Under the Southern Cross. Ballou Maturin Murray
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repository of vice of the most brutal and disgusting character, affording the fullest entertainment for the low tastes of the most depraved. Finding that this pandering to the curiosity of a certain class of whites brings them in money, the Chinamen give them all the grossness they are willing to pay for.
The reader, however, must not entertain a wrong idea with regard to Chinatown, since in the midst of all this squalor, dirt, immorality, and wickedness, there are some of this race living here who keep themselves untainted by the objectionable associations that surround them. They are the exceptions, to be sure. We were told of several Chinese gentlemen, for instance, who have amassed large fortunes by legitimate trade, within the last ten or fifteen years, – men who, as reliable and honorable merchants, stand high among the commercial people of San Francisco. Three names were given us by a gentleman who was well informed in the matter, of Asiatics who were each worth over a million dollars. To these were added the names of two who are worth over two millions. These men will not return to China, because the property tax is so high there. Like many of our own citizens, these Chinese find their great satisfaction in accumulating wealth, and so go on adding daily to their possessions. We have said that there are thirty thousand Chinese in this district, but we were officially informed that forty thousand would be much nearer the true aggregate.
The impression prevails that the open immigration of this race has ceased at San Francisco, but the arrival of several hundreds by steamer the day before we visited their miserable quarter of the town, was duly announced in the papers. These came by the way of Japan. A sickening odor adheres to one's clothing for hours after returning from the Asiatic section of San Francisco, – a flavor of musk, opium, stale tobacco, and sandal-wood, the latter being freely burned as an incense before the Chinese gods; for amid all his filth and vileness, John does not forget scrupulously to fulfil the conventional requirements of his idolatrous faith.
After a few days devoted to renewing acquaintance with the familiar localities of the city, passage was taken on board the Union Steamship Company's mail-packet "Zealandia" bound for Australia. Once before the Golden Gate, as the entrance into the harbor of San Francisco is called, had been passed by the author when bound upon a twenty days' sea-voyage. Japan then formed the objective point, the route being a northerly one; but the "Zealandia" was bound for the tropics and the far southern sea, – that vast region forming the largest expanse of ocean in the world and containing fully one half of its water surface. The Pacific measures nine thousand miles from north to south, and is ten thousand miles broad between Quinto, South America, and the Moluccas, or Spice Islands; while at the extreme north, where Behring Strait divides the continents of Asia and America, it is but about forty miles in width, and in clear weather one can distinctly see the shore of Asia from that of our own continent.
The harbor of San Francisco presented much the same busy scene which so impressed us five years before; it was full of commercial activity and the occupations incident to various forms of maritime life. The noise of steam-whistles from the ferry-boats, the hoarse signals from ocean-going vessels starting on long voyages, and the boatswain's shrill whistle were half deafening as they mingled in direst discord. Big white sea-gulls in myriads flew fearlessly in and out among the shipping, uttering defiant screams, or floated like corks upon the water alongside of the ship. In no other part of the world are there so many snow-white sea-gulls to be seen as frequent this spacious and charming bay. They are large, graceful, dignified birds, and are never molested, being looked upon as picturesque ornaments to the harbor; besides which they are the most active sort of scavengers in removing the floating carrion and the débris thrown from the wharves and the cook's galley. The gulls one sees off the coast of Norway and among the Loffoden Islands are thousands in number, but they are not nearly so large as are these bird-monarchs of the Pacific. Their rank, fishy flavor renders them unfit for the table, though the Chinamen about the wharves secretly snare and eat them. Their breeding-places are not known, but they must be hundreds of miles away on unfrequented rocks and reefs. Distance, however, is of little account to these buoyant navigators of the atmosphere.
