Italian fishing boats with lateen sails go by,
  To cast their lines outside the Golden Gate;
  And ferryboats their ceaseless traffic ply,
  From mole to mole, from early morn till late.

  And so the march of commerce takes its way,
  And every clime contributes of its store
  Where once the Indian’s tepee held its sway,
  Now stands the Golden City on the shore.

[Illustration]

IN CHINA TOWN

If you are a tourist, making your first visit to San Francisco, you will inquire at once for Chinatown, the settlement of the Celestial Kingdom, dropped down, as it were, in the very heart of a big city; a locality where you are as far removed from anything American as if you were in Hongkong or Foochow.  Chinatown is only about two blocks wide by eight blocks long; yet in this small area from ten to fifteen thousand Chinese live, and cling with all the tenacity of the race to their Oriental customs and native dress.  They are as clean as a new pin about their person, but how they can keep so immaculate amid such careless and not over-clean surroundings is a mystery not to be solved by a white man.

For a few dollars a guide will conduct a party through Chinatown, and point out all the places of interest; but we preferred to act for ourselves in this capacity, and saunter from place to place as our fancy dictated.  Stores of all kinds line both sides of Grant Avenue, formerly called Dupont, where all kinds of Chinese merchandise are displayed in profusion.  At one place we stopped to examine some most exquisite ivory carvings, as delicate in tracery as frost on a window pane.  Next we lingered before a shop where the women of our party went into raptures over the exquisite gowns and the beautiful needlework displayed.  Here are shown padded silks of the most delicate shades, on which deft fingers have embroidered the ever-present Chinese stork and cherry blossoms, as realistic as if painted with an artist’s brush.

That peculiar building just across the way is the Kow Nan Low Restaurant, resplendent with dragons and lanterns of every shape and size suspended above and about the doorway.

If you are fond of chop suey, or bird’s-nest pudding, and are not too fastidious as to its ingredients, you may enjoy a dinner fit for a mandarin.

We stop before a barber shop and watch the queer process of shaving the head and braiding the queue.  The barber does not invite inspection, as the curtains are partly drawn, but we peep over the top and look with interest at the queer process of tonsorial achievement, much to the disgust of the barber and his customer, if the expression on their faces can be taken as an index of their thoughts.

Then to the drug store, the market, the shoeshop, and a dozen other places, to finally bring up where all the tourists do—­at the “Marshall Field’s” of Chinatown, Sing Fat’s, a truly marvelous place, where one can spend hours looking over the countless objects of interest.