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were foreign. The difference between the statements of the entrances and departures arises chiefly from the circumstance that the many vessels engaged in the Californian coasting trade were cleared, but not entered in the custom house. The quickest passages of the year were made by the Flying Fish and the John Gilpin, both "clipper ships." These were from New York, and arrived on the 31st January, and 2d February, in 92 and 97 days respectively. At the close of the year, there were 72 square rigged sailing vessels in the port, consisting of 21 ships, 36 barques, and 15 brigs. A few weeks, and sometimes a few days only, were now sufficient to discharge the largest vessels, and fit them ready to depart again for sea. Besides the vessels mentioned as being in port, there was also there a proportion of the large ocean steamers and those that plied along the coast, and in the bay and tributaries. Many old "forty-niners" and other vessels that had arrived in various late years, served as storeships, or lay dismantled and neglected in various parts of the harbor.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

1853.

Prosperity of San Francisco.-Business activity.-Fortunes rapidly made.-Disputes concerning titles to real estate. Real property commanding extravagantly high prices.-Social, moral and intellectual characteristics.-Gambling.-Vice less concealed in San Francisco than in other cities.-The female population.-Expenses of house-keeping.-Foreign population.-The marvellous progress of the city during the past few years.

MANY of the observations regarding San Francisco and its citizens made in the reviews of the several years since 1849, and in the chronological order of the proper " Annals," may be fitly applied in describing the place and people at the present time. Cities change neither their moral nor physical nature in a twelvemonth. The same broad characteristics that marked the first great increase in the number of inhabitants are still visible. At the beginning of 1854, the citizens are as remarkable, as in 1849 they were, for energy for good and evil, and the power of overcoming physical obstacles, and creating mighty material changes. Every where in the city is the workman busy at his trade. Laborers of various kinds are still hewing down the rocky hills, excavating the streets, grading and planking them; they are levelling building lots, and rearing mammoth hotels, hospitals, stores, and other edifices; they are piling and capping water lots, and raising a new town upon the deep; gas and water works are forming; sand hills are being continually shifted, and cast, piecemeal, into the bay. The wharves are constantly lined with clipper and other ships, the discharge of whose cargoes gives employment to an army of sailors and boatmen, stevedores and 'longshoremen. The streets are crowded with wagons and vehicles of every description, bearing goods to and from the huge stores and warehouses. The merchant and his clerk are busily

buying and selling, bartering and delivering; and fleets of steamers in the bay and rivers are conveying the greater part of the goods disposed of to the interior towns and mining districts. The ocean is covered with a multitude of ships that bear all manner of luxuries and necessaries to San Francisco. Seven hundred and forty-five thousand tons of the most valuable goods were brought into port in one year. All the inhabitants of the city are in some measure engaged in commerce, or in those manufactures and trades that directly enable it to be profitably carried on, or in supplying the wants, the necessities and extravagances of the proper commercial community. The gold of the mines pays for every thing, and it all passes through San Francisco. Elsewhere we have talked of the high ordinary prices of labor, and the assurance of employment to the earnest workman, who is not above turning his hand to any kind of work, however severe and irksome it may be.

Numerous fortunes were rapidly made in the early days of San Francisco, when the golden gains were shared among a few long-headed speculators, who fattened on the public means, or who took advantage of peculiar circumstances, or who had fortune absolutely thrust upon them by lucky accident. The ordinary rates of profit in all kinds of business were very great, and unless the recipients squandered their gains in gambling, debauchery, and extravagance, they were certain in a very short time to grow rich. Capital, when lent, gave at all times a return of from thirty to sixty per cent. per annum, with the best real security that the country and the times could afford. In twe years' space, the financier doubled his capital, without risk or trouble to himself; and the accumulation went on in geometrical progression. But chiefly it was the holders of real estate that made the greatest fortunes. The possession of a small piece of building ground in or about the centre of business was a fortune in itself. Those lucky people who held lots from the times before the discovery of gold, or who shortly afterwards managed to secure them, were suddenly enriched, beyond their first most sanguine hopes. The enormous rents paid for the use of ground and temporary buildings in 1849 made all men covetous of real estate. By far the greater part had originally belonged to the

