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71 chapters
San Carlos
San Carlos
Ruins! A pile of stone, standing in a country of mud-tracks, adobe ranches, and timber-sheds? Yes, broken dome, projecting rafter, crumbling wall, and empty chancel, open to the wind and rain, poetic wrecks of what, in days gone by, have been a cloister and a church. A wide and ragged field, enclosed within a fence of sun-dried bricks, surrounds the fane, marking the sacred precincts with a dark and perishing line. No human form is seen, no human voice is heard. An owl, disturbed in her siesta,
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Mission Indians
Mission Indians
Though friar and priest have left the altars of San Carlos to the owls and lizards, some of the converts whom these fathers gathered into grace are staunch. A squad of Mexicans, armed with writs and rifles, drove out Fray Jose Maria, chief of the Carmelo friars; but neither writs nor rifles have been able to drive off “Capitan” Carlos, patriarch of the Carmelo camp. In dealing with Fray Jose Maria, the liberators had no more to do than close his church, disperse his brethren, seize his fields an
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Strangers In The Land
Strangers In The Land
The ground is almost cleared; cleared of the original and the Second growths. What crops will occupy the soil? On strolling to the orchard, we find a Portu guese squatter living in a mud lhut, under a fruit wall, and in the midst of apple trees. “Fine apples, Sefor,” smirks the Portuguese. “Just try the flavour of our fruit.” Though thin and cold, the acid has a grateful taste; but these Spanish apples cannot be compared with the American variety, a fruit which is at once meat and drink, food an
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A Lost Capital
A Lost Capital
Lapping round Pinos Point, Nine or Ten miles from the Old Quarries, the water races on a pale and sandy beach, of bow-like form, ending in Two green and picturesque bluffs. One bluff is Santa Cruz, the other Monterey. The arc is Twenty miles across; a sweep of sunny water, over which flocks of gulls and pelicans dart and flash. A slip of sand, dotted along the line with ribs and tusks of whales, so many that they look like drifts of snow, divides the dark blue sea from amber dunes and light gree
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Don Mariano
Don Mariano
No One can say whether the Vallejo family-of which Don Mariano is the head-derive their line from Hercules or only from Caesar. Nothing in the way of long descent would be surprising in Don Mariano; even though his race ran up to Adam, like the pedigree made out by heralds for his countryman Charles the Fifth. “You ask about the history of California,” he remarks; “My biography is the history of California.” In One sense he is right. Don Mariano's story is that of nearly every Mexican of rank. I
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White Conquerors
White Conquerors
“Guess you'll say here's a place,” whispers Colonel Brown, a settler in these parts. “If this valley had a little more rain, a little more soil, and a little less sun and wind, it would be a place! You bet?” Leaving the open sewers and pretty balconies of Monterey behind, we cross the amber dunes, and Twenty miles from the sea we strike the Rio Salinas, near the base of Monte Toro, and a few steps farther, on a creek called Sanjon del Alisal, we find a new city, called Salinas, rising from the e
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Hybrids
Hybrids
“We cannot now undo what has been done,” Don Mariano sighs, when we are talking of the bad blood in his province. “The Franciscan fathers tried to check this evil by keeping White men and Red women apart. They failed; the customs of the country were too strong for them. No One has yet succeeded in arresting an evil which baffled the Franciscan fathers. Too well we know the mischief, for this mixture of White with savage blood is giving us a vicious and unstable race.” White female faces are not
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Brigands
Brigands
IX California, as in Greece and Italy, brigands are the privateers of public wrongs, or what the peasants call their public wrongs. A brigand is a malcontent, who waits his chance to rise in a more threatening shape. Los Angeles and San Jose, the Free Towns peopled by disbanded soldiers, squaws, and camp followers, are Two great nests of rogues and thieves, gamblers and cut-throats. From these Free Towns, a line of brigand chiefs have drawn their scouts and helps. A mixed blood hates the agents
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Capitan Vasquez
Capitan Vasquez
