ample accommodations, the whiteness of its canvas, and its gay trimmings.
It was in the larger cities, however, such as San Francisco, Sacramento, and Marysville, that this passion with the most unbriddled license was displayed. In 1850 on two sides of the plaza were brick buildings devoted almost exclusively to gambling. There were the El Dorado, the Bella Union, the Rendezvous, the Empire, the Parker House, and the Verandah. Here large halls were fitted up, some of them by companies formed in France, with oriental splendor. In one the ceiling, rich in fresco and gilt, was supported by glass pillars, pendant from which were great glass chandeliers. Around the walls were fine large paintings of nude female figures, and mirrors extending from floor to ceiling. Entering at night from the unlighted dismal street into an immense room lighted with dazzling brilliance, and loud with the minoied sound of musical histruments, the clink of coin and glasses, and the hum of human voices, was like passing from the dark depths to celestial briorhtness.
There were long rows of leather-covered mahogany tables on which were temptingly spread out heaps of glittering gold and silver coin, nuggets, slugs, bars, and bags of dust, and where the votaries of chance might choose from every game known to the civilized gambling world.
With difficulty one elbowed one's way through the promiscuous crowd that here nightly congregated. There were men in black clothes, immaculate linen, and shining silk hats, merchants, lawyers, and doctors; miners in woollen shirts, greasy Sandwich Islanders, Chilians, and Mexicans; Irish laborers, Negroes, and Chinamen, some crowded round the tables intently watching the games, others lounging about, smoking, chewing, spitting, drinking, swearing, now and then dropping a dollar, or a five, or ten, or twenty.
