South Vallejo is typical of many Californian towns. It was a
blunder; the site has proved untenable; and, although it is still
such a young place by the scale of Europe, it has already begun to
be deserted for its neighbour and namesake, North Vallejo. A long
pier, a number of drinking saloons, a hotel of a great size, marshy
pools where the frogs keep up their croaking, and even at high noon
the entire absence of any human face or voice--these are the marks
of South Vallejo. Yet there was a tall building beside the pier,
labelled the Star Flour Mills; and sea-going, full-rigged ships lay
close along shore, waiting for their cargo. Soon these would be
plunging round the Horn, soon the flour from the Star Flour Mills
would be landed on the wharves of Liverpool. For that, too, is one
of England's outposts; thither, to this gaunt mill, across the
Atlantic and Pacific deeps and round about the icy Horn, this crowd
of great, three-masted, deep-sea ships come, bringing nothing, and
return with bread.
The Frisby House, for that was the name of the hotel, was a place
of fallen fortunes, like the town. It was now given up to
labourers, and partly ruinous. At dinner there was the ordinary
display of what is called in the west a TWO-BIT HOUSE: the
tablecloth checked red and white, the plague of flies, the wire
hencoops over the dishes, the great variety and invariable vileness
of the food and the rough coatless men devoting it in silence.
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