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30 chapters
INTRODUCTION
INTRODUCTION
S INCE the first and second editions of "In the Footprints of the Padres" appeared, many things have transpired. San Francisco has been destroyed and rebuilt, and in its holocaust most of the old landmarks mentioned in the pages that follow as then existing, have been obliterated. Since then, too, the gentle heart, much of whose story is told herein, has been hushed in death. Charles Warren Stoddard has followed on in the footprints of the Padres he loved so well. He abides with us no longer, sa
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"STRANGE COUNTRIES FOR TO SEE"
"STRANGE COUNTRIES FOR TO SEE"
N OW , the very first book was called "Infancy"; and, having finished it, I closed it with a bang! I was just twelve. 'Tis thus the twelve-year-old is apt to close most books. Within those pages—perhaps some day to be opened to the kindly inquiring eye—lie the records of a quiet life, stirred at intervals by spasms of infantile intensity. There are more days than one in a life that can be written of, and when the clock strikes twelve the day is but half over. The clock struck twelve! We children
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CROSSING THE ISTHMUS
CROSSING THE ISTHMUS
W E approached the Mosquito Shore timidly. The shallowing sea was of the color of amber; the land so low and level that the foliage which covered it seemed to be rooted in the water. We dropped anchor in the mouth of the San Juan River. On our right lay the little Spanish village of San Juan del Norte; its five hundred inhabitants may have been wading through its one street at that moment, for aught we know; the place seemed to be knee-deep in water. On our left was a long strip of land—the depo
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ALONG THE PACIFIC SHORE
ALONG THE PACIFIC SHORE
A LL night we tossed on the bosom of the lake between San Carlos, at the source of the San Juan river, and Virgin Bay, on the opposite shore. The lake is on a table-land a hundred feet or more above the sea; it is a hundred miles in length and forty-five in width. Our track lay diagonally across it, a stretch of eighty miles; and when the morning broke upon us we were upon the point of dropping anchor under the cool shadow of cloud-capped mountains and in a most refreshing temperature. Oh, the p
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IN THE WAKE OF DRAKE
IN THE WAKE OF DRAKE
W E were buried alive in fathomless depths of fog. We were a fixture until that fog lifted. It was an impenetrable barrier. Upon the point of entering one of the most wonderful harbors in the world, the glory of the newest of new lands, we found ourselves prisoners, and for a time at least involved in the mazes of ancient history. In 1535 Cortez coasted both sides of the Gulf of California—first called the Sea of Cortez; or the Vermilion Sea, perhaps from its resemblance to the Red Sea between A
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ATOP O' TELEGRAPH HILL
ATOP O' TELEGRAPH HILL
P ERHAPS it is a mile wide, that Golden Gate; and it is more bronze than golden. A fort was on our right hand; one of those dear old brick blockhouses that were formidable in their day, but now are as houses of cards. Drop one shell within its hollow, and there will be nothing and no one left to tell the tale. Down the misty coast, beyond the fort, was Point Lobos—a place where wolves did once inhabit; farther south lie the semi-tropics and the fragrant orange lands; while on our left, to the no
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PAVEMENT PICTURES
PAVEMENT PICTURES
W E had been but a few days in San Francisco when a new-found friend, scarcely my senior, but who was a comparatively old settler, took me by the hand and led me forth to view the town. He was my neighbor, and a right good fellow, with the surprising composure—for one of his years—that is so early, so easily, and so naturally acquired by those living in camps and border-lands. We descended Telegraph Hill by Dupont Street as far as Pacific Street. So steep was the way that, at intervals, the mode
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A BOY'S OUTING
A BOY'S OUTING
T HERE was joy in the heart, luncheon in the knapsack, and a sparkle in the eye of each of us as we set forth on our exploring expedition, all of a sunny Saturday. Outside of California there never were such Saturdays as those. We were perfectly sure for eight months in the year that it wouldn't rain a drop; and as for the other four months—well, perhaps it wouldn't. It is true that Longfellow had sung, even in those days: Our days were not dark or dreary,—indeed, they could not possibly be in t
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THE MISSION DOLORES
THE MISSION DOLORES
I HAVE read somewhere in the pages of a veracious author how, five or six years before my day, he had ridden through chaparral from Yerba Buena to the Mission Dolores with the howl of the wolf for accompaniment. Yerba Buena is now San Francisco, and the mission is a part of the city; it is not even a suburb. In 1855 there were two plank-roads leading from the city to the Mission Dolores; on each of these omnibuses ran every half hour. The plank-road was a straight and narrow way, cut through acr
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SOCIAL SAN FRANCISCO
SOCIAL SAN FRANCISCO
S OCIAL San Francisco during the early Fifties seems to have been a conglomeration of unexpected externals and surprising interiors. It was heterogeneous to the last degree. It was hail-fellow-well-met, with a reservation; it asked no questions for conscience's sake; it would not have been safe to do so. There were too many pasts in the first families and too many possible futures to permit one to cast a shadow upon the other. And after all is said, if sins may be forgiven and atoned for, why sh
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HAPPY VALLEY
HAPPY VALLEY
