Byways Around San Francisco Bay Part 3

The sun sinks down in golden splendor behind the ocean's rim, leaving a track of molten gold that tips as with a halo the edges of the dancing waves. We turn our faces homeward, with a last, lingering look at the majestic expanse of blue rolling waters, and ever in our ears sounds the ceaseless moaning of the ocean.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

Muir Woods

June, to me, is one of the most fascinating months in California--if any of them can be set apart and called more perfect than another--for June is a month of moods.

If you are an Easterner you would abandon your proposed picnic party, upon rising in the morning, for fear of rain, and, being a tenderfoot, you would be justified, for the clouds--or, more properly speaking, the high fog--give every indication of a shower. But an old Californian would tell you to take no thought of appearances, and to leave your umbrella and raincoat at home, for this is one of nature's "bluffs"; by ten o'clock the sun will be s.h.i.+ning brightly, and the fog dispersed under its warm rays.

Then pack your lunch basket, don your khaki suit, and strike out on the trail, while the dew still twinkles on the gra.s.s blades like cut diamonds, and the birds are singing their _Te Deum_ to the morning sun.

It was on just such a day that we set out on a trip to Muir Woods and the giant sequoias, one of the most beautiful spots in the State. From Mill Valley the climb is a steep one, pa.s.sing the picturesque ruins of an old mill erected in 1843. We come to a sort of corduroy path, where some enterprising landowner has placed logs across the trail, with the object of facilitating travel. It is not a very decided improvement on nature, however, for the steps are too far apart for comfort.

Summer cottages are scattered along the trail, perched on the hillside, and placed in the most advantageous position to gain a view of the bay, or on slightly higher ground, where they peek over the tops of the trees into the valley below.

After a stiff climb we reach the top of the last range of hills and begin our descent into the valley, where Muir Woods nestles between the hills at the foot of Mount Tamalpais, in the beautiful Sequoia Canon. We look away to the right and can see the heavy clouds envelop the summit of the mountain, but the highest stands above the clouds, and the sun touches its stately crest with golden splendor.

[Ill.u.s.tration: COMRADES]

The forest always has a weird fascination for me, with its soft whisperings, as if the trees were confiding secrets to each other. One can become intimately acquainted with it, and learn to love its quiet solitude, only by living in or near it, and wandering at will through its trackless, leaf-carpeted aisles. Your eyes must be trained to constant watching, you must learn to be a close observer, to note the flowers, vines, and tangled shrubbery that are seldom mentioned by botanists, and your ear must be tuned to catch the elfin music that is heard within the confines of the forest. You cannot travel a rod under the trees without being watched by the small forest inhabitants, who regard you with suspicion, and peer at you from under decaying logs or leafy covert like self-appointed detectives.

Muir Woods comprises nearly three hundred acres, the princ.i.p.al trees being laurel, fir, oak, redwood, and madrone, of which the giant redwood (Sequoia) predominates. The redwoods in Muir Woods are thousands of years old, and rise from two to three hundred feet in air. The bark is from one to two feet in thickness, of a cinnamon color, and the base of the largest trees from twenty-five to thirty feet in diameter. A clear and cold mountain brook runs through the forest, and ferns grow in rich profusion along its margin, some of them reaching a height of six feet.

One cannot but note the profound quiet of the forest, as if these mighty trees that had withstood the storms of centuries were afraid their secrets might be wrested from them.

In some past ages fire has swept through the forest, laying some of these giants low, but other trees have sprung from their charred stumps, and rear their straight trunks and green-crowned heads hundreds of feet above the surrounding foliage. These stately trees have grown and flourished like Solomon's Temple with no sound of woodman's axe to mar the quiet solemnity of this primeval forest. One stands in awe in the presence of these wonderful sequoias, the greatest of trees, and we converse in low tones, as if standing in the presence of spirits of bygone ages.

[Ill.u.s.tration: AMONG THE REDWOODS]

Muir Woods was accepted by the United States government as a national monument in 1908, by special proclamation of President Theodore Roosevelt, and was named in honor of John Muir, the celebrated California naturalist.

There is no place in California where one can more profitably spend a day in the enjoyment of the wonderful beauties of nature than in this grove of giant redwoods.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

San Francis...o...b..y

Where once the Indian's canoe roamed o'er the bay, With silent motion, sped by warrior's hand; The sea gulls wheel and turn in columns gray, And on the beach the miners' cabins stand;

Now, white-sailed s.h.i.+ps sail outward with the tide, The stately ocean liners lead the van; And iron wars.h.i.+ps anchor side by side, With sister s.h.i.+ps from China and j.a.pan.

Italian fis.h.i.+ng boats with lateen sails go by, To cast their lines outside the Golden Gate; And ferryboats their ceaseless traffic ply, From mole to mole, from early morn till late.

And so the march of commerce takes its way, And every clime contributes of its store Where once the Indian's tepee held its sway, Now stands the Golden City on the sh.o.r.e.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

IN CHINA TOWN

If you are a tourist, making your first visit to San Francisco, you will inquire at once for Chinatown, the settlement of the Celestial Kingdom, dropped down, as it were, in the very heart of a big city; a locality where you are as far removed from anything American as if you were in Hongkong or Foochow. Chinatown is only about two blocks wide by eight blocks long; yet in this small area from ten to fifteen thousand Chinese live, and cling with all the tenacity of the race to their Oriental customs and native dress. They are as clean as a new pin about their person, but how they can keep so immaculate amid such careless and not over-clean surroundings is a mystery not to be solved by a white man.

