WHE

CHAPTER IX.

RILEY (CONTINUED).

HEN the election of August 1, 1849, took place, the white population of California was between forty and fifty thousand. Most of it, however, was scattered at different places throughout the mining regions. The population of San Francisco was about five thousand. There were some two hundred square-rigged vessels and numerous smaller craft in the harbor, chiefly from Pacific ports, the Sandwich Islands, China and Australia, whose passengers and in most cases their crews also had hurried off to the interior. Nearly all the population had been to the mines and returned with more or less gold-dust. The comparative ease with which it had been acquired and the knowledge that there was plenty more in the river beds and foot-hills, which could be drawn upon as soon as their present stock was exhausted, had induced and encouraged habits and feelings of the most reckless extravagance; and the natural result of extravagance was dissipation and excess. Gambling developed into a regular business-one of the most generally carried on and the most extensive in the enormous amounts staked upon it in the country. At the same time the gambling spirit, fostered as well by the experiences of varied fortunes in the gold-fields as by the gaming tables, pervaded all branches of business. Speculation took the place of legitimate trade; prices rose and fell; fortunes were made and lost in a day; schemes of all kinds became rife and all, without much reference to their utility or practicability, found persons in abundance ready and eager to engage in them. While very few persons were willing to work or to be satisfied with the regular wages of labor however high, everything plunged into a state of fever and unnatural and unhealthy

excitement.

This was more or less the condition of things throughout the country; but it was more apparent and more sensibly felt in San Francisco than elsewhere. As the great central point for speculation and business, through which all the immigrants by sea passed and all the supplies and merchandise were compelled to enter, and to which almost all the gold whether intended to remain or to be shipped away was brought or sent, all the idle men in the territory, as well those who as they thought had worked long enough in the mines as those who chose easier methods of making their livelihood, congregated there. Not only these, but speculators by nature and profession found their way to the same point. A shining example of this class was one John B. Steinberger, usually called "Baron Steinberger." He was a large, physically fine-looking, smooth-tongued fellow; had been an extensive speculative cattle-dealer in the East, and used to boast that he had helped break the United States bank by being indebted to it, as he said, five million dollars. He had come out on the first trip of the steamer Oregon and proposed to slaughter and salt down beef for the use of the army and navy. Among the difficulties he encountered were that he had no barrels and no brine, nor any boat for transportation purposes on the bay. But he said he could get plenty of cattle from Don Timoteo Murphy at San Rafael; and, on the strength of this assurance, Commodore Jones furnished a boat and promised him all the barrels and brine of the United States stores as fast as the supplies on hand were used. Thus provided with a sort of backing, he opened the first regular butcher-shop in San Francisco near what was then the foot of Broadway street, and soon did an extensive business. For prices ranging from twenty-five to fifty cents a pound he disposed of the choicest roasts, steaks and cuts of beef, which had cost him nothing; for he never paid anybody if he could help it; and before very long he substantially stripped Don Timoteo. His receipts were so large that in a very short time he returned his borrowed boat and set up for himself. In the course of a few months he became one of the airiest and most pretentious men in the country. He gave dinner parties and banquets regardless of expense, like a veritable baron of old. But there was of course a speedy end of all this. As soon as he was found out, he lost his credit; and,

being caught in a tight place in his wild speculations, he became hopelessly and helplessly bankrupt. In the course of a year or two, he would step into gentlemen's business houses, or even stop them on the street, and borrow small sums of money in repayment of their share in his gallant feasts. Afterwards, in 1861, he followed Fremont to St. Louis and soon afterwards died there-a pauper in one of the hospitals.'

As the large accession of population poured into San Francisco before regular houses for its accommodation could be erected, and neither building materials nor labor was for the time to be had, shanties and sheds, brush booths and canvas tents supplied their place. The built-up portion of the town included about half a mile square of ground embraced between California, Powell and Vallejo streets and the then water front. The tents, booths and shanties were stuck chiefly outside of this district, along roads or trails on the hill-sides, or among the bushes and sand-drifts of the leveler grounds. There had been no grading; nor was there anything like an improved street. There were several great ravines coming down from the high hills west of Stockton street; and all that part of what is now the city, as well as all the sand-drifts to the south of California street towards the Rincon in one direction and towards the Mission in the other, were covered with chaparral.

