As firemen they are most prompt and efficient, performing their perilous duties with the greatest zeal and intrepidity—as might indeed be expected of men who undertake such a service for no hope of reward, but for their own love of the danger and excitement attending upon it, actuated, at the same time, by a chivalrous desire to save either life or property, in trying to accomplish which they gallantly risk, and frequently lose, their own lives. This feeling is kept alive by the readiness with which the public pay honor to any individual who conspicuously distinguishes himself—generally by presenting him with a gold or silver speaking-trumpet (that article being in the States as much the badge of office of a captain of a fire-company as with us of a captain of a man-of-war), while any fireman who is killed in discharge of his duties is buried with all pomp and ceremony by the whole fire-brigade.
Two miles above San Francisco, on the shore of the bay, is the Mission Dolores, one of those which were established in different parts of the country by the Spaniards. It was a very small village of a few adobe houses and a church, adjoining which stood a large building, the abode of the priests. The land in the neighborhood is flat and fertile, and was being rapidly converted into market-gardens; but the village itself was as yet but little changed. It had a look of antiquity and completeness, as if it had been finished long ago, and as if nothing more was ever likely to be done with it. As is the case with all Spanish-American towns, the very style of the architecture communicated an oppressive feeling of stillness, and its gloomy solitude was only relieved by a few listless unoccupied-looking Mexicans and native Californians.
The contrast to San Francisco was so great that on coming out here one could almost think that the noisy city he had left but half an hour before had existence only in his imagination; for San Francisco presented a picture of universal human nature boiling over, while here was nothing but human stagnation—a more violent extreme than would have been the wilderness as yet untrodden by man. Being but a slightly reduced counterpart of what San Francisco was a year or two before, it offered a good point of view from which to contemplate the miraculous growth of that city, still not only increasing in extent but improving in beauty and in excellence in all its parts, and progressing so rapidly that, almost from day to day, one could mark its steady advancement in everything which denotes the presence of a wealthy and prosperous community.
The “Mission,” however, was not suffered to remain long in a state of torpor. A plank road was built to it from San Francisco. Numbers of villas sprang up around it,—and good hotels, a race-course, and other attractions soon made it the favorite resort for all who sought an hour’s relief from the excitement of the city.
At the very head of the bay, some sixty miles from San Francisco, is the town of San José, situated in an extensive and most fertile valley, which was all being brought under cultivation, and where some farmers had already made large fortunes by their onions and potatoes, for the growth of which the soil is peculiarly adapted. San José was the headquarters of the native Californians, many of whom were wealthy men, at least in so far as they owned immense estates and thousands of wild cattle. They did not “hold their own,” however, with the more enterprising people who were now effecting such a complete revolution in the country. Their property became a thousandfold more valuable, and they had every chance to benefit by the new order of things; but men who had passed their lives in that sparsely populated and secluded part of the world, directing a few half-savage Indians in herding wild cattle, were not exactly calculated to foresee, or to speculate upon, the effects of an overwhelming influx of men so different in all respects from themselves; and even when occasions of enriching themselves were forced upon them, they were ignorant of their own advantages, and were inferior in smartness to the men with whom they had to deal. Still, although too slow to keep up with the pace at which the country was now going ahead, many of them were, nevertheless, men of considerable sagacity, and appeared to no disadvantage as members of the legislature, to which they were returned from parts of the State remote from the mines, and where as yet there were few American settlers.
San José was quite out of the way of gold-hunters, and there was consequently about the place a good deal of the California of other days. It was at that time, however, the seat of government; and, consequently, a large number of Americans were here assembled, and gave some life to the town, which had also been improved by the addition of several new streets of more modern-looking houses than the old mud and tile concerns of the native Californians.
Small steamers plied to within a mile or two of the town from San Francisco, and there were also four-horse coaches which did the sixty miles in about five hours. The drive down the valley of the San José is in some parts very beautiful. The country is smooth and open—not so flat as to appear monotonous—and is sufficiently wooded with fine oaks; but towards San Francisco it becomes more hilly and bleak. The soil is sandy; indeed, excepting a few spots here and there, it is nothing but sand, and there is hardly a tree ten feet high within as many miles of the city.
CHAPTER V
OFF FOR THE MINES
I REMAINED in San Francisco till the worst of the rainy season was over, when I determined to go and try my luck in the mines; so, leaving my valuables in charge of a friend in San Francisco, I equipped myself in my worst suit of old clothes, and, with my blankets slung over my shoulder, I put myself on board the steamer for Sacramento.
As we did not start till five o’clock in the afternoon, we had not an opportunity of seeing very much of the scenery on the river. As long as daylight lasted, we were among smooth grassy hills and valleys, with but little brushwood, and only here and there a few stunted trees. Some of the valleys are exceedingly fertile, and all those sufficiently watered to render them available for cultivation had already been “taken up.”