The gold hunters

by John David Borthwick

San Francisco retained now but little resemblance to what it had been in its earlier days. The same extraordinary contrasts and incongruities were not to be seen either in the people or in the appearance of the streets. Men had settled down into their proper places; the various branches of business and trade had worked for themselves their own distinct channels; and the general style of the place was very much the same as that of any flourishing commercial city.

It had increased immensely in extent, and its growth had been in all directions. The barren sandhills which surrounded the city had been graded down to an even slope, and were covered with streets of well-built houses, and skirted by populous suburbs. Four or five wide streets, more than a mile in length, built up with solid and uniform brick warehouses, stretched all along in front of the city, upon ground which had been reclaimed from the bay; and between these and the upper part of the city was the region of fashionable shops and hotels, banks and other public offices.

The large fleet of ships which for a long time, while seamen’s wages were exorbitantly high, lay idly in the harbor, was now dispersed, and all the shipping actually engaged in discharging cargo found accommodation alongside of the numerous piers which had been built out for nearly a mile into the bay. All manner of trades and manufactures were flourishing as in a place a hundred years old. Omnibuses plied upon the principal thoroughfares, and numbers of small steamboats ran to the watering-places which had sprung up on the opposite shore.

The style of life had improved with the growth of the city, and with the increased facilities of procuring servants and house-room. The ordinary conventionalities of life were observed, and public opinion exercised its wonted control over men’s conduct; for the female part of creation was so numerously represented that births and marriages occupied a space in the daily papers larger than they require in many more populous places.

Female influence was particularly observable in the great attention men paid to their outward appearance. There was but little of the independent taste and individuality in dress of other days; all had succumbed to the sway of the goddess of fashion, and the usual style of gentleman’s dress was even more elaborate than in New York. All classes had changed, to a certain extent, in this respect. The miner, as he is seen in the mines, was not to be met with in San Francisco; he attired himself in suitable raiment in Sacramento or Stockton before venturing to show himself in the metropolis.

Gambling was decidedly on the wane. Two or three saloons were still extant, but the company to be found in them was not what it used to be. The scum of the population was there; but respectable men, with a character to lose, were chary of risking it by being seen in a public gambling-room; and, moreover, the greater domestic comfort which men enjoyed, and the usual attractions of social life, removed all excuse for frequenting such places.

Public amusements were of a high order. Biscaccianti and Catherine Hayes were giving concerts, Madame Anne Bishop was singing in English opera, and the performances at the various theaters were sustained by the most favorite actors from the Atlantic States.

Extravagant expenditure is a marked feature in San Francisco life. The same style of ostentation, however, which is practiced in older countries, is unattainable in California, and in such a country would entirely fail in its effect. Extravagance, accordingly, was indulged more for the purpose of procuring tangible enjoyment than for the sake of show. Men spent their money in surrounding themselves with the best of everything, not so much for display as from due appreciation of its excellence; for there is no city of the same size or age where there is so little provincialism; the inhabitants, generally, are eminently cosmopolitan in their character, and judge of merit by the highest standard.

As yet, the influence of California upon this country [England] is not so much felt by direct communication as through the medium of the States. A very large proportion of the English goods consumed in the country find their way there through the New York market, and in many cases in such a shape, as in articles manufactured in the States from English materials, that the actual value of the trade cannot be accurately estimated. The tide of emigration from this country to California follows very much the same course. The English are there, very numerous, but those direct from England bear but an exceedingly small proportion to those from the United States, from New South Wales, and other countries; and the latter, no doubt, possessed a great advantage, for, without undervaluing the merit of English mechanics and workmen in their own particular trade, it must be allowed that the same class of Americans are less confined to one speciality, and have more general knowledge of other trades, which makes them better men to be turned adrift in a new country, where they may have to employ themselves in a hundred different ways before they find an opportunity of following the trade to which they have been brought up. An English mechanic, after a few years’ experience of a younger country, without losing any of the superiority he may possess in his own trade, becomes more fitted to compete with the rest of the world when placed in a position where that speciality is unavailable.

California has afforded the Americans their first opportunity of showing their capacity as colonists. The other States which have of late years been added to the Union, are not a fair criterion, for they have been created merely by the expansion of the outer circumference of civilization, by the restlessness of the backwoodsman unaided by any other class; but the attractions offered by California were such as to draw to it a complete ready-made population of active and capable men, of every trade and profession.