Far Western Chinese (The Chinese Far From Home)

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Part six of the American Far West seven mid nineteenth
century Views from Abroad by Anonymous. This LibriVox recording is
in the public domain. Part six Far Western Chinese The
Chinese Far from Home. Traveling over the mountain trails almost

(00:20):
anywhere in California, no matter how remote and solitary may
be your root, you can scarcely fail to meet a
curious figure, sloping eyed, yellow complexioned, with a shaved head
and pigtail, carefully secured in a twisted knot behind, clad
in a loose cloth or calico garment, half shirt, half jacket,

(00:43):
trousers equally wide, a long bamboo pole over his shoulder,
on either end of which carefully balanced are a sack
of rice, a piece of pork, and a heterogeneous mass
of mining tools. And overall, the head of this strange
individual jewel is covered with a hat made of slips
of bamboo, the brim of which equals in breadth a

(01:06):
moderately sized umbrella. This is John Chinaman from home, finding
his fortune. He always answers to the name of John.
He follows many ways of making his modicum of rice,
and the representative of Chinese industry in this case is mining.
John the white miners only allow him to labor at

(01:28):
the poorer diggings or at others which have been so
well wrought over as no longer to yield returns enough
to satisfy their ideas as to wages. Accordingly, we find
John at work in some remote locality which the stronger
race has deserted, or which is too poor to tempt
them to drive out the Chinese. In former times this

(01:51):
was frequently done, and in the old California newspapers reports
of such outrages, or of meetings at which resolutions to
do so past, are quite common. Some years ago I
had occasion to pass a few days with some Chinese
miners in the mountains. They numbered some twenty men and
occupied the deserted cabins of the miners who had formerly

(02:13):
wrought in the locality. Every morning they would go down
to the river side and labor steadily washing the gravel
for gold until midday, when their slight meal of rice
and vegetables was partaken of. At six o'clock or thereabouts,
they stopped work for the day, and after carefully washing
themselves in the river, they prepared supper. I was the

(02:37):
only white there and had made an arrangement with them
about my meals. Accordingly, my supper was first prepared an
office which I generally superintended, as they had, according to
my observation, a nasty habit of incorporating rattlesnakes, frogs, slugs,
and such small deer in their stews after supper, where

(03:00):
they would look to their little patches of watermelons, cabbages,
and so forth, and their headman would talk to me
about his daily life, or the province he had come from,
and to which he hoped before long to return. The
greater portion of them. However, after they had weighed out
the proceeds of the day's labor and allotted each man

(03:20):
his share by the aid of a swanpan, a sort
of miniature Babbage's calculating machine, would place themselves on their
sleeping benches, put a little tray before them, on which
were all the materials for smoking, and soon drugged themselves
into a dreaming stupidity with the fumes of opium. Their

(03:41):
huts were situated amid the most beautiful scenery, by the
banks of a fine river, over which cataracts from the
snow covered mountains in the distance fell gurgling or roaring
into the waters below. But for all this, on which
I never tired of gazing, my hosts seemed to care little.
They had no visitors save an Indian on horseback now

(04:03):
and then, who treated them very cavalierly and rarely dismounted.
On Sundays, they generally laid over from work, not from
any religious motive, as they were Buddhists, but merely as
a day of rest, and sometimes, if they had been
more than ordinarily successful, one of them would go to
the town or trading port distant some ten miles and

(04:25):
buy some provisions and a bottle of a beverage called,
I quote the label fine Old tom Over, which they
made very merry for a few hours, playing a rude
description of musical instrument, sounding like a paralytic drum. They made, however,
poor pay, generally not more than three or four shillings

(04:46):
per diem each, though now and then they would come
on a lucky pocket and return in the evening grinning
from ear to ear. The ground was, however, getting exhausted,
and they were then talking of putting their household gods
on the bamboo pole, and of removing to some more
favored locality, which they had heard of. Go down into

(05:07):
almost any town or village, and you will find John
moving about with that same silent air of his. Here
he generally follows the business of a laundryman all through
the by streets and suburbs. You can see his little
cabin with a sign board informing that here lives wang Ho,
washing and ironing buttons sewed on, and peeping through the

(05:30):
window you see the proprietor busily at work clear starching
or ironing out the frills on the shirt bosom of
probably the governor himself. He has a large pan full
of lighted charcoal, which he uses as a flat iron,
and his mouth is full of water, which he most
adroitly sprinkles over the linen in a fine shower. If

