&c. &c. &c., 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 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
reason 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, they
will occasionally come to grief, and land within
the interior of the Californian Whitecross
Prison. A Chinese, named Ah 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 short descriptions of them in his ledger,
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:

The last entry the Commissioner decided
was of much too general a character to allow
of the slightest hope of fixing the debt upon
any one in particular.

In San Francisco there are five great hongs,
or merchant companies, called the Yung-wo,
the Sze-yap, the Sam-yap, the Yan-wo, and
Wing-yeung companies. These companies
have 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. 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 labour in various ways. This is
essentially the coolie system, and I think there
need be little doubt but that this prevails in
California. The labourers 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, 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
odour, perfectly indescribable. A friend of
mine used to declare that they smell of nothing
but effete civilisation!

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, 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
labourers are recruited from the notoriously
scoundrelly coolie population of Chinese cities.
Some of them are most adroit fowl thieves,
and will 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, 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 fibres of the cloth.
They had a 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, close the two sides again. So
neatly was this done that the union was not
detected until some time after 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