For a few dollars a guide will conduct a party through Chinatown, and point out all the places of interest; but we preferred to act for ourselves in this capacity, and saunter from place to place as our fancy dictated. Stores of all kinds line both sides of Grant Avenue, formerly called Dupont, where all kinds of Chinese merchandise are displayed in profusion. At one place we stopped to examine some most exquisite ivory carvings, as delicate in tracery as frost on a window pane. Next we lingered before a shop where the women of our party went into raptures over the exquisite gowns and the beautiful needlework displayed. Here are shown padded silks of the most delicate shades, on which deft fingers have embroidered the ever-present Chinese stork and cherry blossoms, as realistic as if painted with an artist's brush.

That peculiar building just across the way is the Kow Nan Low Restaurant, resplendent with dragons and lanterns of every shape and size suspended above and about the doorway.

If you are fond of chop suey, or bird's-nest pudding, and are not too fastidious as to its ingredients, you may enjoy a dinner fit for a mandarin.

We stop before a barber shop and watch the queer process of shaving the head and braiding the queue. The barber does not invite inspection, as the curtains are partly drawn, but we peep over the top and look with interest at the queer process of tonsorial achievement, much to the disgust of the barber and his customer, if the expression on their faces can be taken as an index of their thoughts.

Then to the drug store, the market, the shoeshop, and a dozen other places, to finally bring up where all the tourists do--at the "Marshall Field's" of Chinatown, Sing Fat's, a truly marvelous place, where one can spend hours looking over the countless objects of interest.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A CHINESE SHOEMAKER]

One of the pleasures of Chinatown is to see the children of rich and poor on the street, dressed in their Oriental costumes, looking like tiny yellow flowers, as they pick their way daintily along the walk, or are carried in the arms of the happy father--never the mother. If you would make the father smile, show an interest in the boy he is carrying so proudly.

To gamble is a Chinaman's second nature. Games of fan-tan and pie-gow are constantly in operation; and the police either tolerate or are powerless to stop them. Tong wars are of frequent occurrence, crime and its punishment being so mixed up that an outsider cannot unravel them. The San Francisco police have struggled with the question, but have finally left the Chinese to settle their own affairs after their own fas.h.i.+on. Opium dens flourish as a matter of course, for opium and Chinese are synonymous words. You can tell an opium fiend as far as you can see him; his face looks like wet parchment stretched over a skull and dried, making a truly gruesome sight. Every s.h.i.+p that comes into the bay from the Orient is searched for opium, and quant.i.ties of it are found hidden away under the planking, or in other places less likely to be detected by the sharp-eyed officials. When found it is at once confiscated.

[Ill.u.s.tration: IN CHINATOWN]

The Chinese are an extremely superst.i.tious people, and it is very difficult to get a photograph of them, for they flee from the camera man as from the wrath to come. When you think you are about to get a good picture, and are ready to press the b.u.t.ton, he either covers his face, or turns his back to you. The writer was congratulating himself on the picture he was about to take of four Chinese women in their native costumes, and was just going to make the exposure, when four Chinamen who were watching him deliberately stepped in front of the camera, completely spoiling the negative. The younger generation, and especially the girls, will occasionally pose for you, and a truly picturesque group they make in their queer mannish dress of bright colors, as they laugh and chatter in their odd but musical jargon.

A few years ago you could not persuade a Chinaman to talk into a telephone, for, as one of them said, "No can see talkee him," meaning he could not see the speaker. Another said, "Debil talkee, me no likee him," but now this is all changed. Some there are who still cling to their old superst.i.tions, but they are few. The march of commerce levels all prejudices, and the telephone is an established fact in Chinatown. They have their own exchange, a small building built in Chinese style, and their own operators. Even the San Francisco telephone book has one section devoted to them, and printed in Chinese characters. And so civilization goes marching on, the old order changeth, and even the Chinaman must of necessity conform to our ways.

But the Chinatown of to-day is not the Chinatown existent before the great disaster of 1906. It has changed, and that for the better, better both for the city and the Chinaman.

Mr. Arnold Genthe, in his Old Chinatown, says: "I think we first glimpsed the real man through our gradual understanding of his honesty. American merchants learned that none need ever ask a note of a Chinaman in any commercial transaction; his word was his bond." And while they still have their joss houses, wors.h.i.+p their idols, gamble, and smoke opium, they are their own worst enemies; they do not bother the white men, and are generally considered a law unto themselves.

As we pa.s.s on down Grant Avenue we meet a crowd gathered around a bulletin board, where hundreds of red and yellow posters are displayed. All are excited, chattering like magpies, as they discuss the latest bulletin of a Tong war, or some other notice of equal interest; and here we leave them, and Chinatown also, pa.s.sing over the line out of the precincts of the Celestial, and into our own "G.o.d's country."

[Ill.u.s.tration]

In a Gla.s.s-bottom Boat