dome of the Capitol dominates the entire city, and almost every street-vista ends in an imposing public building, a mass of luxuriant greenery, or at the least a memorial statue. The little wooden houses of the coloured squatters that used to alternate freely with the statelier mansions of officialdom are now rapidly disappearing; and some, perhaps, will regret the obliteration of the element of picturesqueness suggested in the quaint contrast. The absence of the wealth-suggesting but artistically somewhat sordid accompaniments of a busy industrialism also contributes to Washington's position as one of the most singularly handsome cities on the globe. Among the other striking features of the American capital is the Washington Memorial, a huge obelisk raising its metal-tipped apex to a height of five hundred and fifty-five feet. There are those who consider this a meaningless pile of masonry; but the writer sympathises rather with the critics who find it, in its massive and heaven-reaching simplicity, a fit counterpart to the Capitol and one of the noblest monuments ever raised to mortal man. When gleaming in the westering sun, like a slender, tapering, sky-pointing finger of gold, no finer index can be imagined to direct the gazer to the record of a glorious history. Near the monument is the White House, a building which, in its modest yet adequate dimensions, embodies the democratic ideal more fitly, it may be feared, than certain other phases of the Great Republic. Without cataloguing the other public buildings of Washington, we may quit it with a glow of patriotic fervour over the fact that the Smithsonian Institute here, one of the most important scientific institutions in the world, was founded by an Englishman, who, so far as is known, never even visited the United States, but left his large fortune for "the increase and diffusion of knowledge among men," to the care of that country with whose generous and popular principles he was most in sympathy.
FOOTNOTES:
[24] This refers to 1893; things are much better now.
[25] This suggestion of topsy-turvydom in the relations of God and Mammon is much intensified when we find an apartment house like the "Osborne" towering high above the church-spire on the opposite side of the way, or see Trinity Church simply smothered by the contiguous office buildings.
[26] Compare Montgomery Schuyler's "American Architecture," an excellent though brief account and appreciation of modern American building.
[27] The position of the Metropolitan Museum of Art is so assured that in 1896 its trustees declined a bequest of 90 paintings (claiming to include specimens of Velazquez, Titian, Rubens, and other great artists), because it was hampered with the condition that it had to be accepted and exhibited en bloc.