H OW well I remember it—the Happy Valley of the days of old! It lay between California Street and Rincon Point; was bounded on the east by the Harbor of San Francisco, and on the west by the mission peaks. I never knew just why it was called happy ; I never saw any wildly-happy inhabitants singing or dancing for joy on its sometimes rather indefinite street corners. If there is happiness in sand, then, happily, it was sandy. You might have climbed knee-deep up some parts of it and slid down on t
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THE VIGILANCE COMMITTEE
THE VIGILANCE COMMITTEE
I T was May 14, 1856. I chanced to be standing at the northwest corner of Washington and Montgomery Streets, watching the world go by. It was a queer world: very much mixed, not a little fantastic in manner and costume; just the kind of world to delight a boy, and no doubt I was delighted. "Bang!" It was a pistol-shot, and very near me—not thirty feet away. I turned and saw a man stagger and fall to the pavement. Then the streets began to grow dark with people hurrying toward the scene of the tr
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THE SURVIVOR'S STORY
THE SURVIVOR'S STORY
I T is not much of a story. It is only the mild adventure of a boy at sea; and of a small, sad boy at that. This boy had an elder brother who was ill; and the physicians in consultation had decided that a long sea-voyage was his only hope, and that even in this case the hope was a very faint one. There was a ship at anchor in the harbor of San Francisco,—a very famous clipper, one of those sailors of the sea known as Ocean Greyhounds. She was built for speed, and her record was a brilliant one;
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"China is Not More Chinese than this Section of Our Christian City."
"China is Not More Chinese than this Section of Our Christian City."
Close about us there are over one hundred and fifty mercantile establishments and numerous mechanical industries. The seventy-five cigar factories employ eight thousand coolies, and these are huddled into the closest quarters. In a single room, measuring twenty feet by thirty feet, sixty men and boys have been discovered industriously rolling real Havanas. The traffic which itinerant fish and vegetable venders drive in every part of the city must be great, being as it is an extreme convenience f
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"Rag Alley" in Old Chinatown
"Rag Alley" in Old Chinatown
We pass from one black hole to another. In the first there is a kind of bin for ashes and coals, and there are pots and grills lying about—it is the kitchen. A heap of fire kindling wood in one corner, a bench or stool as black as soot can paint it, a few bowls, a few bits of rags, a few fragments of food, and a coolie squatting over a struggling fire,—coolie who rises out of the dim smoke like the evil genii in the Arabian tale. There is no chimney, there is no window, there is no drainage. We
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The Farallones
The Farallones
T HOSE who have visited the markets of San Francisco during the egg season may have noticed the abundance of large and singularly marked eggs, that are offered for sale by the bushel. The shells of these eggs are pear-shaped, parti-colored, and very thick. They range in color from a light green to grey or brown, and are all of them profusely spotted, or blotted, I might say spattered, with clots of black or brown. Some are beautiful, with soft tints blended in a delicate lace-like pattern. Some
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Murre on their Nests, Farallone Islands
Murre on their Nests, Farallone Islands
"Built another bridge over a gap where the sea rushes, and which we call the Jordan . If the real Jordan is as hard to cross, heaven help us. Eggs not very plentiful as yet; we are rather early in the season, or the crop is late this year. More rabbits in the p.m.; more wind, more fog; and at night, pipes, cards, and a few choruses that sound strange and weird in the fire lights on this lonely island. "Eggs are so very scarce. The foreman advises our resting for a day. We lounge about, looking o
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Monterey, 1850
Monterey, 1850
At nine o' the clock next morning we were still enveloped in mist, but the sun was struggling with it; and from my window I inspected Spanish or Mexican, or Spanish-Mexican, California interiors, sprinkled with empty tin cans, but redeemed by the more picturesque débris of the early California settlement—dingy tiles, forlorn cypresses, and a rosebush of gigantic body and prolific bloom. We breakfasted at Simoneau's, in the inner room, with its frescos done in beer and shoeblacking by a brace of
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San Carlos de Carmelo
San Carlos de Carmelo
The original custom-house—there was no mistaking it, for it was founded on a rock—overhung the sea, while the waves broke gently at its base, and rows of sea-gulls sat solemnly on the skeletons of stranded whales scattered along the beach. A Captain Lambert dwelt on the first floor of the building; a goat fed in the large hall—it bore the complexion of a stable—where once the fashionable element tripped the light fantastic toe. In those days the first theatre in the State was opened with brillia
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III.
III.
S HE was a dear old stupid town in my day. She boasted but half a dozen thinly populated streets. One might pass through these streets almost any day, at almost any hour of the day, footing it all the way from the dismantled fort on the seaside to the ancient cemetery, grown to seed, at the other extremity of the settlement, and not meet half a score of people. Geese fed in the gutters, and hissed as I passed by; cows grazing by the wayside eyed me in grave surprise; overhead, the snow-white sea
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"The Huge Court of that Luxurious Caravansary."