The story of Tiburcio Vasquez is the legend of his race in light and shade. Born in Monterey county, Thirty-nine years ago, Vasquez is by birth a Mexican, and owes no fealty to the United States. His father, a mixed blood, like his neighbours, lived on a small farm called Los Felix, not far from Monterey. A poor school, kept by a drowsy priest, in Sleepy Hollow, offered him the only teaching he ever got. He learned to read a little, to recite his creed, and curse the heretics who came into his p
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Brigand Life
Brigand Life
Tres Pinos, a white hamlet on the Rio San Benito, was selected for the scene of his revenge. A mail passes through Tres Pinos every night. The place consists of a Post office, a tavern, a stable, a drinking bar, a smithy, and a barn. Leandro Davidson kept the hotel, Andrew Snyder owned a store. Snyder was rich. If all went well with him, Vasquez could reckon on adding the profit of money and horses, to the pleasure of revenge. Starting from Rock Creek, but leaving Rosalia at San Embro, the briga
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Love And Death
Love And Death
Though Capitan Vasquez never sighed in vain to senorita, he nursed a great contempt for women. “Do you think a woman had to do with your arrest?” “No, surely not,” replies the brigand with a sneer: “I never trusted women in my life.” “Not with the secret of your hiding-places in the hills?” “No, Senor; I never put myself in any woman's power, by telling her a secret that could do me injury.” Yet men may be betrayed who never give their trust, even to the women they profess to love. His wounds be
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Catholic Missions
Catholic Missions
“With Fifty thousand dollars,” the bandit said at San Jose, “I could have raised an army, driven out the English settlers, and cleared the southern counties of California from Santa Clara to San Diego.” Men less heated than the prisoner think that if Vasquez had been cursed with as much genius for affairs as Castro and Alvaredo, he might have caused a civil war and cost the State much blood and coin. These persons judge by what is going on in Mexico, a country very much like California, being oc
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The Jesuits
The Jesuits
“Their task is done, and they are gone,” says Padre Varsi, Principal of the Jesuit College in Santa Clara, and an eminent member of his company. A tall, dark figure, with a face of antique mould, in which the natural force seems tamed by fasting, prayer, and self-control, The reverend Father has lived in many cloisters, travelled in many countries, and is well acquainted with the world. He seems to live in his retreat, taking no thought of the world beyond his college gates; yet he is quick with
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Jesuits' Pupils
Jesuits' Pupils
Yet gravely gay and soberly festive as the Jesuit College m Santa Clara looks to those who stroll about gardens and playgrounds, the rules of order and the methods of instruction are devised with an austerity that strikes an English eye as almost penal. With elaborate art these rules and methods are designed to bring about One great and uniform result; a habit of deferring to the Church, to the abandonment of personal will and independent thought. To give the college something of a liberal air,
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Bay Of San Francisco
Bay Of San Francisco
A long and narrow inland sea, about the size and volume of Lake Leman, open to the ocean by an avenue called the Golden Gate; a stretch of water locked within the arms of picturesque and sunny hills, with islets sprinkled up and down, as Angel Island, Alcatraz, and Yerba Buena, round the cliffs of which skim flocks of gulls and pelicans; the inner shores all marsh and meadow, falling backward to the feet of mountain chains; shores not only rich in woods, in springs, in pastures, but adorned at e
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San Francisco
San Francisco
Closing the passage by the Golden Gate, a city of white houses, spires, and pinnacles rises from the water-line, and rolling backward over flat and sand rift, strikes a headland on the right, and surging up Two hills, creams round their sides, and runs in foam towards yet more distant heights. This city is San Francisco, seen from the ferry-boat; a port and town with ships and steamers, wharves and docks, in which the flags of every nation under heaven, from England to China, flutter on the bree
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White Women
White Women
Not even his squaw! White men have learned a good deal from the Indian, but they have not learned to stake their wives, like Utes and Bannocks, on the chances of a throw. White females are still too rare and precious on this coast; some cynics say too rare and precious for their own well-being, not to mention the well-being of the Commonwealth. Nature puts the sexes on the earth in pairs, and man destroys that balance at the cost of his moral death. In California there are Five White men to Two
