He saw through your disguise at once and intended to kill you."

narrow escape.

"When he returned to the cabin," she continued, "he accused me of having warned you. I then knew that he had been foiled. He was very violent, swore he would kill me, and choked me, as you can see," pointing to her neck where I could plainly see the marks of his fingers. "Do you wonder now," said she, "at my indifference to his death?"

I assured her that I did not, and expressed my earnest sympathy and readiness to do her any service in my power. She thanked me, but firmly declined any help, even to get from the cabin over to the stage road: she said that she could pack the little she had on her saddle as the horse was very gentle, and that she very much preferred going by herself.

Seeing that she was determined and that pressing my offer of assistance seemed to annoy her, I concluded to say no more upon the subject until the next morning, and went out to take care of my horse; in the excitement of the day I had left him saddled and tied to a tree. I moved him and that of the dead highwayman to a fresh spot of grass, and again spread my blankets under a tree. I was up the next morning early and saw by the smoke from the chimney that the sole occupant of the cabin had arisen, and hoping that she had changed her mind and would accept my services, I went to the door and renewed my offers. She still firmly but politely declined them. She already had breakfast on the table and invited me to share it. After breakfast I said to her that as she seemed fully determined in her course I would not annoy her with any further offers of help. She replied that she had thought the matter all over, that it was not a foolish whim, but that she desired to avoid anything that might bring to publicity the recent terrible event; that she felt competent to take care of herself, and would start early the next morning and ride over to the stage

bade her "good by," led my horse up the steep mountain side, and returned home.

I was

My present occupation sometimes calls me to remote portions of the State. Some months since, while traveling on horseback through one of the northern mining counties, I passed by a school-house. A short distance beyond it the road forked. not certain which way to take, and turned back to inquire of the children who were playing in front of the school-house. While I was talking with them the teacher came to the door, and I recognized her as the highwayman's widow. She knew me at once, expressed surprise at seeing me, and at first seemed afraid that my call meant further trouble for her. So I hastened to assure her that it was purely accidental, and that she had nothing to fear. Her fears thus reliev

ed she seemed pleased to see me, and as it was late in the afternoon she dismissed her school and gave me a brief history of her life since I had seen her.

She told me she had ridden on horseback the entire distance from the place where I left her at the cabin to this place—a distance of more than four hundred miles; and to corroborate her story she pointed to the horse, which I readily recognized, a short distance from the school-house. She had taught in two schools besides the one in which she was now employed, and was engaged to teach one farther up the mountains after the close of this.

She found the people extremely kind and hospitable, and said she was much happier than she had supposed she could be. She had assumed her maiden name, and had, as she playfully remarked, but one annoyance, and that was the curiosity of the people with whom she boarded because she had no correspondents.

After a half hour's conversation, I again bade her "good by" and continued my journey.

A TRAIT that distinguishes the Mongolian immigration from all others to this country is its non-assimilation. All other races and nationalities come to us with a desire to become Americans; and, in the main, they quickly adopt our manners, habits, and customs, insomuch that by the second generation they become thoroughly Americanized and absorbed. The Chinese, on the contrary, do not intend to assimilate. They hold themselves aloof from us, retaining all the peculiar institutions of their civilization.

There seems to be a popular impression that China has emerged from seclusion only within the present century, and therefore that the migration of her people is new and experimental. The truth is, that the Chinese have maintained intercourse with the surrounding countries from the beginning of the Christian era, and the results of their settlements abroad should be as well known as those of any of the European peoples. They have in that time sought occupation in all parts of the world with an unvarying and uniform result. They have found their way across the continental ranges to the elevated table-lands of Central Asia, they have swarmed into the tropical countries bordering the Indian Ocean, crossed the seas to Australia, South Africa, Europe, and North and South America. Under all the varied conditions of climate, government, education, and religions which have surrounded them, they have remained unchanged and unchangeable.

Wherever they are, they wear the same clothes, eat the same food, read the same books, retain the same religious superstitions, and believe in the same philosophy and code of morals that they did in the valley of Kwangtung whence they came. If we are to have them at all, we must have them as they are in China, with every objectionable feature of their social and domestic life. In view of this fact, the character of Chinese

institutions becomes an important study. If they have retained through thousands of years a family organization that represses individuality, effectually debars progress, degrades woman to drudgery or worse, holds children in a prolonged servitude, and clothes the pater familias with absolute power over the life and liberty of every member of the family, it is an imperative duty to ascertain that fact. If these society conditions, little above savagery, are to be, or have been, transplanted here, it becomes us to know something of them.

During some years' residence in China, in an official position, the writer devoted considerable time to an investigation of this subject, and as a contribution to the discussion of the Chinese question invited in a late number of the OVERLAND MONTHLY, now offers the following notes upon Chinese Slavery.

Slavery in China has its origin in the Chinese family organization, which is patriarchal. Patriarchism, in its pure form, is defined by Gibbon as "the exclusive, absolute, and perpetual dominion of the father over his children." It is the type and sum of all the tyrannies and despotisms ever endured by man. The pater familias unites in one person the kingly, priestly, military, and judi cial power. Under this system wives and children are unqualifiedly slaves. Under it, woman has no place except as a drudge, or a dishonored minister to the pleasures of her

clothed with the same power. In Rome, as the people emerged from barbarism into civilization, patriarchism was modified and was finally merged into the modern family. In China it has outlived savagery, and is the present societary condition of a people who, in some respects, have claims to be called civilized. It is doubtful whether the patria potestas ever existed in Europe to the extreme degree that it does at the present time in China. "The adult Roman son enjoyed in the forum, the senate, and the camp the public and private rights of a person. It was only in his father's house that he was a mere thing." The Chinese adult has no legal rights outside of the family. The Roman son, when sold, did not in every respect become a slave; he was statu liber, subject to redemption. The Chinese son and daughter can be sold into perpetual and irredeemable bondage.

