nor European. He had no cue, but his eyes were to this building, he searched among the sleepers | till he found the other robber, unearthed the rest of the plunder, and carried both back with him. slightly bias, and there was a mixture of Saxon and Tartar in his dress as well as his features. We passed by slowly, and the captain being somewhat in advance, I determined to settle the question of his nationality on my own hook. "John," I asked, "are you a Chinaman, or not?" To which he replied, with equal candor and sincerity: "Were you alone, captain ?" I asked. "Were you not afraid? And how is it that all these men speak to you as if they really liked you?" "Oh, well," he said, "they know that I don't trouble them as long as they behave themselves, and they know also that I find them out every "My mother she be Englishman; my father he time they get into mischief." one Chinaman.” Every man we met knew our captain, and had a friendly recognition for him; and as there were about three Chinamen to every square inch of pavement, the walk through Chinatown was nearly equal to passing through a New Year's levee at the White House. Before crossing the street the captain stopped to inquire whether the young lady felt sufficiently recovered to enter a place which was just a little bit crowded. The Baron suggested that perhaps Miss Hatch had had enough Chinatown for one day, and that the rest of us could finish some other time. But the lady vowed in the most solemn manner not to faint any more if some of the gentlemen would lend her an additional handkerchief or two; and we crossed the street to enter a blind alley which led up to the rear entrance of what had once been a large store. Foul, slimy water oozed out from under the dilapidated walls of the building, and stood in little green-covered pools along the alleyway. The captain had pleasant little reminiscences attached to all these savory spots, and while we were picking our way along told us how one fine morning at about six o'clock he spied a Mongolian slipping through this alley and up to the door with a large cloth-covered basket on his shoulder. He shouted to him to stop, and the man stood stock still till the captain coming up asked him what was in the basket. He said he was in the habit of getting among the most villainous crowds alone, and could almost always detect the culprit he was in search of at the first glance, in spite of their great powers of dissemblance. While recounting these things he had very leisurely, after knocking for admittance once or twice, pried back the tin sheets that served for window glass in the door, and now proceeded to unfasten the lock from the inside. The Baron, standing nearest to him, entered the door first but started back, put his handkerchief to his nose, and took off his hat. Mr. Hatch followed, started back, put his handkerchief to his nose, and etered sideways. Cousin Harry turned a little pale, but resolutely followed him. When it came my turn to enter last, I saw that the ceiling was so low that the Baron had to stoop even with his hat off; the passage between a row of bunks on either side was so narrow that Mr. Hatch's broad shoulders had to make progress sideways, and the captain alone of all the company seemed to move and breathe with perfect ease. He stood in our midst all at once (I don't know how he got there), and said that just above us were rows of bunks similar to these, and that these low ceilings, or floors, were put into all rooms over ten feet high by the Chinese, so that they always got two rooms where a white man had but one. Nor must the reader imagine that there was but one row of "Me get washee clo'es," said John, with the bunks on either side of us; there was tier above most innocent face in the world. tier as high up as the ceiling would permit, and all these tiers of bunks were filled with sleepers. They were not all sleepers though, as the captain's next words convinced us. "You never went for clothes to wash as early as this in the morning," protested the captain, and lifting the cloth, what should come to view but a lot of the most elegant silverware! Without a word the captain marched his prisoner, basket on shoulder, to the city hall, where he found the police already apprised of the robbery, consisting of a lot of fine table linen and cutlery, beside the silver. Retracing his steps from the city prison "These are all thieves," he informed us; "chicken thieves, burglars and pickpockets. Some of them are stupid and dead asleep with opium, but the rest are lying with their eyes only half closed, counting every ring on your finger and measuring every inch of chain they see on know that nothing could save them from crossing the bay (the penitentiary is situated at San Quentin, on the other side of the bay). Some of them are cut-throats, and I know there must be a dozen here who have served their term in San