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Bucks And Squaws
Bucks And Squaws
More than the White women gain, their Red sisters lose by this unnatural disparity of the male and female sexes. In the Indian lodges, there are more females than males, and in these lodges the females are bought and sold like cows and slaves. Rounding Cape Horn and passing the summit near Truckee, Three or Four miles from Donner Lake, the scene of a wild winter legend, we dip into the valley of Humboldt River, a valley rising higher than the top of Snowdon; and are now among the savage mountain
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Red Mormonism
Red Mormonism
From Winnemucca, an Indian camp in Nevada, to Brigham, a prosperous Mormon town in Salt Lake Valley, we race and wriggle through a mountain district, not more striking in physical aspect than in human interest. Rolling on the level of Ben Nevis, with a score of snowy peaks in front and flank, we climb through woods of stunted pine, ascending by the Pallisades to Pequop, at the height of Mont d'or, from which we slide by way of Humboldt Wells and the American Desert direct to Brigham in the land
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White Indians
White Indians
Before the Mormons came into these mountains, they were known as friends of the Red men, and were called in mockery the White Indians. They professed to have solved the mystery, so puzzling to linguists and ethnologists, of the origin of the Indian tribes. On evidence supplied to them by angels, they asserted that the Red men are sons of Laman, remnants of the lost tribes of Israel, and objects of God's pecular care. Giving the Indians a great place in history, the Mormons stamped them as a peop
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Polygamy
Polygamy
In Salt Lake Valley, as in Los Angeles, San Jose, and other places, the Red aberrations of White people are in process of correction. White polygamy is perishing in Utah, like Red polygamy, of which it is a bastard offspring, not by force or violence, but by the operation of natural laws. It dies of contact with the higher fashions of domestic life. “I gather, not from what you tell me only, but from every word I hear, and every man I see, that there is change of practice, if not change of doctr
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Indian Seers
Indian Seers
Red Cloud is an example, and no more than an example, of a Red Brigham Young. At Green River, in the territory of Utah, we find the details of a recent drama, every scene in which would be a parody on the Mormon pope, if Brigham Young were not himself a parody on these Indian seers. In March last year an Indian prophet came into a camp of wandering Utes near Tierra Amarilla, in New Mexico, bringing a message to this tribe of Utes from their Great Spirit. The man was known to be a Saint; a Red de
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Communism
Communism
To introduce the Indiin doctrine of Common Property in lodge and land, with the village adjunct of Blood Atonement, into a community of White people, is more than Brigham Young has yet been able to achieve, though he has pressed those doctrines on his people in Salt Lake Valley with a sleepless energy, acting through the Indian machinery of secret societies and orders, bound by oaths to carry out his despotic will. Men who can be persuaded by their bishops to marry a Second and A Third wife, or
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White Vendetta
White Vendetta
In Illinois every man claims to be a law to himself, and every Second man claims to be a law to other people. Wild justice, as among the Indian wigwams, is the favourite form of punishment; if pure revenge, the rule of eye for eye and tooth for tooth, may be called punishment. Under this Indian system, men of violent instincts assume a right to reject the public code, and even to resist the popular magistrate. In many parts of Illinois, the public rule is faint and formal; for the officers of ju
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The Red War
The Red War
Fort Leavenworth, and the young city of Leavenworth, growing up under her guns, are ruffled by some recent incidents of the Red war; a war which often hides itself from sight, but never wholly ceases, in countries where the Red and White men are contending for the soil. Bad blood is always flowing on the frontier line which separates the White State of Kansas from the Red Territory of Cheyennes and Osages. The savages are rich in ponies, and the settlers are accused of stealing them; the citizen
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Cherokee Feuds
Cherokee Feuds
