The Teams, Exhausted, Began to Fail
The city of San Francisco had sprung up almost overnight. In 1835 a Captain Richardson had landed on the shore of Yerba Buena Cove, and built a hut of four redwood posts, covered by a sail. Five years afterward this village of Yerba Buena contained about fifty people and a dozen houses. In 1846 the American war-ship Portsmouth anchored there, and her captain raised the "Stars and Stripes" on the Plaza. At that time there were not more than fifty houses and two hundred people. When the town became American the Plaza was renamed Portsmouth Square, and a year later the settlement was christened San Francisco. That was in January, 1847; and by midsummer of 1849 the town had become a city. It was an odd place to look at. The houses were made of rough unpainted boards, with cotton nailed across the walls and ceiling in place of plaster; and many a thriving business was carried on in canvas tents. There were few homes. The city was crowded; but most of the population did not intend to stay. They came to buy what they needed, or sell what they brought with them, and then hasten away to the mines. So many eager strangers naturally drove the prices up enormously, especially when it seemed as though gold could be had for the taking. The restaurants charged three dollars for a cup of coffee, a slice of ham, and two eggs. Houses and lots sold for from ten thousand to seventy-five thousand dollars each, and everything else was in proportion. What happened in San Francisco also happened in many other California towns. Sacramento was the result of the gold-craze. Speculators bought large tracts of land in any attractive place, gave it a high-sounding name, and sold city lots. Many of these so-called cities, however, shriveled up within a year or two. The seaports flourished because they were the gateways through which the newcomers passed in their rush to locate in the gold country.
These seaports became the goal of merchants everywhere. Necessary articles were so scarce that they were shipped long distances. Flour was brought from Australia and Chili, rice and sugar from China, and the cities along the Atlantic provided the dry-goods, the tools, and the furniture. At one time a cotton shirt would sell for forty dollars, a tin pan for nine, and a candle for three. But on the other hand cargoes of goods that were not needed, silks and satins, costly house-furnishings, were left on the beaches and finally sold for a song.
From the seaports the new arrivals hurried either up the Sacramento and the Feather Rivers to the northern gold fields, or up the San Joaquin to the southern country. Usually they were guided by the latest story of a rich find, and went where the chances seemed best. Several men would join forces and pitch their tents together, naming their camp Rat-trap Slide, Rough and Ready Camp, Slap-jack Bar, Mad Mule Gulch, Git-up-and-Git, You Bet, or any other name that struck their fancy. There were no laws to govern these little settlements, and the men adopted a rough system of justice that suited themselves. But as the numbers increased it was evident that California must have a better form of government, and steps were taken to have that rich stretch of land along the Pacific admitted as a state to the United States.
In three years California had grown from the home of about two thousand people to the home of eighty thousand. The finding of gold had changed that almost unknown wilderness into a thriving land in the twinkling of an eye. Railroads were built to reach it, and more and more men poured west. Some men made great fortunes, but more in a few months abandoned their claims and drifted to the cities, or made their way slowly back to the eastern farms and villages from which they had set out. The Forty-niners, as the gold-seekers were called, found plenty of adventure in California, even if they did not all find a short-cut to wealth.
[IX]
HOW THE UNITED STATES MADE FRIENDS WITH JAPAN
One of the beautiful names that the Japanese have given to their country is "Land of Great Peace," and at no time was this name more appropriate than in the middle of the nineteenth century. Two hundred years before the last of the civil wars of Japan had come to an end, and the people, weary of years of bloodshed, had turned delightedly to peaceful ways. The rice-fields were replanted, artisans returned to their crafts, shops opened again, and poets and painters followed the call of their arts. The samurai, or warriors, sheathed their swords, though they still regarded them as their very souls. They hung their armor in their ancestral halls, and spent their time in sport or idleness. The daimios, or nobles of Japan, lived either in the city of Yedo or at their country houses, taking their ease, and gradually forgetting the arts of war on which their power had been founded. All the people were quite contented, and had no desire to trade with the rest of the world. As a matter of fact they knew almost nothing about other countries, except through English or Russian sailors who occasionally landed on their coasts. Japan was satisfied to be a hermit nation.
On the afternoon of the seventh day of July, 1853, or the third day of the sixth month of Kayéi, in the reign of the Emperor Koméi, the farmers working in the muddy rice-fields near the village of Uraga saw a strange sight. It was a clear summer afternoon, and the beautiful mountain Fuji, its cone wreathed in white clouds, could be seen from sea and shore. What startled the men in the fields, the people in the village, and the boatmen in the harbor, was a fleet of vessels coming to anchor in the bay of Yedo. These monsters, with their sails furled, although they were heading against the wind, were shooting tongues of smoke from their great black throats. "See the fire-vessels!" cried the Japanese to each other. When the peasants asked the priests where the monsters came from the wise men answered that they were the fire-vessels of the barbarians who lived in the West.