Page:A La California.djvu/159

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CHAPTER VI.

IN THE STREETS OF SAN FRANCISCO.

Cosmopolitanism of San Francisco.—Its Street Panoramas and Pictures and Sounds.—An Autumn Morning.—The "Barbary Coast."—The Chinese Missionary.—Factory Hands on Holiday.—Funeral of Ah Sam.—A Chinese Faction-fight.—An Equestrian Outfit.—The Poundmaster's Van.—General Stampede: its Cause and its Course.—The Pine-apple Plant.—The Passers-by.

Cosmopolitan, in the fullest acceptation of the term, above that of any other city of America, perhaps of the world, is the population of this goodly city of San Francisco, the metropolis of an empire in the near future, of the wealth and grandeur of which we of to-day have hardly yet commenced to dream. Here on the shore of the blue, illimitable Pacific, the human tides circling around the globe from east and west, from Europe and the Atlantic slope of America, from Asia, the isles of the ocean, Australia, and farthest Africa, meet and commingle with a deep, incessant roar, even as the waves from the shores of China, Japan, and the Spice Islands meet the floods from the Sacramento and the San Joaquin, at her Golden Gate, and burst in thundering surf on the frowning: rocks of Point Lobos and Point Bonita.

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