“What is about to happen?”we enquire of a settler at Olathe, a city with Six log shanties, a church, a school, a drinking bar, and a fringe of maize. Olathe is suffering from a scare. Three weeks ago, Five men with masked faces, stopped the train running from Fort Scott to Kansas City, in open day. Two of the Five men kept guard, their rifles cocked, while their pals entered the cars, and rifled the express of Thirty thousand dollars. No One interfered, for who could tell how many passengers wer
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A Zambo Village
A Zambo Village
“What here-what dar? Lib here, paper dar. What place? Hi! hi! dis place Caddo; colour genl'men lib in Caddo-hi!” Caddo, a village in the Choctaw district, Thirtytwo miles north of Red River, Thirty-seven miles South of Limstone Gap, is a Zambo settlement, One of the most singular hamlets in a country full of ethnological surprises. A scatter of log-cabins, standing in fenced fields, surrounds a little town, with school and prison, chapel and masonic lodge, main street and market-place, billiard-
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Savage Slavery
Savage Slavery
To own a batch of Negroes was the aim of every Creek and Seminole chief. Negroes, like squaws, were evidence of his wealth and rank; more grateful in his eyes than squaws, as being a property which he held in common with the Whites. In ,early days he had lived in Georgia or Carolina, where the society was divided into free men and bondmen. He and his brethren of the tribe were free, and only the less martial and more dusky race were bond. Acquainted with the Pale men's ways, he paid them the mor
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In Caddo
In Caddo
The Negro slaves were free; but free in a separate Indian country, in the midst of savage Indian camps! In President Lincoln's proclamation not a word was said about the Ten thousand Negroes who were then living as slaves on Indian soil. This country lies beyond the Pale. Only Ten months after the Battle of Pea Ridge the proclamation of freedom came out, but the heat and burthen of the strife had been so great on other fields, that people had forgotten how the war-whoop and the scalping-knife ha
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Oklahoma
Oklahoma
Oklahoma is the name proposed by Creek and Cherokee radicals for the Indian countries, when the tribes shall have become a people, and the hunting grounds a State. Enthusiasts, like Adair and Boudinot, dream of such a time. These Indians cannot heal their tribal wounds, nor get their Sixteen thousand Cherokees to live in peace; yet they indulge the hope of reconciling Creek and Seminole, Choctaw and Chickasaw, under a common rule and a single flag. Still more, their hearts go out into a day when
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Red And Black
Red And Black
“You fear the full-bloods cannot be reclaimed?”I ask Colonel Stevens. “I never knew a pure Indian settle down to any kind of work. He is a hunter and a warrior, and to touch a spade or plough is to soil his noble hands. The Mestizos have a chance; though they are weighted by their savage blood. They start well, for their father is, in almost every case, a White.” On crossing from the Creek country to the Choctaw country, by way of the Canadian river, we arrive at a store and mill, kept by a brav
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A Frontier Town
A Frontier Town
From Caddo to Red River is a bee-line of Thirty miles. A clearing in the jungle has been made near the river-bank, and the name of Red River City has been printed on local maps; but not a single shanty, not even a ticket-office, or landing stage, or a drinking crib, has yet been built. The city consists of a rock cutting and a trussle bridge. Red River city is not even a ghost of a city, with imaginary squares and roads, like those unborn paradises on the Bay of San Francisco, which are waiting
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Texas And Texans
Texas And Texans
A Texan is a mounted man; a knight, who rides and carries arms. The air is hot, and swells in mortal veins. Under Sam Houston, there was a Texan boast that every White settler in the land had killed a Mexican and scalped a Redskin. Later on, the saying of the country ran that every White man owned a mustang and a slave. The slave being gone, the sense of lordship takes another shape. Now, the legend runs, that every Texan owns a horse, a dog, and a gun; a horse that never slackens speed, a dog t
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The Three Races
The Three Races
Such conflicts are the curse of Texas; yet One sees no end of them till the country has been settled, the roads have become safe, and the courts have been purged of party spirit. The White settlers are gaining ground, but they are still too near the Indian lodges for security, and too near the day of Negro rule for peace and confidence. “Our blood is hot,” says an English settler, who tells me he has learned to like the country very much, “But we are mending day by day, especially in the towns.