Quentin." "How many are there in here altogether?" asked Mr. Hatch, who is of a statistical turn of mind. "Lemme see;" the captain counted on his fingers, his gaze seeming to penetrate to the farthest end of the narrow passage, where all was lost in bunks and darkness to our unpracticed eyes, "I should say about one hundred and eighty on this level; but as this," touching the ceiling with his finger, "divides the room into two stories, and fully but without ostentation to reach the door, which the captain had wisely left open. Speaking out as plainly as I could from behind my handkerchief, I observed to Miss Hatch that I intended describing Chinatown to the readers of POTTER'S AMERICAN MONTHLY. She looked up quickly into my face, dropping her handkerchief in her surprise. "How many languages do you speak?" she asked, hurriedly reapplying her handkerchief to her nose. "Two," I answered, proudly. "Two!" she repeated, contemptuously; "I speak five; but I should never attempt to describe Chinatown till I had learned a sixth-the Chinese." Mr. Hatch turned triumphantly. But the captain remained immovable. After walking through a wider street a little distance, we found ourselves at the entrance of another alley, on one side of which stood a row of low, untidy houses, provided with a number of doors and windows at regular intervals, something after the style of soldiers' quarters at a barracks. The windows were curtained and closed, but each door had a sort of look-out, a square piece cut out of the centre, and at each opening of that kind there appeared the head and face of a China-"Follow me through this alley;" and, having woman, powdered and rouged, and with hair arranged in the most elaborate fashion. They looked at us with great unconcern, forming, as they were seated there, the most perfect illustration of the spider waiting for the fly. "The Odalisques of Chinatown," Miss Hatch called them. started out to see Chinatown and everything in it, we followed. This was in an alley not quite so filthy as the other by just one shade. As the captain pushed open the door and began to asscend the stairs of a house we entered, a shrill female Chinese voice struck our ears in accents of unmistakable pleasure. Looking up we saw a portly Chinawoman shambling along the corridor above in great haste, with the liveliest gesticulations that a Chinawoman can afford, and screeching out something at the top of her voice. Almost immediately a round-faced Mongolian joined her, threw the baby he held into the woman's arms, and hurried down the stairs to meet us, making every possible demonstration of joy at beholding the captain, and grinning welcome to the whole party. When we reached the landing, the woman had already thrown open three or four different doors, and made frantic efforts to induce us to enter them These women were all bought in China, the captain told us, and were resold at a higher figure after reaching this country. Some of them, he thought, had brought perhaps only fifty or seventy-five dollars when their parents sold them; but very likely the trader who bought them first had sold out for a higher figure to the man who brought them to this country; and that man, if he had any luck at all, got probably four hundred dollars a piece after landing them here. This seemed so heartless and barbarous that Mr. Hatch would hardly believe the captain's story. "What! parents sell their own children?" he all at once and at the same time. But the captain asked, indignantly. "I've never seen any Chinese in this country that wouldn't do it," was the reply. paused to explain. "What makes this woman and her husband so glad to see me is, that I saved their establishment once from destruction by Highbinders." "Highbinders?" We had never heard of these animals. "A lot of cut-throats who descend on houses of this kind, lay the keepers under heavy contribution, and if they are not bought off will smash the entire contents of a good-sized house in about ten minutes' time, the inmates being only too glad to escape with life and limb. Such a descent is always a little private enterprise of their own but it is said that the Six Companies employ them secretly to put out of the way any Chinaman who has been found guilty of high crime and misde meanor from a Chinese point of view." Just then a Chinaman carrying on his arms a child perhaps a year old, entered the alley and stopped to gaze at so many specimens of "Melican man" crowding his alley. The child was dressed out in all the fantastic garments its little body could carry. A wadded gown of silk, with sashes tied like butterfly's wings, worked with green and gold, and purple and red, was one of the articles it wore; on its head sat a thing like a bee-hive, with scarlet and silver fringe, and drooping silver tassels. Mr. Hatch stepped up to him. "Will you sell me the baby?" he asked, persuasively. "I will give