FOLLOWING THE ARGONAUTS
So it's Westward Ho! for the land of worth,
Where the "is," not "was" is vital;
Where brawn for praise must win the earth,
Nor risk its new-born title.
Where to damn a man is to say he ran,
And heedless seeds are sown,
Where the thrill of strife is the spice of life,
And the creed is "GUARD YOUR OWN!"
—Woon.
When the fast mail steamer which had carried us from the Isthmus of Panama (we had journeyed to the Isthmus from New Orleans in the little transport McClellan), steamed through the Golden Gate and anchored off the Presidio I looked with great eagerness and curiosity on the wonderful city known in those days as "the toughest hole on earth," of which I had read and heard so much and which I had so longed to see. I saw a city rising on terraces from the smooth waters of a glorious bay whose wavelets were tempered by a sunshine that was as brilliant as it was ineffective against the keen sea-breeze of winter. The fog that had obscured our sight outside the Golden Gate was now gone—vanished like the mist-wraiths of the long-ago philosophers, and the glorious city of San Francisco was revealed to view.
I say "glorious," but the term must be understood to apply only to the city's surroundings, which were in truth magnificent. She looked like some imperial goddess, her forehead encircled by the faint band of mist that still lingered caressingly to the mountain tops, her countenance glistening with the dew on the green hill-slopes, her garments quaintly fashioned for her by the civilization that had brought her into being, her slippers the lustrous waters of the Bay itself. Later I came to know that she, too, was a goddess of moods, and dangerous moods; a coquette to some, a love to others, and to many a heartless vampire that sucked from them their hard-wrung dust, scattered their gold to the four winds of avarice that ever circled enticingly about the vortex of shallow joys that the City harbored, and, after intoxicating them with her beauty and her wine, flung them aside to make ready for the next comer. Too well had San Francisco merited the title I give it in the opening lines of this chapter. Some say that the earthquake and the fire came like vitriol cast on the features of a beautiful woman for the prostitution of her charms; but I, who lost little to her lures, am not one to judge.
My memories of San Francisco are at any rate a trifle hazy now, for it is many, many years since I last saw the sun set over the Marin hills. An era has passed since the glamour of the Coast of High Barbaree claimed my youthful attention. But I remember a city as evil within as it was lovely without, a city where were gathered the very dregs of humanity from the four corners of the earth. What Port Said is now, San Francisco was then, only worse. For every crime that is committed in the dark alleys of the Suez port or the equally murky callejons of the pestholes of Mexico, four were committed in the beautiful Californian town when I first went there. Women as well as men carried "hardware" strapped outside, and scarcely one who had not at some time found this precaution useful. The city abounded with footpads and ruffians of every nationality and description, whose prices for cutting a throat or "rolling a stiff" depended on the cupidity of the moment or on the quantity of liquor their capacious stomachs held. Scores of killings occurred and excited little comment.
Thousands of men were daily passing in and out of the city, drawn by the lure of the Sierra gold-fields; some of these came back with the joy of dreams come true and full pokes hung around their necks, some came with the misery of utter failure in their hearts, and some—alas, they were many, returned not at all.
The Barbary Coast was fast gaining for itself an unenviable reputation throughout the world. Every time one walked on Pacific street with any money in pocket he took his life in his hand. "Guard Your Own!" was the accepted creed of the time and woe to him who could not do so. Gold was thrown about like water. The dancing girls made fabulous sums as commissions on drinks their consorts could be persuaded to buy. Hundreds of thousands of dollars were spent nightly in the great temples devoted to gambling, and there men risked on the luck of a moment or the turn of a painted wheel fortunes wrung from the soil by months and sometimes years of terrific work in the diggings. The most famous gamblers of the West at that time made their headquarters in San Francisco, and they came from all countries. England contributed not a few of these gentlemen traders in the caprices of fortune, France her quota, Germany very few and China many; but these last possessed the dives, the lowest kind of gambling places, where men went only when they were desperate and did not care.
We were not at this time, however, to be given an opportunity to see as much of San Francisco as most of us would have liked. After a short stay at the Presidio we were sent to Wilmington, then a small port in the southern part of the State but now incorporated in the great city of Los Angeles. Here we drew our horses for the long trek across the desert to our future home in the Territory of Arizona. There was no railroad at that time in California, the line not even having been surveyed as far as San Jose, which was already a city but, instead of being, as now, the market-place for a dozen fertile and beautiful valleys, she was then merely an outfitting point for parties of travelers, prospectors, cattlemen and the like, and was also a station and terminus for various stage lines.