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The Gulf Of Mexico
The Gulf Of Mexico
Moving at sunrise out of Galveston harbour we sail into a thick and golden mist, which hides the lowlying shores of Saline Pass and the adjoining country from our sight. The waves are long and smooth. A flock of snow-birds flutter in our wake, and swoop with easy undulation on their prey. A semi-tropical languor lies on every face. As day comes on the mist clears off, and through the vanishing haze we catch along the shores a fringe of cypress and cotton-wood, with roots in swamp and pool, and b
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Louisiana
Louisiana
St. Charles! Eighteen miles from New Orleans. Another hour! We try to catch the landscape as the pools and marshes, cedars and palmettoes slip behind us; but we try in vain to fix our minds on trifles by the way. A grove of orange trees, the fruit all burning ripe, arrests attention and provokes a cry of rapture; yet the coolest brain among us frets and flutters, for we know that we are driving towards a scene of strife, on which the eyes and hearts of Forty millions of people are fixed in passi
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Reign Of Anarchy
Reign Of Anarchy
On Monday Morning, Packard, having the Republican writs in his hand, the Federal soldiers at his back, arrived at the Mechanics' Institute, in which edifice the Assembly was to meet. Caesar C. Antoine, holding Durell's order, stood at the door, pointing out who should enter and who should not enter. None but his friends were passed. Once in the legislative hall, these lost no time in prate, for Durell's order would expire on Wednesday, and many things had to be done before the Conservative membe
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White Reaction
White Reaction
For Seventeen months New Orleans groaned under the yoke of Governors who could not rule, of Assemblies which were unable to pass bills, and of Tribunals which reversed each other's decrees. Kellogg, though backed by Grant, was repudiated by Congress. McEnery though supported by the main body of White citizens in New Orleans, was not recognised by the authorities at Washington. The courts were open to Kellogg, if he cared to try his right. Though taunted by the citizens to take a case, he shrank
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General Sheridan
General Sheridan
Soon after our arrival at the St. Charles Hotel, in New Orleans, General Sheridan leaves a card, and Two hours later we pay the young and brilliant Irish soldier a visit in his quarters “Headquarters of the Military Division of the Missouri.”Like ourselves, General Sheridan and his staff are lodged in the hotel. Our talk is general and on public matters; about the Plains of Kansas, where we saw Indian scares in 1866 ; about the disturbed districts in Texas, which we have just left; about our sev
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The State House
The State House
Sunday, January 3, is a busy day in St. Louis Street, the next day being marked, on both sides, as the date on which the great conflict is to be carried from the streets into the legislative halls. Monday is to either make or mar the scalawag government in New Orleans. Out of One hundred and eleven members recently elected to the lower house, Fifty-eight are called Conservative, Fifty-three Republican; giving the Conservatives not only a legal quorum but a working majority of Five members. All t
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Invasion!
Invasion!
At break of day, while the Negro senators, yawning on their fever-moss, are yelling for more cocktails, Royal Street is being filled with soldiery, who pile arms in the roadway, and occupy the side-walks. The scene looms black. Already everyone seems to be awake and in the streets. The paths are thronged with citizens as well as soldiers, and ominous sarcasms pass along the line. Marines are marching from the quays, cavalry are prancing near the Custom House. Two Gatling guns are trained on the
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Banditti
Banditti
The camp is pitched, the sword is king! If President Grant will leave Sheridan as free to act in Louisiana, as he left him free to act in the Blue Ridge valleys and the Peigan hunting-grounds, my dashing neighbour sees his way to square accounts with such opponents as Wiltz and Ogden, McEnery and Penn. “I know these people well,” he says, “Having lived with them in other times, when they were wilder than they are to-day. I have no doubt about my course. The White League must be trodden down. The
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The Conservatives
The Conservatives
An aide-de-camp brings us an invitation from General McEnery to visit the Conservative headquarters in Canal Street; and in company of my old friend Consul De Fonblanque we start from our hotel, now known as “Headquarters of the Gulf.” General McEnery occupies a suite of rooms in Canal Street, looking on the effigies of Henry Clay, in which apartments he holds a modest court. “You're not afraid to enter,” asks a senator, meeting us on the stairs, “Although we are banditti?”No, we are not afraid.
