The Chinese theatre was a curious pagoda-looking edifice, built by them expressly for theatrical purposes, and painted, outside and in, in an extraordinary manner. The performances went on day and night, without intermission, and consisted principally of juggling and feats of dexterity. The most exciting part of the exhibition was when one man, and decidedly a man of some little nerve, made a spread eagle of himself and stood up against a door, while half-a-dozen others, at a distance of fifteen or twenty feet, pelted the door with sharp-pointed bowie-knives, putting a knife into every square inch of the door, but never touching the man. It was very pleasant to see, from the unflinching way in which the fellow stood it out, the confidence he placed in the infallibility of his brethren. They had also short dramatic performances, which were quite unintelligible to outside barbarians. The only point of interest about them was the extraordinary gorgeous dresses of the actors; but the incessant noise they made with gongs and kettle-drums was so discordant and deafening that a few minutes at a time was as long as any one could stay in the place.
There were several very good American theatres, a French theatre, and an Italian opera, besides concerts, masquerades, a circus, and other public amusements. The most curious were certainly the masquerades. They were generally given in one of the large gambling saloons, and in the placards announcing that they were to come off, appeared conspicuously also the intimation of “No weapons admitted”; “A strong police will be in attendance.” The company was just such as might be seen in any gambling room; and, beyond the presence of half-a-dozen masks in female attire, there was nothing to carry out the idea of a ball or a masquerade at all; but it was worth while to go, if only to watch the company arrive, and to see the practical enforcement of the weapon clause in the announcements. Several doorkeepers were in attendance, to whom each man as he entered delivered up his knife or his pistol, receiving a check for it, just as one does for his cane or umbrella at the door of a picture-gallery. Most men drew a pistol from behind their back, and very often a knife along with it; some carried their bowie-knife down the back of their neck, or in their breast; demure, pious-looking men, in white neckcloths, lifted up the bottom of their waistcoat, and revealed the butt of a revolver; others, after having already disgorged a pistol, pulled up the leg of their trousers, and abstracted a huge bowie-knife from their boot; and there were men, terrible fellows, no doubt, but who were more likely to frighten themselves than any one else, who produced a revolver from each trouser-pocket, and a bowie-knife from their belt. If any man declared that he had no weapon, the statement was so incredible that he had to submit to be searched; an operation which was performed by the doorkeepers, who, I observed, were occasionally rewarded for their diligence by the discovery of a pistol secreted in some unusual part of the dress.
Some of the shops were very magnificently got up, and would not have been amiss in Regent Street. The watchmakers’ and jewelers’ shops especially were very numerous, and made a great display of immense gold watches, enormous gold rings and chains, with gold-headed canes, and diamond pins and brooches of a most formidable size. With numbers of men who found themselves possessed of an amount of money which they had never before dreamed of, and which they had no idea what to do with, the purchase of gold watches and diamond pins was a very favorite mode of getting rid of their spare cash. Laboring men fastened their coarse dirty shirts with a cluster of diamonds the size of a shilling, wore colossal gold rings on their fingers, and displayed a massive gold chain and seals from their watch-pocket; while hardly a man of any consequence returned to the Atlantic States without receiving from some one of his friends a huge gold-headed cane, with all his virtues and good qualities engraved upon it.
A large business was also done in Chinese shawls, and various Chinese curiosities. It was greatly the fashion for men, returning home, to take with them a quantity of such articles, as presents for their friends. In fact, a gorgeous Chinese shawl seemed to be as necessary for the returning Californian as a revolver and bowie-knife for the California emigrant. There was one large bazaar in particular where was exhibited such a stock of the costliest shawls, cabinets, workboxes, vases, and other articles of Chinese manufacture, with clocks, bronzes, and all sorts of drawing-room ornaments, that one would have thought it an establishment which could only be supported in a city like London or Paris.
