"Bar of a Gambling Saloon," "Drawn on Wood by Mr. L.C. Martin, from Designs by Frank Marryat," illustration for From Mountains to Molehills..., 1885. Larger.
During the Gold Rush, San Francisco bustled with myriad business activities, but when it came to recreation, the choices were pretty slim.
British travel writer Frank Marryat arrived in California in 1850, eager to record Gold Rush goings-on, including the peculiar manners displayed in San Francisco "drinking-bars."
The better description of drinking-bars are fitted up with great taste, and at enormous expense. Order and quiet are preserved within them during the day; they are generally supplied with periodicals and newspapers, and business assignations are made and held in them at all hours. Every body in the place is generous and lavish of money; and perhaps one reason for so many drinks being consumed is in fact that there is ever some liberal sould who is not content until he has ranged some twenty of his acquaintances at the bar; and ehwn each one is suplied with a "drink," he says, "My respects gentlemen!" and the twenty heads being simultaneously thrown back, down go "straight brandies," "Queen-Charlottes," "stone-fences," "Champagne-cocktails," and "sulky sangarees," while the liberal entertainer discharges the score, and each one hurries to his business. There is no one in such a hurry as a Californian, but he always has time to take a drink.
"Mountains and Molehills...," frontispiece, 1855. Larger.
Though some of us may scoff, the purchase and use of firearms in California is strictly regulated; looking at conditions during the Gold Rush may give us a clue as to why.
Frank Marryat, an English travel writer and sportsman, was familiar with firearms. But during his tour of Gold Rush California, even he was astonished to see them so casually brandished.
Previous to the last San Francisco fire I have recorded, burglaries were so common, that it became necessary to carry fire-arms after dark, more particularly as the streets were not lighted. An acquaintance of mine was walking late one night through a street which was apparently deserted, and in which one dim light alone shed a sickly ray from over the door of a closed restaurant. As he reached this spot, a man started from the obscurity, and requested with the politeness of a Claude Duval to know the time. With equal civility, my friend presented the dial of his watch to the light, and allowing the muzzle of his revolver to rest gracefully upon the turnip, he invited the stranger to inspect for himself. Slowly the latter advanced, and the sickly ray gleamed likewise on the barrel of his "six-shooter," as with some difficulty he satisfied himself respecting the time.
Both then prepared to depart, and for the first time the light fell on their faces; then these desperate fellows discovered that they were no burglars, but old acquaintances, who had dined in company on that very evening. But this is not the only part of the world where it is prudent to look on every man as a rogue until you know him to be honest.
Frank Marryat returned to England in 1853. He died just two years later, the same year that his Gold Rush chronicle Mountains and Molehills appeared.
"Acres and acres of empty oyster shells. Piles 15 deep in places.," photographed by Lewis Wickes Hine, 1909. Larger.
California has its own version of the old cliche "necessity is the mother of invention." Here, desire is the mother of opportunity.
In 1850 Francis Marryat left England for Californa, intent on gathering material for a book. He found plenty to write about, including California's incipient oyster industry.
It is not until you have been a long time without an oyster that you find how indispensable to your complete happiness this bivalve is; so soon as the want of it was generally expressed by the inhabitants of San Francisco, some enterprising individual gave his attention to the subject, and, after an adventurous voyage of discovery along the coast, he found a bed, and returned with a cargo of natives in triumph. . . They were very small innocent oysters at first, and tasted like a teaspoonful of salt water; they also cost sixpence a piece, which was about their weight in silver; but they were oysters; a victory had been gained; an imperious want had been supplied: we thought of this as we swallowed them, and were grateful for them even at the price. Since then the submarine colony has thrived so well that oysters in San Francisco are not only large, but comparatively cheap, so that many of the inhabitants gratuitously supply the city with pavement by throwing the shells out into the street, as oyster-venders do in every city in the world where the law permits.
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