One of the ship's officers told us of a sea-gull which was caught within the last year just off the Golden Gate, and detained for a brief period on board a steamship bound for Japan. A short piece of red tape was securely tied to one of its legs, after which the bird was released. This identical gull followed the ship across the Pacific into the harbor of Yokohama, – a distance of over four thousand miles. Until this experiment was tried, it had been doubted whether the same individual birds continue with a ship on a long voyage as they seem to do. "You will see the albatross as we get down south," continued the officer, "a bird worth watching, the largest of the gull family, frequently measuring across its outspread wings twelve feet from tip to tip." We resolved to be on the lookout for this king-bird, though rather doubting the mammoth proportions attributed to him.
By turning to a map of the Western Hemisphere it will be found that the Sandwich Islands are located far up in the northeastern part of the Pacific Ocean, whence a vessel laying her course for New Zealand steers south by west through a long tract of ocean, seemingly so full of islands that the inexperienced are apt to wonder how she can hold such a course and not run foul of some of the Polynesian groups. But so vast are the distances in Oceania, so mathematically exact are the rules of navigation, so well known are the prevailing winds and currents, that the passengers of a steamship may make the voyage and not sight even a headland between Honolulu and Auckland, – a distance of more than four thousand miles. This is the course we pursued, first steering for the Hawaiian group, and thence for the north headlands of New Zealand, via Tutuila, of the Samoan Islands.
It was Magellan, the Portuguese navigator, who first discovered this great ocean, sailing through the strait which bears his name. In the month of November, 1520, he finally came into the waters of the new sea upon which he was the first to sail, and which he named Mar Pacifico. It may have been "pacific" in his day, or may have seemed so to him after experiencing some rough weather on the other side of the continent of America, but we have seen it more turbulent than the Atlantic, especially where it approaches the Antarctic circle. Magellan did not long survive to enjoy the fame and profit of his discovery, as about a twelvemonth later he was killed in an unfortunate skirmish with the savages of some of the Pacific islands. He is often compared with his great contemporary Columbus, whose experience in the West Indies was undoubtedly the incentive for Magellan on his voyages of discovery.
Sea-life is conducive to idleness, and the saline atmosphere is narcotic. Lying in his berth the voyager gazes listlessly at the yellow iron-mould on the towels, the greasy moreen curtains, the restless hanging-lamp, and the damp, begrimed carpet, while he inhales the unpleasant bilge-scented atmosphere which penetrates everything. The jerking motion of the ship shaken incessantly by the propeller, causes the letters of the printed regulations tacked upon the door to run together in unintelligible lines, until at last he grows dizzy with the ceaseless motion imparted to everything. Finally, with a sudden burst of energy the deck is reached, where there is pretty sure to be something suggestive to occupy the mind and vary the wearisome monotony. The wonderful blue of the sea by day, and its fire-like phosphorescence by night, are always interesting. The Mediterranean between Malta and Gibraltar is proverbially blue, but the Pacific seemed to us more so. At times it lay as if in a trance, a perfect calm, the ship's keel gliding as it were over a burnished metallic field, or a flood of molten sapphire. The familiar jelly-fish often appeared above the liquid depths, contracting and expanding its soft, flat body, and thus progressing through the still waters, its half-transparent form emitting opaline colors under the warm rays of the sun. The many-armed, vaulting cuttle-fish was seen now and again leaping out of the water as though pursued by some aquatic enemy, though its general habit is not to frequent the surface by daylight. Specimens of the deep-sea star-fish with its five arms of equal length were abundant. Those which we met here were of a reddish and purple color combined, but we have seen them in shallower waters of a bright orange-yellow. While exhibiting but little apparent life, the star-fish can yet be quite aggressive when pressed by hunger and in search of food, having, as naturalists tell us, a mysterious way of causing the oyster to open its shell, whereupon the star-fish proceeds gradually to consume the body of the bivalve.
One frail, small rover of the quiet surface of the sea always interested us, – the tiny nautilus, with a transparent shell almost as frail as writing-paper. It was to be seen only in calm weather. If disturbed, it drew itself within