(05:53):
you have any foul clothes, he will follow you home,
take them away, and return them again in a day
or two, charging about sixpence apiece for his trouble, bargaining, however,
that he has not to find linen collars for paper
ones which may have been dropped in from the frequent
warnings of washing John. On this subject, I suspect that

(06:17):
it is a custom of the colonial gentleman by which
our friend has suffered in time past. In the suburbs
of every town, agricultural John is busy at work clearing
the most unlikely pieces of ground for the purpose of
raising vegetables for the town market. These farmers, or rather
market gardeners, are generally in companies of three or four,

(06:40):
and if you pass that way, you can generally find
one or other of the Bucolic partnership driving the old
cart and still older horse, either from or to market.
If the latter is the case, it is usually filled
with several casks of garbage and so forth, which the
industrious proprietor has bought or begged from the hotel keepers

(07:04):
for feeding his pigs. With shopkeeping, John is of a
rather more aristocratic type. He still wears his country's dress,
but it is of a fine material, and his shoes
are of the best description, with the thickest of felt soles.
He is also more particular about his person and shaves
his head with greater regularity than any of the laboring classes,

(07:28):
much to the advantage of his personal appearance. For however
smart a Chinaman may look, with his sprucely shaven head
and neat pigtail, he looks a most atrocious scoundrel when
the hair is beginning to grow down on his forehead.
These little shops are chiefly patronized by their own nation,
or by the peddlers, who, at all seasons, but more

(07:51):
especially in the winter, when the outlying settlers find it
inconvenient to come into town for trifling purchases, perambulate the
country with two he huge hampers, swung as usual on
either end of a bamboo hole over the dealer's shoulder.
Most obliging are these Chinese peddlers, and they always make
a point every Christmas of making some little present to

(08:13):
their chief customers and to the children. Most of the
large storekeepers and wholesale dealers are men of education and refinement,
standing well with the commercial community, but except on rare occasions,
never mingling in any society but that of their own people.
A few of them keep cheap eating houses or restaurants

(08:34):
frequented by sailors and others who have no objection to
a dinner composed of very dubious materials, so long as
its cost does not exceed a shilling or eighteen pence.
Many of them are general servants, and in almost every
house in Northwest America, the cook is a Chinaman. Female
servants are rare, expensive and most independent, so that are

(08:59):
Asiatic friends have almost a monopoly of the kitchen. They
get for such services from fifteen to twenty dollars per
week with board and lodging, while the young ladies who
condescend to do house helping will demand from thirty to
forty dollars, coupled with the bargain that they are not
to brush boots and are to have two nights a

(09:20):
week and the whole of Sunday to themselves. They are
not strong enough for laborers, but what they lack in
muscle they make up in industry, accordingly, working for moderate wages.
A large number of them are employed on public works
like the Pacific Railroad. Indeed, it is principally owing to
the assistance rendered by them that the rapid formation of

(09:42):
the portion of the line already completed on the west
side of the Rocky Mountains is due. They were also
employed in considerable numbers on the Panama Railroad, but had
to be discontinued as they had a disagreeable habit when
the day was very warm, a fascina themselves by their
pigtails to the dump cart used to empty the earth

(10:05):
into the Shagris River. They also employ themselves to some
extent in catching and drawing fish for the Chinese market.
Every year they preserve several tons of the albacore or
earth shell for exportation to Canton, where it is used
in a variety of manufactures. Even their sign boards are

(10:26):
painted by themselves, as it is dangerous to employ a
jocular American, especially when under the influence of Monongahela whiskey.
Near San Francisco is a Chinese washing house surmounted by
a sign board informing the passers by that all's well,
we may be happy, yet you bet, which, no doubt

(10:46):
the innocent proprietor supposes to be an eloquent announcement annent
washing and ironing. Most of their large firm's designations do
not express the names of the owner or owners, but
are symbolic. For instance, they mean the widespreading firm, the
firm of the flowery land, and so on. All of

(11:07):
their food, clothing, and so on, with the exception of pork,
boots or mining tools, are imported from China. Some years ago,
they were detected carrying on a most lucrative business in
importing a liquid called Chinese wine, which was discovered to
be a very strong brandy, and accordingly, notwithstanding its name,

(11:28):
excizable in the highest duties. If a Chinese dies in
a foreign country, Mongol theologians seem to be agreed that
it will go hard for him in the after world
unless his bones repose in the flowery land. Accordingly, the
companies which bring the Chinese immigrants over to California are