Chinese society is composed of the individual family, under the pater familias, and an aggregation of individual families called a gens or clan, controlled by a council of elders. In the management of the ordinary affairs of the family, the pater familias has absolute power over every member.

Only the affairs of families, as they relate to each other, come under the control of the elders. Von Mollendorf, the English authority upon Chinese family law, says: "As was the rule according to the Roman law of the time before Justinian, all persons in China stand under the patria potestas. The patria potestas is the same as the domini potestas, the power of the master over his slaves of the ancient Roman law.

"The patria potestas over children, whether legitimate or adopted, is unlimited. The pater familias can do with them as he likes; he may not only chastise, but even sell, expose, or kill them."

Archdeacon Gray, another high authority, says: "There is no law to restrict parents in the exercise of authority over their children. They can sell them. The children of Chinese parents are in some instances put to death." He relates such instances which came under his own observation, where chil

dren of some years of age had been killed by their parents and no punishment followed, as the authorities found that there had been no transgression of parental authority.

The Tashing (Tartar) penal code gives as the maxim of the law: "As the emperor should have the care of a father for his people, so a father should have the power of a sovereign over his family." It should be borne in mind, as a measure of this maxim, that the emperor of China is absolute, with no constitutional limits to his power.

All authorities upon China and the Chinese, from the time of Marco Polo to the present, bear witness to the existence of this absolute and unparalleled authority of the head of the family over every member. As to the fullest exercise of this authority there are libraries of evidence, and every observing resident or traveler can daily see indubitable evidence of it in all the towns and villages, in the numbers of old and young who have been bought and sold.

Du Halde, the fountain head of all general knowledge of the Chinese, says: "Misery produces a prodigious number of slaves, who mortgage themselves with a condition of redemption. A man sometimes sells his son and even himself and wife, at a very moderate price; but, if he can, he chooses to pawn his family only. When rich folks marry their daughters, they give them several families of slaves in proportion to their wealth. . . . . The cities of Yangchow and Suchow are famous for furnishing great numbers of concubines, for which purpose they bring up good, handsome young girls, whom they buy up elsewhere; teaching them to sing, to play on music, and, in short, all sorts of accomplishments belonging to young gentlewomen. with a view to disposing of them at a good price to some rich mandarin.”

Archdeacon Gray, quoted before, says "In the families of Chinese gentlemen, fe male servants generally, and male servant in some instances, are the property of thei masters by purchase. In the houses o wealthy citizens it is not unusual to find from twenty to thirty slaves attending upon family. Even citizens in the humbler walk

of life deem it necessary to have, each, a slave or two. Poor parents on the verge of starvation offer their sons and daughters for sale at remarkably low prices. I remember instances of parents rendered destitute by the marauding bands who infested the two Kwangs" (two provinces) "in 1854-'55, offering to sell their daughters in Canton for five dollars apiece. The ranks of slaves are also recruited from the families of gamblers whose losses not infrequently compel them to sell I remember two bright looking youths being sold by their profligate father who had gambled his means away. The eldest fetched fifty dollars, and the younger forty.

their children.

"The slavery to which these unfortunate persons are subject is perpetual and hereditary, and they have no parental authority over their offspring. Slaves, although regarded as members of the family, are not recognized as members of the general community. They cannot sue in the courts of law. In short, they are outside of the pale of citizenship, and within the reach of the avarice or hatred or lust of their masters. Masters can sell female slaves, either to be concubines or to be inmates of brothels. A master is not called to account for the death of a slave, although it is the result of punish ment inflicted by him. In 1853, I saw in the Shap-sam-poo Street of the custom suburb of Canton the corpse of a female slave who had been beaten to death by her mistress."

Doolittle, for many years a resident in China, in a work entitled "Social Life among the Chinese," says: "The Chinese use the same term to indicate the sale and the purchase of children that they use when speaking of the sale and purchase of land, cattle, or any description of property."

The writer of this article has seen large numbers of little girls in the foreign concession of Shanghai who had been bought and -old. Rows of little slave girls can be seen itting in front of the houses of their masers on nearly all the streets of the larger

owns.

which I could see from my window in Shanghai. I was then investigating this subject, and they were pointed out to me by an old resident as slaves. We went down and found the owner quite communicative. The children had been bought, some from the "basket man" and the others from parents who were actually starving. They were all ages, from two years to twelve, and the prices that were put upon them were from fifteen Mexican dollars for the two-year-old to eighty-five Mexicans for the twelve-yearold child. They were plainly but neatly. dressed, clean looking, and apparently well fed. I never saw them doing any work more than errands, but I have daily seen them unmercifully beaten with a bamboo stick. There are thousands of them in every large place in China. The “basket man" mentioned above is a person who sells new-born babies on the street, as chickens are sold here. Writers upon China who have lived there many years estimate that from twenty-five to forty per cent. of the female children, in some of the densely populated districts, are either sold or exposed at birth. My observation was that few were destroyed, the greater portion being turned over by the midwife to the "basket men" to be sold. In addition to these vast numbers of children sold into perpetual bondage at birth are those who are sold at all ages, when poverty presses the family to the extreme of starvation. Along the eastern shores of China, on the great alluvial plains, the population is in such numbers in excess of the possibilities of the agricultural production, that the wolf of want and hunger is always at the door of one half of the people. The question of the morrow's food is the problem of their lives. A war, a short crop, or even a derangement of trade produces distress, and the only resource these exceedingly poor people have is to sell their children-conditionally if they can, absolutely if they must.

It is hardly possible to over-estimate the numbers of people who are in bondage in China. One-half of the families have slaves,

VOL. III.-12.