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Governor Warmoth
Governor Warmoth
“Where will the government reside?”repeats General Warmoth, to whom we put this question. “Here! The only legal government in Louisiana resides in me. I am the governor. No man but myself has been recognised by Congress as Governor of Louisiana. Kellogg and McEnery are alike repudiated. Kellogg is Governor by grace of General Sheridan. If the Federal army left, McEnery would be Governor by force of the White League. When right and order gain the mastery, there will be no legal Governor in New Or
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Carpet-Baggers
Carpet-Baggers
William P. Kellogg's private secretary comes to the hotel to say that if we will pay a visit to the Legislature and Executive, Speaker Hahn and Governor Kellogg will be happy to receive us at the State House. In company of our consul, as before, we start for Royal Street, the entrance in St. Louis Street being still closed. After some parley with Negro soldiers and police we pass the door. A rush of foul air, the reek of bad cigars and worse liquors, drives us back. Phew! The hall is nearly dark
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The Rotunda
The Rotunda
Scene-Rotunda, New Orleans; marble floor, and open galleries, supported by fluted shafts. Time-Wednesday, January 13, 1875, Eight o'clock in the evening. Persons present-General Sheridan, with his staff, Lieutenant-governor Penn, Senators, Members of Congress, foreign consuls, sea captains, newspaper scouts, orderlies, messengers, telegraph clerks, and other crowds, including Two English travellers. Temperature-boiling point of mercury. “Look out for squalls,” drops a well-known voice, as we eme
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Georgia
Georgia
Atlanta, capital of Georgia, is rising from the dust in which Sherman's too famous march from Chattanooga left her— a sacrifice of war-when the fair young city, not yet Seventeen years old, perished in her youth; wasted so fiercely that her waters seemed to be on fire; so thoroughly that a rosebush here and there was all that told of former opulence and present wreck. Atlanta, rising from her ashes, is a type of Georgia. Standing on a hill, the domes and turrets of Atlanta, shining over belts of
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Black Ascendancy
Black Ascendancy
In the relations of her White people to the coloured race, South Carolina is the most unlucky section of America. In Louisiana the Two colours are nearly balanced. Nine or Ten years may turn the scale; since the European family increases while the African falls away. Even in Mississippi the majority of coloured people is not great; not more than Seven Blacks to Six Whites. Neither of these unhappy States is so far overweighted by her African numbers as to make contention in the ballot-boxes hope
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Charleston
Charleston
Overtopping Charleston, as St. Paul's overtops London, springs the belfry of a new Orphan Asylum; crowning the gay city and expansive bay; and looking over goodly towers, bright gardens, and ruined edifices. Emerging on the leads of this edifice we find a watchman leaning in a corner, smoking his pipe, and gazing at the sky. “And what may be about the time?”he asks. “Time? Just gone Twelve.”“Gone Twelve? Then guess I'll sling the bell.”Bang, bang! Men lounging in the streets below look up; the h
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Shades Of Colour
Shades Of Colour
The Negro is seen in Virginia under Two aspects— an ideal aspect and a practical aspect. In the library of the Capitol stands a figure called the Nation's Ward— a Negro boy, in all the freshness of his youth and all the impotence of his race. The Negro type is softened, but not into that of the African Sibyl, in which Story has enchanted into stone the sadness and pathos of a servile people. In the nation's ward, the face is rich in sunshine, and the figure ripples over with animal vivacity. The
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Coloured People At School
Coloured People At School
At the time of my First visit to Virginia, the Negro had been free about a year, and in the freshness of his freedom showed a spring and go that hinted, not at physical vitality only, but at a power of moral progress. Sam, the waiter, sat up half his night over book and slate. Harry, the labourer, squatted on a waste, and wrung his maize and onion from a blasted heath. Sam walked with me One evening to a score of Negro cabins, where, in dens and garrets, we saw woolly pates bending over desks an
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Virginia
Virginia
1N English eyes Virginia is a pleasant country, with an aspect that recalls the home-like hills in Kent. Her air is soft, her climate fine. How green her fields, how fresh her streams, how bright her. uplands! Fronting the sea, she faces all the world, and every port where trade is carried on lies open to her enterprise. Deep friths indent her shores and tides flow up her valleys. She is everywhere a water power. A Thousand sparkling rills drop down her wooded heights. Her dells are cool with po
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At Washington
At Washington