(11:48):
under contract to take them back again after a certain period,
dead or alive. A Chinese funeral is a curious scene.
In San Francisco, a special be carrying ground called the
Yerbabuena Cemetery is set apart for celestial repose. When carrying
the body to the grave, a solemn individual scatters little

(12:10):
slips of paper with wise aphorisms from Confucius written on them.
On either side, and on the lintels of their doorways
are strips of red paper on which are inscribed similar
wise saws. On the grave is placed a roast fowl,
some rice, and a bottle of Chinese wine, after which

(12:31):
the mourners depart, never looking behind them. There is, however,
another class of gentlemen who assist at the departed funeral
who are not so backward. A number of the rowdies
of San Francisco, who are concealed near at hand, no
sooner see the last of the mourners than they make
a rush for the edibles and drinkables left for the

(12:52):
benefit of Joss, and very soon make short work of them.
Jos no doubt getting the credit. After lying some months
in the grave, the bones are dug up and carefully
cleaned and polished with brushes, tied up and put into
little bundles, which are nicely labeled and stowed away in
a small tin coffin in the particular hong Or commercial

(13:15):
house which is responsible for them. Footnote I notice an
advertisement in a California paper about a new earthenware coffin
combining the advantages of durability, cleanliness, and cheapness, which latter
virtue will no doubt commend it to the Chinese undertakers.
The editor, in a paragraphic puff, remarks that anyone, having

(13:39):
once used this coffin, would use no other end note.
When a sufficient number of these interesting mementos have accumulated,
a ship is chartered and the coffins dispatched with their
contents back to Shanghai Canton or Hong Kong. I saw
a vessel in San Francisco Harbor laden with four hundred

(14:02):
dead Chinese. On some of the silent mountain trails, I
have come across some of these lonely graves only marked
with a cleft stick in which was stuck a slip
of red paper with the name of the deceased, followed
by one of the sage maxims of Kunfu Sea Confucius
about the vanity of things earthly, which the subject of

(14:24):
the cousin of the Moon who lay below had already
experienced in his own person. Every year thousands of Chinese
are entering to supply the place of those who leave,
so that instead of decreasing, their numbers are increasing with
the country. Nobody liked John overmuch, and some of the
baser sort have the most determined enmity to him. The

(14:47):
storekeepers don't like him because he deals with his own people,
though they forget that he takes nothing from them, and
sometimes does put something in their pocket for mining tools. Besides,
all John's dealings are for ready money for though he
may haggle long enough about the price, yet he gets
no credit. Though worse men may the laborer doesn't like him,

(15:11):
for he works for lower wages than he. This is
a favorite subject of growling with these lazy loafers as
they doze away in bar rooms with their feet on
the top of the stove. Yet there is room for
all of them, and the Chinese are only taken because
white men can't be got. Politicians don't take him up

(15:31):
because he doesn't vote and therefore is of no account
in municipal or state elections and is not to be conciliated,
while the newspaper editor, who ought to put in a
good word for him, is very lukewarm on the subject,
for John does not advertise, while his detractors do. Accordingly,
poor John is kicked and abused with very little chance

(15:54):
of redress. He is hunted out of every good mining locality,
and he may think himself well off if he is
not robbed and has his pigtail cut off as a
lesson to him, when, of course, the local paper will
be sure to repeat the time honored joke about a
long tail being cut short. Formerly Rowdy's thought it good

(16:14):
fun to catch a chinaman and cut his tail off,
though as everyone who knows that people is aware, he
would as soon you took his life, as he is
an outcast among his co religionists until his hair grows.
Some of them are Christians and have given up this
method of hair dressing. But these are rare exceptions. I

(16:35):
am glad, however, to say that of late years the
California legislator have made it a penal offense to cut
off a chinaman's pigtail. At the same time, I never
heard of anybody being punished, though there are plenty of
pigtails lopped off in the streets. He is openly insulted
in Christian California. I have seen a poor, harmless Chinese

(16:58):
stoned by boys and till he was bleeding, hardly one
being manly enough to take his part. I have heard
of others after whom Ruffians would hound their dogs while
the poor persecuted man was torn and bleeding, and the
law touched his assailants not. The law passes axe against him,
taxes him heavily as he enters, taxes him for making

(17:21):
his living, and taxes him at every turn. It is
quite a perquisite of the local official, this Chinese taxation.
And he is either a very just or by no
means a smart man who cannot make a revenue out
of the unfortunate celestial even the digger Indian, taking example

