the hall she saw a letter lying on the table
addressed to her. It was the letter from
Walter Joyce.

THE CHINESE FROM HOME.

TRAVELLING over the mountain trails almost
anywhere in California, no matter how remote
and solitary may be your route, 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; 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, over all, the head of this strange
individual is covered with a hat made of slips
of bamboo, the brim of which equals in breadth
a 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 labour at 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
tunes, this was frequently done; and in the
old California newspapers reports of such out-
rages, or of meetings at which resolutions to
do so were passed, 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 wrought in the locality.
Every morning they would go down to the
river side, and labour, steadily washing the
gravel for gold until mid-day, when their
slight meal of rice and vegetables was partaken
of. At six o'clock, or thereabout, they stopped
work for the day; and after carefully washing
themselves in the river, they prepared supper.
I was the 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," hi their stews. After
supper they would look to their little patches
of water melons, cabbages, &c.; and their
head man 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 lalbour and allotted each man his share
by the aid of a suan-pan (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 drug themselves
into a dreaming stupidity with the fumes of
opium. Their huts were situated amid the most
beautiful scenery, by the banks of a fine river,
over which cataracts from the snow- capped
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 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 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 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 favoured
locality which they had heard of. Go down
into 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 signboard informing that here lives
—" Whang Ho. Washing and Ironing. Buttons
sewed on;" and, peeping through the 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
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 it
is a custom of the colonial gentlemen, 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; 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