"The Huge Court of that Luxurious Caravansary."
I think I must have dozed, for it first seemed like a dream—the crouching figures that stole in Indian file along the carpet from bed to bed; but soon enough I wakened to a reality, for the Phillistines were upon us, and the pillows fell like aerolites out of space. The air was dense with flying bed-clothes; the assailants, Bartholomew and Alf, his right-hand man, fell upon us with school-boy fury; they made mad leaps, and landed upon our stomachs. We grappled in deadly combat; not an article of
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"The Gallery Among the Huge Vases of Palms and Creepers."
"The Gallery Among the Huge Vases of Palms and Creepers."
Yet on the Sunday—our final day at the bungalow—you would have thought that the gods had assembled together to hold sweet converse; and, when we lounged in the shadow of the invisible Ida, never looked the earth more fair to us. The whole land was in blossom from the summit to the sea; the gardeners, as they walked among their vines, prated of Sicily and sang songs of their Sun-land. There was no chapel at hand, and no mass for the repose of souls that had been sorely troubled; but the charm of
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PRIMEVAL CALIFORNIA
PRIMEVAL CALIFORNIA
P RIMEVAL California" was inscribed on the knapsack of the Artist, on the portmanteau of Foster, the Artist's chum, and on the fly-leaf of the note-book of the Scribe. The luggage of the boisterous trio was checked through to the heart of the Red Woods, where a vacation camp was pitched. The expected "last man" leaped the chasm that was rapidly widening between the city front of San Francisco and the steamer bound for San Rafael, and approached us—the trio above referred to—with a slip of paper
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Meigg's Wharf in 1856
Meigg's Wharf in 1856
About dusk our rakish cutter drifted into the shelter of the hills along the north shore of the bay, and with a chorus of enthusiastic cheers we dropped anchor in two fathoms of soft mud. We felt called upon to sing such songs as marines are wont to sing upon the conclusion of a voyage, and I believe our deck presented a tableau not less picturesque than that in the last act of "Black-eyed Susan." Susan alone was wanting to perfect our nautical happiness. How charming to pass one's life at sea,
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Telegraph Hill, 1855
Telegraph Hill, 1855
Y OSEMITE , Sept.—: Come at once—the year wanes; would you see the wondrous transformation, the embalming of the dead Summer in windings of purple and gold and bronze—come quickly, before the white pall covers it—delay no longer. The waters are low and fordable, the snows threaten, but the hours are yet propitious; and such a welcome waits you as Solomon in all his glory could not have lavished on Sheba's approaching queen. * * *" There was much more of the same sort of high-toned epistolary rhe
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Sentinel Hotel, Yosemite, in 1869
Sentinel Hotel, Yosemite, in 1869
When shall I see another such cabin as this—its great fireplaces, and the loft heaping full of pumpkins? O, Yosemite! O, halcyon days, and bed-time at eight P.M., tucking in for ten good hours and up again at six; good eatings and drinkings day by day, mugs of milk and baked squash forever, plenty of butter to our daily bread; letters at wide intervals, and long, uninterrupted "thinks" about home and friends (as the poet of the "Hermitage" writes in one of his letters). Shall I ever again sit fo
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WHAT THE MOON SHONE ON
WHAT THE MOON SHONE ON
S HE was a smallish moon, looking very chaste and chilly and she peered vaguely through folds of scurrying fog. She shone upon a silent street that ran up a moderate hill between far-scattered corporation gas-lamps—a street that having reached the hill top seemed to saunter leisurely across a height which had once been the most aristocratic quarter of the Misty City; the quarter was still pathetically respectable, and for three squares at least its handsome residences stared destiny in the face
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WHAT THE SUN SHONE ON
WHAT THE SUN SHONE ON
H E shone on the far side of the eastern azure hills and set all the tree tops in the wood beyond the wold aflame; he looked over the silhouette out of a cloudless sky upon a Bay whose breadth and beauty is one of the seven hundred wonders of the world; he paved the waves with gold, a path celestial that angels might not fear to tread. He touched the heights of the Misty City and the sea-fog that had walled it in through the night as with walls of unquarried marble—albeit the eaves had dripped i
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BALM OF HURT WOUNDS
BALM OF HURT WOUNDS
H E was scrimping in every way; his case was growing desperate. The books, the pictures, the bric-a-brac so precious in his eyes, he was loath to part with; moreover, he was well aware that if he were to trundle his effects down to an auction-room they would not bring him enough to cover his expenses for a single week. "Better to starve in the midst of my household gods," thought he, "than to part with them for the sake of prolonging this misery." The situation was in some respects serio-comic.
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IV.
IV.
F OR a long while he had been listening to the moan of the sea—the wail and the warning that rise from every reef in that wild waste of waters. There was no moon, but the large stars cast each a wake upon the wave, and the distant surf-lines were faintly illuminated by a phosphorescent glow. There were reefs on every hand, and treacherous currents that would have imperilled the ribs of any craft depending on the winds alone for its salvation; but the " Waring ," its pulse of steam throbbing with
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