The fable of a city paved with gold is
realised in San Francisco. Mr. Taylor reports:
— "Walking through the town, I was quite
amazed to find a dozen persons busily
employed in the street before the United States
Hotel, digging up the earth with knives and
crumbling it in their hands. They were
actual gold-hunters, who obtained in this way
about five dollars a day. After blowing the
fine dirt carefully in their hands, a few specks
of gold were left, which they placed in a piece
of white paper. A number of children were
engaged in the same business, picking out the
fine grains by applying to them the head of a
pin, moistened in their mouths. I was told of
a small boy having taken home fourteen
dollars as the result of one day's labour. On
climbing the hill to the Post Office I observed
in places, where the wind had swept away
the sand, several glittering dots of the real
metal, but, like the Irishman who kicked the
dollar out of his way, concluded to wait till I
should reach the heap. The presence of gold
in the streets was probably occasioned by the
leakings from the miners' bags and the sweepings
of stores; though it may also be, to a
slight extent, native in the earth, particles
having been found in the clay thrown up from
a deep well."

The prices paid for labour were at that
time equally romantic. The carman of one
firm (Messrs. Mellus, Howard, and Co.) drew
a salary of twelve hundred a year; and it
was no uncommon thing for such persons to
be paid from fifteen to twenty dollars, or
between three and four pounds sterling per day.
Servants were paid from forty to eighty
pounds per month. Since this time (August,
1849), however, wages had fallen; the
labourers for the rougher kinds of work could—
poor fellows—get no more than something
above the pay of a Lieutenant-Colonel in the
British army, or about four hundred per annum.
The scarcity of labour is best illustrated by the
cost of washing, which was one pound twelve
shillings per dozen. It was therefore found
cheaper to put out washing to the antipodes;
and to this day, San Francisco shirts are
washed and "got up " in China and the
Sandwich Islands. So many hundred dozens of
dirty, and so many hundred dozens of washed
linen form the part of every outward and
inward cargo to and from the Golden City.

The profits upon merchandise about the
time we are writing of, may be judged of by one
little transaction recorded by Mr. Taylor:—
"Many passengers," he writes, "began speculation
at the moment of landing. The most
ingenious and successful operation was made
by a gentleman of New York, who took out
fifteen hundred copies of ' The Tribune ' and
other papers, which he disposed of in two
hours, at one dollar a-piece! Hearing of this
I bethought me of about a dozen papers which
I had used to fill up crevices in packing my
valise. There was a newspaper merchant
at the corner of the City Hotel, and to him I
proposed the sale of them, asking him to name
a price. ' I shall want to make a good profit
on the retail price,' said he, ' and can't give
more than ten dollars for the lot.' I was
satisfied with the wholesale price, which was
a gain of just four thousand per cent."

The prices of food are enormous, and,
unhappily, so are the appetites; "for two months
after my arrival," says a respectable authority,
"my sensations were like those of a famished
wolf; " yet the first glance at the tariff of a
San Francisco bill of fare is calculated to
turn the keenest European stomach. "Where
shall we dine to-day? " asked Mr. Taylor,
during his visit. "The restaurants display
their signs invitingly on all sides; we have
choice of the United States, Tortoni's, the
Alhambra, and many other equally classic
resorts, but Delmonico's, like its
distinguished original in New York, has the
highest prices and the greatest variety of
dishes. We go down Kearney Street to a
two-story wooden house on the corner of
Jackson. The lower story is a market; the
walls are garnished with quarters of beef and
mutton; a huge pile of Sandwich Island
squashes fills one corner, and several cabbage-
heads, valued at two dollars each, show
themselves in the window. We enter a little door
at the end of the building, ascend a dark,
narrow flight of steps and find ourselves in a
long, low room, with ceiling and walls of
white muslin and a floor covered with oil-cloth.
There are about twenty tables disposed in
two rows, all of them so well filled that we
have some difficulty in finding places. Taking
up the written bill of fare, we find such items
as the following:—