SAN FRANCISCO.

Waipawa Mail, Volume I, Issue 4, 25 September 1878, Page 3

SAN FRANCISCO.

Benjamin F. Taylor, in a work just published, entitled, “ Betw*een the Gates,” remarks upon the cosmopolitan character of the people of San Francisco : —“ Sometimes painters used to go to Gibraltar to copy the costumes of far countries that set the streets in a blaze; but to see nations, come to San Francisco. You meet a Spaniard in a wide hat, an Itaiian with ink in his hair, a correlative of frogs and soupemaigre, all in a minute. A California Indian in still shoes, a moonfaced Mexican in partial eclipse and a sort of African by brevet, a Russian with a square chin and a furry look, all in three squares. You elbow South Americans, Australians, New- Zealanders. You accost a man who was born in Brazil, who hails from Good Hope, who trades in Honolulu. One of the Chinese merchants with an easy gait, an erect head, and a boyish face, is coming around the corner. A man from Calcutta is behind you. *An Israelite in whom is no guile ’ is before you. The Scotchman is here with his high cheek bones, the blue eyes, and the cuttypipe, and a word from Robert Burns in his mouth. The Dutch have taken us, and the Irish, do they not ‘ travel the round world ? ” Of course, New England is here, and New York and the South. They are everywhere, but show us your Colombians and Peruvians and Sea-Islanders, and all sorts of people from the outer edges of geographies and the far border of atlases, as here. Japanese and Chinese signs grow familiar to you in a week. Slavonians and Mongolians are as thick as red pepper in East India curry. It is a tremendous polpglot.”