San Francisco

San Francisco is the Pacific port at which Phileas Fogg, Aouda, and Passepartout reach the American continent and exchange an ocean crossing for an eastbound rail journey. The city’s floating wharves, crowded commercial waterfront, and packed streets make it a vivid threshold between the Pacific route and the railway crossing of the United States; Fogg’s brief stay there is governed less by sightseeing than by the hour of the next train.

Port and Pacific Gateway

San Francisco appears first from the water. On December 3, the General Grant enters the bay of the Golden Gate and reaches the city. The passengers disembark at seven in the morning onto a floating quay that rises and falls with the tide, a practical arrangement for loading and unloading. Around it lie clippers, steamers flying many national flags, and multi-deck river steamboats serving the Sacramento and its tributaries. The quay is crowded with goods from a commercial network extending to Mexico, Chile, Peru, Brazil, Europe, Asia, and the islands of the Pacific Ocean.

The arrival completes the long sea leg from Yokohama, listed in the planned itinerary as a twenty-two-day crossing. San Francisco is consequently more than a destination on the map: it is the point where the party’s mode of movement changes. Their passage across the Pacific has depended on the connection between steamers; their progress from here depends on rail. The city’s port and railway thus stand together in the narrative as linked parts of a travel system, each transfer carrying the travelers toward the next deadline.

A Commercial City and Its Observers

Passepartout’s landing is comically awkward. Delighted to have reached the New World, he attempts a vault on the quay, falls through worm-eaten planks, and frightens the cormorants and pelicans perched on the floating structure with his cry. The mishap makes the threshold bodily and imperfect: the travelers arrive on a working waterfront, not on a stable ceremonial shore.

From a carriage, Passepartout surveys broad streets, evenly ranged low houses, Gothic churches, docks, large wooden and brick warehouses, omnibuses, and horse-cars. He also notices Americans and Europeans alongside Chinese and Indians. His account registers the city through visible buildings, transport, and people, presenting San Francisco as a place of movement and commercial exchange. The description is filtered through a traveler newly arrived from Japan, and his surprise helps make the city’s scale and variety part of the scene.

That view is set against the reputation of the San Francisco of 1849, imagined as a gathering place for bandits, murderers, and incendiaries, where fortune-seekers gambled with gold dust and weapons at hand. The city encountered by Passepartout is instead characterized as a great commercial emporium. The contrast does not erase the earlier legend; it shows how the traveler’s present-day observations revise the image he brings with him. The port’s warehouses, vehicles, and mixed crowds make commerce, rather than outlaw romance, the dominant impression.

A Brief Stop Under the Clock

The party has the day in San Francisco because the first train for New York is not scheduled to leave until six in the evening. Fogg responds to the interval practically: he hires a carriage for three dollars, takes Aouda with him, and has Passepartout ride beside the driver on the box. Their destination is the International Hotel. The city offers time for a short excursion, but the fixed departure hour places a limit on it from the outset.

On their walk, they reach Montgomery Street, where an immense crowd fills the sidewalks, roadway, horsecar rails, shop entrances, windows, and rooftops. People carry large posters; flags and streamers move above the gathering, and cries for Camerfield ring through the street. Fogg asks whether the crowd is choosing a commander-in-chief and learns that the election is for a justice of the peace. The episode gives the urban visit a civic dimension: the travelers encounter San Francisco not only as a port of goods and transport, but as a city in the midst of a public political gathering.

The stop ends according to the itinerary rather than the crowd’s excitement. Fogg gets aboard the train as it starts at full speed. San Francisco is therefore a temporary station in the larger journey, but not an empty interval: its street scene briefly interrupts the disciplined sequence of transfers with the noise and density of city life.

Narrative Function and Changing Distance

The city’s position in the route gives it particular force. Earlier, the voyage from Yokohama to San Francisco was presented as a direct connection with the steamer arriving from Hong Kong; in San Francisco, the onward movement becomes a railway journey toward New York. The port is the hinge between two large transport systems, and the travelers’ ability to continue depends on catching the scheduled train. The narrative makes global mobility concrete through quays, vessels, carriages, and departure times.

San Francisco also gives visible form to the idea that the world has grown smaller through faster travel. The route’s distances remain immense, but connections between ships and railways allow Fogg’s party to cross them in a tightly organized succession. At the same time, the city is not reduced to a timetable: its unstable wharf, crowded commercial landscape, and political assembly place the modern travel network within a particular urban setting. San Francisco matters both as a precise link in Fogg’s race and as a city briefly observed in its own variety and activity.