softens with her ministries the severities of the past, and sunlit
skies bend over the dead, as of old in many lands, and star-bedecked
heavens tell still to the living, as once to those whose bodies
mouldered here, the story of the life beyond, where glory and riches
and honour are the heritage of the faithful!




CHAPTER V

THEN AND NOW, OR EIGHTEEN HUNDRED FORTY-NINE AND NINETEEN HUNDRED AND
ONE

Triangular Section of San Francisco--Clay Banks, Mud and Rats
in 1849--Streets at That Time--Desperate Characters--Gambling
Houses--Thirst for Gold--Saloons and Sirens--The Bella Union--The
Leaven of the Church--Robbers' Dens and Justice in Mining Camps--The
Vigilance Committee and What It Did--San Francisco Well Governed
Now--Highway Robbers and the Courts--Chief of Police Wittman and His
Men--A Visit to Police Headquarters--The Cells--A Murderer--A Chinese
Woman in Tears--A Hardened Offender.


The traveller to the City of the Golden Gate, as he approaches it,
having crossed the great bay from Oakland, notices that the hundreds
of streets which greet his gaze run from east to west, and cross each
other at right angles, except a triangular section of this metropolis
of the west. This part of the city may be compared to a great wedge
with the broad end on the bay. It begins at the Market Street Ferry