you fifty dollars for it." The Chinaman smiled; but put his other arm around the child with a great display of fatherly Then we were led from one room into the other, affection. all extremely neat with clean though bare floors "No, no," he said, virtuously; "I na sell my but scantily furnished, half in Chinese, half in child for money." English. In one room stood a round table about which were gathered five or six of the resident "Odalisques" playing at cards, and under the surveillance of an ancient dame who looked as if she could tell of the first years of the reign of Confucius. They were all dressed in the common blue blouse, a little longer than that of the men; and wide trousers, very loose about the ankle. The hair was dressed in the intricate fashion that is so hard to describe and makes the general effect of raven's wings and the sail of an old fashioned windmill at the same time. It is always drawn back tight and smooth from the forehead, and some of these damsels had their "back hair" stuck full of ornamental gold pins. "Are they really gold ?" I asked. "Oh, yes," with the greatest sang-froid, pulling two or three out of one girl's head, and handing them around for inspection. She neither turned her head nor looked around; and when the captain went on to denude her of the rest of her jewelry, handing a massive gold ear-ring to one of us and a bracelet of gold and (I think) malachite to the other, she neither assisted nor retarded the business in hand; she sat still and passive, like any other piece of wood- or stonecarving. We admired the beautiful red of the lips and cheeks of these women, and at a word from the captain, the "lady of the house" produced a little flat pasteboard box, from which he took a piece of shiny dark-green pasteboard, folded screenfashion, and alike on both sides. Wetting the finger of one hand and passing it over the green paper, he painted the back of the other to the color of the women's lips in a moment's time, to the great amusement of the entire party. Then tearing the screen into sections he distributed the pieces among us, and bade the women show us the white and pink powder which they also use on their face. When we got ready to go, the captain said he would land us in a different part of Chinatown, on a street more aristocratic than the one from which we had entered the house. As far as I can judge, the part of the city in which Chinatown is now located is one that was built up after the first great rush to early San Francisco was over, and when people began to build with the intention of staying here after they had made their money. These houses were tall, solidly built, with large spacious stores below and rooms for offices and apartments for dwelling in the upper stories. When the Chinese took possession they not only made two rooms out of one in the manner above described, but in many cases broke doorways through separating walls, and added back-porches and long outside galleries where the architect had never designed they should be. This house stood near the corner, and after getting a glimpse of Lesser China in the courtyard below, with its irruption of Mongolian ant-hills, we were led along corridors made endless by breaking the dividing walls between building and building, oppressing the spirit like dreams that we have, where we are lost in just such dark, hopeless passages, which never come to an end, and seem to have no outlet this side the grave. Hand in hand Miss Hatch and I went on, shuddering a little in the chill gloom, but proud in the thought that we were doing Chinatown. Soon, to reward our perseverance, came a broad stream of light and sunshine, and we descended a staircase to find ourselves in " a highly desirable, firstclass neighborhood." The alley was fully half as wide as Jackson street itself, was paved with cobble-stones, had only one filthy gutter running through the centre, which was romantically overhung in one place by a balcony on which some Chinese Juliets were taking an airing and flirting with their pig-tailed Romeos below. The place was really quite recherché, and seemed given up entirely to "bloated bondholders," as Denis the Devil has it; for they were merely idling their hours away, and not a rag-picker, a shoe-mender, nor vegetable-peddler was to be seen among the gay and brilliant crowd. At rare intervals, women, singly or in pairs, with hair decorated with paper flowers, or hidden under a large bandana, and carrying always a red silk handkerchief in their hands, passed along through the crowd, each one with the same step, half shuffle and half smirk. Again the captain paused to explain. (You "Right where that young lady is standing there lay a dead man about three weeks ago.' may believe that Miss Hatch made a leap nearly across the street.) "I was walking along Washington street when I heard shots fired, and hurrying up was just in time to