We dropped anchor at San Francisco Feb. 12th, making the voyage in 111 days, one day less than the good ship had logged before. We took pleasure in reading on shore the record which I give below.[6]
THE PRIVILEGE OF SLOW MOTION.
One of the San Francisco papers spoke of there being two of the pastors of Boston in San Francisco, one of whom, a pastor there for thirty-five years, had been a hundred and eleven days in coming from New York to California, while the other, a young man, had been only ten days on his way. This was true, and it showed what progress had been made within a life time in the means of intercourse between distant parts of the country.
It is easy, however, to imagine a state of things in which it would be a privilege to be a hundred and eleven days on the way from Boston to San Francisco. If the opportunity of navigation were wholly cut off and the only way of passing from New York to California should be to be whirled along in ten days from point to point, men would say, “Alas! for modern degeneracy. Time was, within the memory of not a few now living, when it was a luxury to travel. You could take passage in one of those clippers whose names and exploits now seem fabulous, and the only memorials of them are paintings and photographs on our parlor walls, and in books of art; and in those palaces you could sail down one side of the continent, reach Cape Horn, go five degrees south of it to make a safe run around the great land mark and pass up on the other side. Think of the privilege of running through the Straits of Lemaire, of coming close by the shores of Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego, of experiencing those Cape Horn swells, of feeling that you were not far from Antarctic regions. Those were days when life had some romance in it. Now you seem to be fired out of a field piece; the next thing will be to creep into a pneumatic machine, the air will be exhausted and in a state of suspended consciousness you will wake from your short delirious dream and will be told that you have been shot eight thousand miles across the continent. Some like this; annihilate time and distance and they ask no more; for our part give us the old ways; steam is good in its place; but we envy those who could be a hundred and eleven days on the water, passing from the east to the west.”
SAN FRANCISCO.
It would be gratifying to indulge in full descriptions of San Francisco and the enjoyment derived from valued friends. In doing this, I could most cordially repeat the enthusiastic words of others. Let me give at once the scale by which I soon learned to measure everything in this wonderful region, indicated by some first impressions:
Before leaving home, an elderly lady told me that she had long watched her calla lily, hoping that it would open in time to be presented to me before I left home. It came at last, perfectly beautiful, such as the stem had yielded several times before; the same silvery frost work on its petals, the same odor of lemon balm in the calyx. I told the venerable donor that I believed that the impression made by her rare gift, so long and carefully watched, a beautiful unit, lovely in its oneness, would have a charm for me which I could not suppose would be forgotten in more luxuriant climes. My one calla lily which had made a last impression upon me on leaving home, was brought forcibly to mind the morning after my arrival. I was requested to walk to the window, where I was told some favorites of mine were waiting to see me. There stood in a border to a flower garden, thirty calla lily plants, each plant with its lily in perfect growth. There was no more spirit in me. Is this the scale by which you excel your friends at the East? I found it to be so. A pleasurable feeling of being vanquished came over me. Every hour brought its new surprise. I gave up. I was in California.
A day or two after, the seal was set to my conviction that I was there. I had the pleasure of experiencing an earthquake. About ten o’clock one fair day, suddenly a noise came, such as I never before heard, and a motion unlike anything which I had ever felt before. It lasted not more than five seconds. But Cape Horn did not shake after that pattern. No description can convey any idea of the feeling excited by it. I turned involuntarily to my door, and, opening it, found the family in the entry, brought there in the same bewildered state of mind as myself. Apprehension of danger soon subsided; but we wished ourselves at sea, in order to be safe.
The view of the Pacific from the Cliff House seemed to me the most interesting of sea views from shore. In itself, it so impressed me; but, added to this, the recollection of the great extent of territory of which it is a boundary, makes it approach near to the sublime. The coast line of California, taking in its curves and indentations, it is said in an able statistical paper in that State, is equal to a straight line drawn from San Francisco to Plymouth, Mass. Those seals, climbing upon the rocks not many feet from you, undisturbed by your presence, giving you a new chapter in natural history, opening animal life to you as you may not have seen it before, remind you that you are in a region of the earth far from your home. One day in driving we came to a hill which, though it was only the fifteenth of March, had began to put forth a combination of colors so numerous and brilliant as to make you believe at first that they were the work of art. A little below, the ground was without any sign of spring. A soil which could so quickly feel the sun as to give forth its luxuriance profusely, as it were at a day’s warning, though lifted but a little above the general level, impresses one with its extremely sensitive nature, making you ready to believe anything which is told you of its fruitfulness.
So many friends come around you here that your home circle seems to have stretched its circumference; for those who dwell under these western skies seem to retain their native qualities, which make you identify them at once as those whom you formerly knew and loved. Ties of friendship or valued acquaintance draw many to you, in connection or association with people whom you are glad to recall in the features, the voices, of their descendants. The names of Oakland and Alameda, and of other places, will ever be associated in our minds with names and scenes most precious. I left this wonderful region with great love for it, deeply impressed with the many valued friends whom I found or made there.