city, formerly the so-called pueblo, or village of Yerba Buena; but the guardians of its interests, from the conquest downwards, liberally helped themselves and their friends to all the choice lots. In later years, the unappropriated lots were more remote from the centre of business, although the gradual increase of population was constantly adding to their value. Numerous attempts were then made to filch from the city its more distant tracts of land, and these were often successful. Meanwhile, the legal title of the city itself to all its original estate was disputed, and hosts of rival claimants started up. Conflicting decisions on the subject were given in the courts of law, and all was uncertainty and confusion, violence, ending sometimes in death to the parties, and interminable litigation. The great value of the coveted grounds led to reckless squatterism, and titles by opposite claimants, three or four deep, were pretended to almost every single lot within the municipal bounds. Those who had really made permanent improvements, or who held actual and lucrative possession, might defy the squatter; but the multitude of unimproved land and water lots, and the large tracts around the business part of the city, upon which as yet there was not even a fence, were fair spoils to the resolute invader. No matter what previous title was alleged; all titles were doubtful-except possession perhaps, which was the best. We have, under different dates, noticed at length the speculations of the city guardians in real estate, the Colton grants, Peter Smith sales, and squatter outrages.

The temptation to perpetrate any trick, crime, or violence, to acquire real estate, seemed to be irresistible, when the great returns drawn from it were considered. The reader in the Atlantic States, who may think of the usual cheapness of land in new towns, can scarcely realize the enormous prices chargeable in San Francisco for the most paltry accommodation. We have seen the excessive rents paid in 1849. Four years later, they were nearly as high. The commonest shops, or counting-rooms, in ordinary situations, would rent at from $200 to $400 per month, while larger ones would readily bring $500 and $600. Capacious and handsome stores, auctioneers' halls, and the like, in desirable localities, would often be held at $1000 per month, or more.

The rents of the larger hotels, of the restaurants, coffee saloons, gambling and billiard rooms, and of the finer stores and warehouses, would appear almost incredible to the distant reader. Ordinary stores, offices, and dwelling-houses were rented at equally extravagant sums. One paid away a moderate fortune as a year's rent for but a sorry possession. The profits of general business were so great that large rents, before they became quite so enormous, were readily given. Capitalists built more and handsomer houses, which were tenanted as soon as ready for occupation. In a couple of years, the building speculator in real estate had all his outlay (which, since labor and materials were so very high, was exceedingly great) returned to him in the shape of rents. Henceforward his property was a very mine of wealth. As rents rose, so did the prices of such property. The richest men in San Francisco have made the best portion of their wealth by the possession of real estate.

For several years, rents and the marketable value of real estate had been slowly, though steadily rising. Towards the close of 1853, they were at the highest. At that period, and generally over a great part of the year named, trade and commerce in San Francisco were unprofitable, and in many cases conducted at a serious loss. An excessive importation of goods, far exceeding the wants of California, and which arose doubtless from the large profits obtained by shippers during the previous year, led to a general fall in prices, and occasionally to a complete stagnation in trade. Then it was found that the whole business of the city seemed to be carried on merely to pay rents. A serious fall in these, and in the price of real estate, more especially of unimproved land, followed this discovery, some notice of which will be given in a subsequent chapter.

As we have said, during 1853, most of the moral, intellectual, and social characteristics of the inhabitants of San Francisco were nearly as already described in the reviews of previous years. There was still the old reckless energy, the old love of pleasure, the fast making and fast spending of money, the old hard labor and wild delights, jobberies and official and political corruption, thefts, robberies and violent assaults, murders, duels and suicides, gambling, drinking, and general extravagance and

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