see a Chinaman running as fast as his legs would carry him. I knew he had done the shooting, but knew I could find him later; so I looked up the other man first. The murderer had come up behind him-they always do—and had given the fellow no chance for his life. The windows and the balcony were filled with women, and such chattering, and screeching, and clawing the air you never heard or saw in your born days." The good captain laughed at the recollection. Some one asked why the Chinese, who seemed so numerous here now, had not interfered, or at least held the murderer. But it seems that all these Romeos, Lotharios and Rothschilds had unaccountably vanished at the sound of the first shot, till at the captain's appearance they suddenly sprang up again all around him like mushrooms. They always hold in this quarter that discretion is the better part of valor. Among the Celestial nuisances may be classed the Chinese rag-picker and vegetable-peddler. A long pole is laid across the shoulders, from which hangs a basket at either end; and though they have great dexterity in swinging the baskets so as not to come in contact with those meeting them, they cannot entirely steer clear of the crowds on the streets. Of course there have been laws passed to abate this as other nuisances; but they do not always understand or regard the laws. An oddity, however, is the cobbler, who squats gravely at the street corners in Chinatown and mends Celestial shoes with an untiring industry that might be profitably imitated by the "superior race." What I cannot understand about this mysterious being is how he mends the shoes; I never see any tools or implements except the one he happens to be using, and I fancy he sits on the rest to keep them from walking off with his passing countrymen and fellow-citizens. The restaurant to which we now bent our steps was designated as "high-toned" by the captain. It must be conceded that it had a very promising appearance on the outside; for from the third story hung a balcony so intensely Chinese that the Emperor of China himself need not have disdained to sit among the fantastically-shaped hanging-lamps in the shadow of the front wall, covered with strange characters and weird signs which would have been an excellent stage background to the performance of a prestidigitator or an Egyptian mystery man. The lattice-work enclosing the balcony was painted a bright green; and what with the glitter of tinsel, and the swaying of paper lanterns and dragon-kites, it was a shining mark for death or the sight-seer to seize rated building was used as a market-meats on one side, vegetables on the other. The proprietor, a fat, squabby pig-tail, crawled out of some nook of concealment, and waddled with all possible diligence up to our captain, and invited us with many bows and pleasant smiles to walk up stairs. The staircase was broad and clean, and the story above was a very good plain restaurant for the upper middle classes, I should say. The room we entered directly from the stairway extended the entire length of the building, and at the lower end of the room was a deep recess, where, upon 1 raised platform, covered in this instance with soft Brussels carpet, was the inevitable opium jar, with lamp and pipes and a head-block on either side, where the smokers could stretch themselves at full length and enjoy their pipe-born dreams. Ascending the next flight of stairs, we landed directly in front of a large elegant mirror. This was upper-tendom. The space here was divided, into different rooms, all large, light, and with clean-scrubbed floors. The principal room was furnished with heavy round tables, made of a dark mahogany-brown wood, and around which were placed chairs of the same material, guiltless of cushion or upholstery, but with handsomely carved, straight backs. They were imported from China, together with all other utensils and furn ture in these apartments. All around the room, ranged against the wall, were square stools, or rather chairs without backs, of the same wood, carved, too, and without cushions; and these things, the captain said, were, at great festivals and on extra occasions, drawn up near the table, where the women occupied them, placed behind the chair of their liege lord, not beside it. Mia Hatch gave an indignant sniff at this piece of formation, but I-well, I've been married, you know. Some of the male elite of Chinatown were seated at the tables, and they, just as their more humble brethren of the basement restaurant, had standing beside their little fancy tea-bowl, another bowl still smaller, containing a liquor made of rice, 12 China called Sham shoo. (The orthography not be quite correct; my Chinese dictionary loaned out.) The little tea-bowls were double, that is, the tea was drawn in one and covered in with the other. The viands on the table-excus me from going into details, there was no bill al |