The Barbary Plague
The Black Death in Victorian San Francisco
Chapter One
The Year of the Rat
The new year of 1900 ushered in dangerous times. In San Francisco,
it was, as always, a holiday with two faces. Downtown, white
celebrants raised their usual end-of-year ruckus. In the streets of
Chinatown, a shadow fell over the Lunar New Year, in an ominous
prologue to the year ahead.
Rain spattered the boardwalks on New Year's Eve. When the skies
cleared, the merrymakers came out. A band of maskers gathered on the
corner of Market and Kearny streets, just below Union Square and
Chinatown. Blowing horns and clanging cowbells, they hurled confetti
and thrashed passersby with evergreen boughs left over from
Christmas. Then the celebration turned ugly. Charging north up
Kearny for five blocks, the carousers reached Chinatown and started
grabbing Chinese musical instruments from the shops, banging the
gongs, and blasting away ... read full excerpt from The Barbary Plague ebook