(17:41):
from his superiors, question Mark persecutes and robs John also
if he finds him in the mountains, and as our
poor friend will do anything rather than fight, he comes
off very poorly. Indeed, John, it must be acknowledged, has
an insuperable objection to pay taxes, notwithstanding his being in

(18:03):
early life accustomed to be squeezed by a mandarin in
his own country, and he will often take to the
mountains when he hears of the sheriff coming his way.
In southern Oregon, where nearly all the diggings are occupied
by Chinese, the sheriff, in order to take them by strategy,
has to send a few deputies in the guise of

(18:23):
miners with packs of blankets on their backs, who surprise
John before he has time to escape, and if he
shows any symptoms of resistance, with a revolver at his head,
force him to pungle down the dust. I remember hearing
a few years ago of some Chinese who, expecting the
tax gatherer, went and took refuge in a cave which

(18:45):
they had bribed a digger Indian to show them. After
their guide had taken their money, he went off to
the sheriff, and, receiving another bribe, informed him where they
were hiding. A fire was kindled at the mouth of
the cave, and the poor fellows, fairly trapped, had to
crawl out one by one and to pay their money
without loss of time. They never think of the wretched

(19:07):
economy of all this, and of the loss of time
being more than all the tax amounts to, but only
of the sum which has to be squeezed out of
their hoard. Yet John is not such a bad fellow
even when from home, though rarely mingling in general society,
yet on high occasions he is most hospitable. Once a

(19:30):
year in southern Oregon, the Chinese give a grand dinner
to which they invite the neighboring storekeepers and other friends.
These storekeepers almost live by the Chinese, as there are
no native dealers there. It is amusing to see the
stock in trade of one of these cute Yankees, who
is possibly a pillar of the church Chinese gods. Papers

(19:53):
to burn in the Temple of Jos, Chinese swampans, almanacs, novels, medicine,
pickled cabbage, slugs, and so forth, possibly the whole superintended
by a Chinese clerk. These entertainments were, however, greatly eclipsed
by the grand dinner they gave to mister Burlingame, at

(20:13):
present Chief Ambassador to the Treaty Powers, on his way
out to China as United States Ambassador, and some time
previously to mister Colefax, the Speaker of Congress, on the
occasion of his visit to San Francisco in eighteen sixty five.
It was given by the five Great Hongs or mercantile

(20:34):
companies of San Francisco, and was quite unique in its way,
Chinese dishes and European being both presented. Of the former
I counted some one hundred and sixty five, but there
must have been many more. They included every possible delicacy, sharks, fins, birdness, soup,

(20:55):
young bamboo, scorpions, eggs, and so forth, and so forth,
and so forth, eaten with chopsticks, with dessert. About the
beginning of the feast, including tea, which is said to
have cost fifty dollars per pound. Between the courses, the
hosts and guests left the table and were entertained by
a Chinese opera, consisting of a one stringed fiddle, a

(21:19):
sort of gong, and something looking like a mud turtle
on the back of which they beat. They are exceedingly industrious,
and if a Chinaman makes only half a dollar a day,
he will save half of it. If he is well off,
he lives well, but still saves. At their New year
in February, all accounts must be settled up, otherwise good

(21:41):
reasons must be shown why he should continue in business
or hold further commercial dealings. Most of them speak a
sort of broken English known in Canton as pigeon English,
and all are exceedingly anxious to learn. Still, notwithstanding all
their industry, will occasionally come to grief and land within

(22:02):
the interior of the Californian White Cross Prison. A Chinese
named as Sam, who kept the Lord Nelson Restaurant in Victoria,
Vancouver Island, became bankrupt and was ordered to file a
schedule of his assets. Not knowing the names of his customers,
he had entered a short description of them in his ledger,

(22:24):
and when he entered court he had nothing more than
the following to show. It was given me by his
solicitor as a legal curiosity a butcher oths eighteen dollars.
Captain of a schooner fifty dollars, cook in a ship
galley eight, red shirtman twenty seven man comes late a

(22:46):
printer ten CapMan eight dollars fifty cents, lean man, white
man twenty fat Frenchman thirty dollars sixty two and a
half cents, Captain tall man twenty dollars, French old man
eight whiskers man eighteen dollars thirty seven and a half cents,

(23:08):
blacksmith forty nine dollars, barkeeper five workman, five whiskers, man's
friends six dollars twenty five cents, Double blanket man six
dollars fifty cents, Little shortman ten dollars double blanket Man's
friend fifteen, lame leg man forty fat man nine dollars