On our arrival in Washington we start for the White House to see the President. In crossing the park we meet Secretary Fish and Secretary Bristow, and— exchange with them the latest news from New Orleans. The Full Committee, startled by the Sub-Committee's report, is going South; but no One thinks a new enquiry will present new facts. The thing is done: the truth is told. Yet President Grant, though yielding to public opinion, appears to cling to his old idea that the South should not be left to
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Our Yellow Brother
Our Yellow Brother
Our First glimpse of this Yellow brother is in the market-place of Baltimore, the noisiest and dirtiest spot in the United States, excepting China Town in San Francisco, which is not regarded by Sanitary Boards as being in the United States. Our brother is Two-fold: perhaps man and wife; perhaps only twins. Whether he is male and female who can say? The Two parts of him are of One height, and wear the same round hat and blue frock. Each part of our Asiatic brother has the same smooth face, round
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Mongol Migration
Mongol Migration
Nothing so strange, hardly anything so grave, has happened in our time as this opening of a new Asiatic problem on the field of American politics. Time out of mind the Chinese people stayed at home, asking for no fraternity of men, but barring their doors in every stranger's face. Not caring for the outer world, they sought to dwell alone, living their own life, enjoying their own produce, observing their own rites. A wall, the greatest work of human toil, divided them from neighbours on the wes
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The Chinese Legend
The Chinese Legend
The Chinese legend current in San Francisco is a little wild; making the Chinese in America a mere gang of bondsmen, owned by the Six Companies, and governed by an Asiatic Vehm Gericht, Grand Lodge or Council of Ten, who wield a secret and mysterious power, which neither male nor female can escape. Feeling some doubt as to the truth of this Chinese legend, taken as a whole, we seek for light among persons who are likely to have ferretted out the facts-officers of police and ministers of religion
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Heathen Chinee
Heathen Chinee
A Meek-eyed, passive Mongol moves your heart to pity, even while your ears are ringing with the scorn, and tingling with the curses, heaped on him and all his brood. Note him at table, where his shining face, his natty figure and his nimble movements, tell so much from contrast with the dull tint, the shapeless contour, and the lumpy languor of a Negro servant. Note him in the kitchen, on the railway track, and in the silver mine; where he is always ready, with his shaven face, his twisted pig-t
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Chinese Labour
Chinese Labour
More serious are the questions raised in San Francisco by the Chinese knack of learning trades. The Mongol's advent in America has brought into the front the great struggle for existence between eaters of beef and eaters of rice. Living on rice, asking no luxuries beyond a whiff of opium and a pinch of tea, John Chinaman can toil for less money than a beef-eating fellow who requires a solid dinner, after which he likes to smoke his cuddy, drain his pot of beer, and top his surfeit with a whisky-
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A Celestial Village
A Celestial Village
Like Paddy Blake and Juan Chico, Hop Lee and Hong Chi appear to be social animals, who love to jostle in a crowd, and lodge by preference in a narrow court. Like many of their Irish and Mexican peers, they seem to delight in close alleys, and enjoy abominable smells. When they might camp out in the open, they burrow in the earth, under the houses of great cities, hiding their heads in drains and vaults, in sinks and sewers. They make a rookery in the heart of every city they invade. At Salt Lake
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China Town
China Town
A Seventh part of the population— a Seventieth part of the surface— of San Francisco is Asiatic. All Orientals pack closer than Europeans. A man may see big crowds in many cities: Russ and Tartars at Nishni-Novgorod, Copts and Armenians in Jerualemr, Arabs and Algerines in Cairo; but in neither Russia, Syria, nor Egypt cal he see such crowds as we find packed in the Asiatic quarter of San Francisco. The term Asiatic quarter may suggest a separate portion of the city, walled off from the remainin
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Yellow Agony
Yellow Agony
“At length!”exclaims a Senator in Sacramento, laying down his copy of the President's new Message to Congress, in which there is a short paragraph devoted to the Chinese immigration. “Our master in the White House has spared One moment from the contemplation of his Black Agony on the Gulf to a consideration of our Yellow Agony on the Slope!” No One will say that President Grant has spoken either too soon or in too loud a voice. Opinion runs the other way. In Washington men may talk; in Sacrament
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White Progress
White Progress
Under the menace of such an invasion from China, threatening at no distant date to swallow up the civilization of Europe in the barbarism of Asia, has not the time arrived for White men of all sections in America to review the situation? White conquest in America has been so rapid and so uniform that men are not unlikely to be careless of the future, fancying that their work is done, their tenure of the land secured. When Hancock and his comrades signed the Declaration of Independence, Thirteen