The most notable buildings were around Portsmouth Square. Near the northwest corner was the custom-house, a one-story adobe; near the southeast corner the City Hotel, a one-and-ahalf-story adobe; and directly in front on the east the Parker House, a two-story frame, which had been built at a cost of thirty thousand dollars but was rented at fifteen thousand dollars per month for a gambling house. Next north of the Parker House was a large tent, also used for gambling purposes and known as the El Dorado. There were a few other adobe buildings, a few business houses on or near the line of Montgomery street, which constituted the water front, and a number of slightly built frames. There were two small wharves, one about seventy feet long between California and Sacramento streets, whose outer end did not extend as far as Sansome street, where there was a depth of five feet of water at low tide; and the other about thirty feet long

1 Sherman's Memoirs, I, 69.

46 VOL. II.

on Commercial street at the outer end of which there was only two feet of water. The chief landing place, besides the wharves, was, as it had been since 1835, at Clark's Point, near the present corner of Broadway and Battery streets, where the deep water came close up to the rocky shore. Nearly all the level portion of the present city east of Montgomery street, having a width of considerably over half a mile, was a great mud flat, some portions of which were exposed at low tide; but south of Pine street there was a long, flat, sandy beach, running with a sweeping inland curve to the Rincon.'

Though there were only a few business houses, business was extraordinarily active. During the six months preceding April 1, 1849, the quantity of goods received and landed amounted in invoice value to very nearly eleven hundred thousand dollars; and as they were usually sold upon landing at an average advance of two hundred per cent., the sales amounted to some three millions of dollars. While the merchandise flowed in from one direction, the gold to pay for it flowed in from the other; and besides the three millions paid for goods it was fairly estimated that at least a million and perhaps much more had by that time passed into or through San Francisco without changing hands at all. In December, 1848, the first American public school, which had originally opened on April 3 but had closed during the gold excitement of the summer and autumn, had re-opened and was flourishing in a building on Portsmouth Square, called the Public Institute. In the same building also, there being as yet no church, Protestant religious worship was conducted regularly every Sunday by a minister named T. D. Hunt, whose annual salary of twenty-five hundred dollars was raised by general subscription. There was one newspaper, the only one in the country; but it was a live, active journal. This was the Alta California, as it had been called since January 4, 1849. It was the direct continuation and legitimate successor of the Star and Californian.

The wiser heads, as well as the speculators, imagined there was a great future for the town. The most intelligent and far

1 Hittell's San Francisco, 146.

Ex. Doc. 1 Ses. 31 Con. H. R. No. XVII, 737, 738.

sighted visitors, as well as the soberest residents who were willing to invest their money on their judgments, prophesied its advance and prosperity; and the logic of facts had already demonstrated it to be the point where the commercial emporium was to be situated. But there were still men who were blind to its advantages. One of these was General Smith of the United States army, whose duty it was among other things to select a point on the bay for the head-quarters of the troops. He desired, as he said, to find a place that would combine good climate, convenience of supply and facility of movement. As for the town of San Francisco, he went on to say, it was in no way fitted for either military or commercial purposes. There was no harbor; there was a bad landing place; there was bad water; there were no supplies of provisions; there was an inclement climate; it was cut off from the rest of the country, except by a long circuit around the southern extremity of the bay, and, in time of war, enemies' troops could land on the ocean beach for many miles south of the Golden Gate and isolate it by a short line of works across the peninsula on which it stands. There were other and much more favorable points on the bay more inland, having good harbors and landings, good water, open to the whole country in the rear, accessible without difficulty to ships of the largest class; and at one of these points he proposed to establish the future depot.'

Smith was in the Mexican war; but he neither planned any important campaign nor conducted any great battle. It is therefore uncertain how he would have succeeded, if called upon to do either. But if he had attempted anything of the kind with no clearer insight than he displayed in his judgment of San Francisco, the country is to be congratulated upon the fact that he did not obtain any superior command until after the war was over. Having, as he imagined, annihilated the prospects of San Francisco, not only as a military but also as a commercial point, he the next day, April 6, 1849, took the little government steamer Edith which had arrived a couple of weeks before and ran up to Benicia, of which he spoke in terms that even Semple and Larkin its founders and owners might have blushed He in substance pronounced it the only point on the bay

at.

1 Ex. Doc. 1 Ses. 31 Con. H. R. No. XVII, 717.