(23:30):
twenty five cents, Old workman eight dollars, red whiskers seven
dollars fifty cents. Steamboat man eighteen dollars. Indian Ya four
dollars sixty two and a half cents. Dick makes coal
shoveler twenty eight dollars. Yay yap earrings twenty five flour

(23:50):
pantaloon man sixteen shoemaker gone to California fifteen dollars sixty
two and a half cents a man, Butcher's friend thirty
nine nine dollars, Stableman sixteen, Get tight Man seven. Footnote
to tight drunk and footnote. The last entry the Commissioner

(24:12):
decided was of much too general a character to allow
the slightest hope of fixing the debt upon anyone. In particular,
in San Francisco, there are five great Hongs or merchant companies,
called the yog Wo, the seiz Yap, the sam Yap,
the yang Wo and Wing Yong companies. These companies have

(24:34):
large wooden buildings in the town where they not only
carry on business, but lodge and board all the people
attached to their companies. When in the city. There are
also benevolent associations to take care of the sick of
their own people. There are no Chinese beggars in San Francisco,
and that nation alone has no representatives in the public hospital.

(24:57):
Most of the Chinese on the Pacific coast come to
California under contract to one or other of these companies,
engaged at a low rate of wages, generally about eight
dollars per month, and these companies again let out their
labor in various ways. This is essentially the Coolie system,
and I think there need to be little doubt but

(25:19):
that this prevails in California. The laborers are said to
be very faithful to their contracts. They have never yet
learned to use the food of the people among whom
they live. Rice is still the great staple, with sometimes
a little pork, and on high occasions ducks and other fowls.
He is, not, however, at all particular in his commissariat. Rats, mice,

(25:43):
and even their mortal enemy, the cat, is not safe
from John's omnivorous stomach. I have often heard the miners
venting curses both loud and deep, on the prowling Chinese
who had cleared the creek of cats. Their houses have
a peculiar, faint, sickening odor, perfectly indescribable. A friend of

(26:03):
mine used to declare that they smell of nothing but
a feat civilization. I have said so much about John's
honesty that it may not be out of place to
close this article with a few remarks upon the disreputable
side of the Chinese character on the Pacific. Albeit, some
have been of opinion that there is only one side,

(26:24):
and that the shady one. It cannot but be expected
where thousands of men are continually arriving, but that some
rogues will slip in more, especially when the laborers are
recruited from the notoriously scoundrelly coolly population of Chinese cities.
Some of them are most adroit foul thieves, and will

(26:46):
clear a fowl yard between sunset and sunrise. They rarely
attempt burglary, and chiefly lay themselves out for the sneaking line.
As they pass in single file along the street. With
a basket on either end of a bamboo pole. Loose
inconsidered trifles are speedily transferred from shop doors to these receptacles,

(27:08):
the thief marching on as innocently as possible. Some few
years ago they put a considerable amount of base coin
into circulation. They were also accused of sweating the coin,
shaking it up in a bag for some hours, and
then burning the bag to obtain the few grains which
clung to the fibers of the cloth. They had a

(27:30):
still more ingenious method of swindling, and that was to
split open the twenty dollar gold pieces, adroitly extract the inside,
and then filling it with some metal of equal weight,
closed the two sides again. So neatly was this done
that the union was not detected until some time after

(27:50):
the trick had been in successful operation, and then only
in the mint at Philadelphia. They are notorious gamblers and
expend a large proportion of their earnings in this manner.
In San Francisco and all the large towns there are
regular gambling houses, and in the mining camps they spend

(28:11):
a great portion of their leisure in playing, generally for
pice or other low stakes. The keepers of these houses
must be wealthy, as they invariably pay the large fines
which are sometimes inflicted on them when detected infringing the
Act passed against gambling houses. They seem to have no

(28:31):
idea of the binding nature of a legal oath, and
accordingly their evidence is always received most cautiously in the
courts of law. They are usually sworn by breaking a plate,
cutting the neck of a fowl, or by burning a
piece of paper before them. They do not intermarry with
the whites, and few of the laborers bring wives with them.

(28:53):
There are upwards of fifteen hundred of their women on
the Pacific coast. One thousand, of whom are in San Francis, Cisco,
and nearly all of them are of the vilest class.
The children are tolerably numerous in San Francisco and are
pretty little creatures, with their sparkling black eyes and queer
little cues behind eked out with green or scarlet silk.