Some of the streets in the upper part of the city presented a very singular appearance. The houses had been built before the grade of the different streets had been fixed by the corporation, and there were places where the streets, having been cut down through the hills to their proper level, were nothing more than wide trenches, with a perpendicular bank on either side, perhaps forty or fifty feet high, and on the brink of these stood the houses, to which access was gained by ladders and temporary wooden stairs, the unfortunate proprietor being obliged to go to the expense of grading his own lot, and so bringing himself down to a level with the rest of the world. In other places, where the street crossed a deep hollow, it formed a high embankment, with a row of houses at the foot of it, some nearly buried, and others already raised to the level of the street, resting on a sort of scaffolding, while the foundation was being filled in under them.
The soil was so sandy that the hills were easily cut down, and for this purpose a contrivance was used called a Steam Paddy, which did immense execution. It was worked by steam, and was somewhat on the principle of a dredging-machine, but with only one large bucket, which cut down about two tons of earth at a time and emptied itself into a truck placed alongside. From the spot where the Paddy was thus walking into the hills a railway was laid, extending to the shore, and trains of cars were continually rattling down across the streets, taking the earth to fill up those parts of the city which were as yet under water.
Two or three years later, in ’54, when an alteration was made in the grade of some of the streets, large brick and stone houses were raised several feet, by means of a most ingenious application of hydraulic pressure. Excavations were made, and under the foundation-walls of the houses were inserted a number of cylinders about two feet in height, so that the building rested entirely on the heads of the pistons. The cylinders were all connected by pipes with a force-pump, worked by a couple of men, who in this way could pump up a five-story brick building three or four inches in the course of the day. As the house grew up, props were inserted in case of accidents; and when it had been raised as far as the length of the pistons would allow, the whole apparatus was readjusted, and the operation was repeated till the required height was obtained. I went to witness the process when it was being applied to a large corner brick building, five stories high, with about sixty feet frontage each way. The flagged sidewalk was being raised along with it; but there was no interruption of the business going on in the premises, or anything whatever to indicate to the passer-by that the ground was growing under his feet. On going down under the house, one saw that the building was detached from the surrounding ground, and rested on a number of cylinders; but the only appearance of work being done was by two men quietly working a pump amid a ramification of small iron pipes. The apparatus had of course to be of an immense strength to withstand the pressure to which it was subjected, and the utmost nicety was required in its adjustment, to avoid straining and cracking the walls; but numbers of large buildings were raised most successfully in this way without receiving the slightest injury.
The hackney carriages of San Francisco were infinitely superior to those of any other city in the world. One might have supposed that any old cab which would hold together would have been good enough for such a place; but, on the contrary, the cabs—if cabs they could be called—were large handsome carriages, lined with silk, and brightly painted and polished, drawn by pairs of magnificent horses, in harness, which, like the carriages, was loaded with silver. They would have passed anywhere for showy private equipages, had the drivers only been in livery, instead of being fashionably dressed individuals in kid gloves. A London cabby would have stared in astonishment at an apparition of a stand of such cabs, and also at the fares which were charged. One could not cross the street in them under five dollars. The scale of cab-fares, however, was not out of proportion to the extravagance of other ordinary expenses. The drivers probably received two or three hundred dollars a month (about £700 a year), and the horses alone were worth from a thousand to fifteen hundred dollars each.
None of the private carriages came at all near the hacks in splendor. They were mostly of the American “buggy” character, and were drawn by fast-trotting horses. The Americans have a style and taste in driving peculiarly their own; they study neither grace nor comfort in their attitudes; speed is the only source of pleasure; and a “three-minute horse”—that is to say, one which trots his mile in three minutes—is the only horse worth driving; while anything slower than a “two-forty (2m. 40s.) horse” is not considered really fast.
A great many very fine horses had been imported from Sydney, but these were chiefly used in drays and under the saddle. The buggy horses were all American, and had made the journey across the plains. The native Californian horses are small, with great powers of endurance, but are generally not very tractable in harness.