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Philadelphia
Philadelphia
Philadelphia is the best example of White progress in America, because nothing accidental, nothing temporary, rules the conditions of her growth. She has not been made a Royal residence, like Rome; the centre of a new imperial system, like Berlin. No great discovery of mineral wealth has drawn to her the daring spirits of all nations, like San Francisco. She is not the chief entry of immigrants from Europe, like New York. She has not sprung into fashion like Brighton and Saratoga. She owes no pa
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Fair Women
Fair Women
Apart from that Conflict of Race which is her permanent tragedy, America has many campaigns to carry on; campaigns in the civil order, and on both her moral and material sides. She has to recover her fair proportion of the female sex. She has to restore a true balance of the sexes on her soil. She has to cure her people of that love of strong drinks which they get from their English ancestors, but which is quickened by a climate rich in extremes of heat and cold. She has to meet a vast amount of
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Crusaderessing
Crusaderessing
Great is the evil, wild are the efforts made by Americans to cure the evil of intemperance. Springing from English and German fathers, the Americans come of a race among whom free tippling was a pious rite and social courtesy, as well as the gratification of a physical appetite. Our gods were hard drinkers as well as strong fighters; and the lovely shield-maidens and wish-maidens who enchanted our fallen heroes, had the duty of pouring out horns of mead and ale. We denizens of earth were quick t
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The Workman's Paradise
The Workman's Paradise
Vermont, in which St. Johnsbury nestles, is a New England State, which in its origin and population had very little to do with Old England. The names are French. Vermont is derived from the Green Mountain of our idiom; St. Johnsbury from Monsieur St. Jean De Crevecoeur, once a fussy little French consul in New York. Eye of man has seldom rested on natural loveliness more perfect than the scenery amidst which St. Johnsbury stands. On passing White River Junction, a spot which recalls a favourite
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Sober By Law
Sober By Law
No bar, no drain-shop, no saloon defiles St. Johnsbury; nor is there, I am told, a single gaming-hell or house of ill-repute. So far as meets the eye this boast is true. Once, in my walks, I fancy there may be an opening in the armour of these Good Templars. Turning from the foreign street, where Jacques is somewhat careless of his fence, and Pat is tolerant of the cess-pool at his door, I read a notice calling on the passer-by to enter “The sporting and smoking bazaar.”Here, surely, there must
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Illiteracy In America
Illiteracy In America
In Europe we hear so much about the public schools of America, that people are apt to fall into Three distinct mistakes about American education. In the first place, they are apt to think there is an American school system, as there is an English school system; in the second place, they are apt to assume that American boys and girls are all at school, like Swiss boys and girls; in the third place, they are apt to conclude that American boys and girls are well taught as German boys and girls are
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America At School
America At School
Some measures have been taken to check an evil which is threatening to reduce White settlers to the level of Creeks and Cherokees, and to convert the Potomac and Savannah into American Nigers and Senegals. These measures are partly general, partly local; partly inquisitorial, partly remedial; but in every case they have improvement as their aim and end. Four years ago, Americans were living in a dream. They knew that here and there a blotch defiled the fair face of their country, but they fancie
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The Situation
The Situation
From New York to San Francisco, from Chicago to New Orleans, every town and hamlet in America is suffering from panic; a loose, unscientific term, explaining nothing, and raising false hopes. A panic is supposed to be an accident. Accidents come and go, and, like the winds and waves, are treated as phenomena beyond control. What cannot be cured, we say, must be endured. In what respects our personal good we act on wiser instincts. No One talks of gout as an accident, of surfeit as an accident. W
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Outlook
Outlook
Is there no writing on the wall? The wounds inflicted on America by the civil war were fresh and bleeding, even before they were reopened by the grave events in New Orleans. The Two sides seem as bitter as they were a month before the Fall of Richmond. Cincinnati, where I write these words, is a great city, chief market of a Free State, looking across the Ohio river into the streets and squares of Covington, her sister of Kentucky. These cities lie as close together as Brooklyn and New York, as
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