(29:16):
Suicides are very common among them, the Chinese, seeming to
care nothing for life. They are mostly Buddhists of a
very corrupted type, though a few Christians are found among them.
The former have a fine temple in San Francisco, and
in every house is a little family temple or joss house,
before which papers are burnt and offerings made at stated times.

(29:40):
With the exception of gambling and opium smoking, they have
few amusements in San Francisco. They support a curious little
theater where the music is a demoniacal band of gongs,
and the same play seemed to have been going on
for several years when I last visited it, and is
not yet finished. Kite flying is a favorite out of

(30:03):
doors amusement. Chinese kites, made in the form of butterflies
and birds, which give out a singing noise, are in
great demand among the youth of the Pacific coast. Occasionally
on a Sunday, a few of them will have an
out on horseback or in a wagon. On these occasions,
some of them dress in European clothes, and the horsemanship

(30:26):
and general display is a site for gods and men.
Except on the great festival of their New year, you
see very little dissipation among them. These holidays generally last
three or four days, when all business is suspended and
you must wear foul linen until John, your washerman, has

(30:46):
finished his jollification. The morning of the first day of
the holidays is ushered in by a loud display of
crackers and other fireworks, and before nine o'clock the streets
are covered with red papers. Sometimes, to the great delight
of young California, a whole cask full is led off
at once. A Chinese merchant told me that it generally

(31:08):
costs about one thousand pounds each New year for fireworks alone,
and some houses in the city will expend from sixty
to eighty pounds for this item alone during this season.
No allusion to anything sad, such as death, sickness, loss
in business, or any misfortune is tolerated by anyone. Every

(31:31):
sentiment must be of hope, good will, and good cheer.
Every true subject of the flowery land does his best,
and the attire of some of the wealthy Chinese far
exceeds in costs. The dresses of the richest of the whites,
a sable cape, silk trousers and embroidered silk jacket make

(31:51):
a very expensive turnout. The greetings and salutations are very ceremonious,
and all imaginary blessings are included in the interchange of
good wishes upon Almost all the stores, places of business,
and tenements of the Chinese may be seen during the
holiday season sundry strips of red paper pasted up inscribed

(32:14):
with Chinese characters. They are usually five in number and
are recognized in common parlance as charms, but among those
familiar with the usages of these people as the five blessings.
Each is inscribed with a separate blessing, such as health, wealth, friends,
long life, and posterity. At this period they also visit

(32:37):
the temple, observing certain religious rites and making offerings of
roast pigs and other dainties to their idols, which are
afterwards withdrawn and eaten at their own feasts. The first
four days at the beginning of each new year are
appropriated for the lower classes, and thirty days for the
gentry as a time of feasting. In China, on the

(33:00):
Pacific coast, the custom is somewhat modified. Some of the
wealthy Chinese keep up a round of festivities for two
or three weeks. While the special holiday season may be
said to expire at the end of three or four days,
they have also other holidays in the course of the year.
About these times, indigestion and other ills trouble john, and

(33:22):
the doctor has to be called in. There are many
of these professional gentlemen on the Pacific coast, grave looking
old fellows, but generally arrant rogues. Deer horns, when in
the velvet, are eagerly bought, being esteemed a valuable medicament
by the Chinese. The gall of a bear is valued

(33:43):
at its weight in gold, and the rare albino deer
is equally prized. In eighteen sixty four, there was quite
a furor in San Francisco about a Chinese doctor whose
consulting rooms were besieged by the elite of the city.
His success was said to consist in careful regimen his
medicines being very harmless. He used, however, to ensure attention

(34:07):
to diet and general conduct by laying down strict rules
to diverge from which he informed his patients would cause
certain death to ensue from the medicine. He was of
a fine appearance, richly dressed, and spoke through an Englishman
as an interpreter. His lionization lasted a few weeks, and

(34:27):
after that he gradually dropped into oblivion to make way
for some other sensation. On the whole, the rapidly increasing
Chinese population is an advantage to the American states and
territories on the Pacific, as well as the British colonies
further north. They cultivate ground which no one else will,

(34:48):
and work gold mines disregarded by the whites. They are
consumers to some extent of European and American manufactures, and
whether or no their merchants paid taxes and import duties.
On the whole, though kicked and abused simply because they
are harmless, inoffensive, and weak, and do not retaliate on

(35:10):
the Ruffians, whom I'll treat them as would anyone else.
They are an industrious people who, if they do not
become citizens yet do not interfere in any way in politics,
and in proportion to their numbers, give less trouble to
the law than anyone else, and are therefore deserving of
every encouragement. End of Part six