CHAPTER XXVII.

Chinese empire-Chinese in the United States-Seeking gold in America-In California-Employments, character, and customs of the Chinese-Chinese in San Francisco-Moral depravityChinese persecuted-Social and political condition of the Chinese -Buddha, Confucius, and Mencius-Religion of the OrientChinese classics-Opium and other stimulants-Small feet of the women-Christianity among the Chinese-Coolyism-Chinese slavery in America-Spanish barbarity.

THE great empire of China, with its four hundred million of people, peculiar in physical type, customs, and religion, has, until a recent period, remained comparatively excluded from the rest of the world.

Commercial intercourse with many of the seaports of the empire has long existed, but the great interior of the country, with its olive-faced, almond-eyed, shaven-headed, sandal-footed people, is still almost unknown.

Merchants, travellers, and missionaries may be found about the seaports, and gradually work their way into the skirts of the country; but European customs and the name of Christ and his mission are all unknown to the people of this vast empire, still dreaming over the philosophy of Buddha and Confucius, plodding along without the appliances of steam and the aid of modern invention. China is to-day as it was centuries ago, and centuries hence will find this vast nation almost as exclusive as it has been since the creation of the

race.

Until a recent period no Chinaman was allowed to leave his country, and if by accident or design any found their way into foreign lands, and returned to their

homes, transportation for life or decapitation awaited them.

Throughout the civilized world to this day the appearance of the strange people of this oldest empire, with flowing robes, sandals, and cue, is a source of wonder and curiosity, always suggesting the Darwinian theory of the creation of our species.

The date of the arrival of the first Chinaman in America is uncertain. A few Chinese and Japanese have, at remote periods, been driven from their native shores to the islands of the Pacific, and occasionally upon the western coast of America; but no effort had been made for thousands of years, either by these people or their governments, to see other lands or affiliate with other people.

In the twenty years from 1820 to 1840 but eleven Chinese had arrived in the United States, and from 1840 to 1850 but three hundred and thirty-five. Of this latter number three hundred had arrived at San Francisco in 1849, induced to seek their fortunes in the new El Dorado.

The discovery of gold in California forms a new era in the history of Chinese migration. The proximity of the Golden State to the Orient, with direct ocean communication, soon broke the hermetic seal of the "flowery kingdom," and brought floods of its strange people to

the shores of America.

A few years before the discovery of gold in California, vessels trading between China, the Pacific islands, and San Francisco carried a few Chinese as cooks and servants. On the 2d day of February, 1848, the brig Eagle, from Canton, arrived at San Francisco with the first Chinese in the country-one woman and two men

who came over in the employ of an American gentleman long resident in China. The men went to the mines, and through them and the masters of vessels anxious to employ their craft in profitable trade news reached China of the rich gold - fields of America. Yankee ingenuity was soon employed, and walls, trees, cliffs, and masts of ships at Hong-Kong and Canton proclaimed in blazing colors and Oriental hieroglyphics the startling news of mountains of gold in California.

Late in 1848 a few Chinese gold-hunters arrived at San Francisco, and in 1849 came an addition of three hundred; so that the earliest American pioneer to the gold-fields found himself face to face with these people. At first the Chinese were regarded with great curiosity and treated with kindness; but the vast numbers in which they soon came to the country, their exclusive habits and indifference to every thing American, changed kindness to fierce hostility, which loses none of its bitterness with lapse of time.

The number of Chinese who arrived at San Francisco in 1850 was four hundred and fifty; in 1851, twenty seven hundred; and in 1852, eighteen thousand-more than eleven thousand having arrived in the month of June of this year.

The total number of Chinese who arrived in the American republic to and including 1870 is estimated at one hundred and fifty thousand; of whom, according to the census returns, 63,154 still remain in the country, 74,646 have returned home, and twelve thousand have died. (The bodies of the dead are all sent to China.) Of the 63,154 Chinese in the United States, 60,765 are on the Pacific coast, as follows: California, 49,277; Nevada, 3,152; Oregon, 3,330; Arizona, 20; Idaho,

4,274; Utah, 445; and Washington Territory, 234; leaving but 3,389 Chinese in the whole republic outside of the Pacific coast; of this number, 1,949 are in that portion of Montana in and about the region properly embraced with the area of the Pacific slope. These are divided among the following States and Territories, as follows: Arkansas, 98; Connecticut, 2; Georgia, 1; Illinois, 1; Iowa, 3; Kentucky, 1; Louisiana, 71; Maine, 1; Maryland, 2; Massachusetts, 87; Michigan, 1; Mississippi, 16; Missouri, 3; New Jersey, 5; New York, 29; Ohio, 1; Pennsylvania, 13; South Carolina, 1; Texas, 25; Virginia, 4; Colorado, 7; District of Columbia, 3; Montana, 1,949; Wyoming, 143.

It will be observed that by the census of 1870 many of the States had not a single Chinese in them. The census of this year shows but 55 Japanese in the whole republic, as follows: California, 33; Massachusetts, 10; Michigan, 1; New Jersey, 10; and Pennsylvania, 1. Since this period many Japanese have arrived in the country, the great majority being of the higher classes, and have entered our colleges and scientific schools, where they make rapid progress in the languages, and seem to feel a deep interest in adopting the costume, language, and customs of the new world. Many Americans have, within the past two years, at the invitation of the Japanese government, gone to that country, and, under large salaries, entered into the service of the Mikado; others have been engaged as teachers and instructors in modern civilization. Japan is represented at Washington by a minister; and with fifty-five Japanese in America for the past three years, they have imbibed and diffused more of our American ideas than one hundred and fifty thousand Chinese who have

landed in our country have done in the past twenty

years.

As may be seen by reference to the location of the Chinese, it will be noticed that they have spread over the entire Pacific coast: indeed there is not a camp, station, city, or village throughout the remotest part of California, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, Montana, Idaho, Washington Territory, and British Columbia, but these people are to be seen, engaged in mining, wood-chopping, making roads, farming, fishing, gardening, washing, in factories, and in houses as cooks, chamber-maids, (men,) nurses, and general servants. But, in whatever capacity employed, one thing is apparent everywhere: that they have no attachment to the soil, customs, or people of America-they don't take root in the country

Not being so rugged as the Saxon or Celt, the Chinaman adapts himself to the lighter out-door work and to the duties generally performed by women in all parts of the world outside of the Pacific coast of America; and when, with his shaven-head, smooth face, wooden shoes, white stockings, and white jeans, costume flowing loose and airy, he is engaged in household affairs, while puzzling man to know his species or sex, he is the picture of ease, order, cleanliness, and sobriety. But see the Chinaman as he is to be seen in his own quarters-see twelve thousand of them huddled together within a few blocks in San Francisco, stewing in their filth, fumes of opium and odors known only to a Chinaman-see them cooped by hundreds in a single room, packed away like mummies on shelves, in dark, damp holes, subsisting upon scant morsels of boiled rice and dried fish-see him waddling knee-deep in filth through narrow, dark alleys, lined with rickety shanties,