A la California - Chapters XI-XII



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CHAPTER XI. THE CHINESE FEAST OF THE DEAD. 
Weird and Ghostly Scene in a Chinese Temple at Midnight.--The story of 
Concatenation Bill, and the True History of the Great Indian Fight on the 
Gila. 

WHAT a strange, peculiar people are these Chinese! Dwelling among us, they 
are not of us; but are born and grow up, and toil and die here in the 
midst of the boasted civilization of the nineteenth century, just as they 
have been being born and growing up, and toiling and dying, for ages on 
ages, in the "Central Flowery Empire" on the other shore of the blue 
Pacific. They walk the same streets and breathe the same air with us; but 
they do not talk the same language; do not act as we act; do not reason as 
we reason; do not think as we think, From the cradle to the grave, the 
Chinaman is always a Chinaman, adhering to the traditions of his 
ancestors, walking in the footsteps of his fathers, careless of the 
approbation or reprobation of the rest of mankind, except so far as it may 
affect him pecuniarily. Keen at a bargain, naturally quick-witted and 
sharp of comprehension, a patient toiler, and skillful at every kind of 
handiwork to which he turns his attention, he yet halts unaccountably on 
the shore of progress, and is 

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the best representative living of the effete civilization of Asia, wedded 
to the traditions of the past, looking ever backwards and never forwards, 
All things to all men, in commercial transactions, and wonderfully 
enterprising in his own way, he is a law unto himself; and our politics 
and ambitions, our industrial problems, and the amenities of our social 
life, are but as vanity and vexation of spirit to him, and he will take no 
part ill them. 

Among the strangest of the strange customs which the Chinese have 
transplanted on American soil, is the annual "Feast of the Dead." Heaven 
comes nearer to the land of his birth than to any other land, and before 
he leaves it for barbarian regions he provides for the ultimate return of 
his bones for interment in the soil where his ancestors, in countless 
millions, sleep the last sleep. Meantime he believes that the spirits of 
his departed friends linger lovingly near the place where their bodies 
rest for the moment; and so long as he remains within reach of their 
temporary resting-place, he, ever true to the traditions of his race, pays 
an annual visit of ceremony to it, and, with a solemn gravity which is 
incomprehensible to the average Caucasian mind, makes an offering of 
creature comforts for the delectation of the disembodied spirits with 
which his imagination peoples all the air. 

All Chinese festivals come at irregular periods, for the reason that their 
months do not correspond with our own, and they throw in an odd month from 
time to time to make the year come even, as we do 

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an odd day on our leap year. The feast of the dead came some years since 
in May, and I well remember visiting the Chinese quarter of Lone Mountain 
Cemetery at that time to witness the ceremonies. Their New Year 
festivities are accompanied by an incessant roar of burning fireworks: 
crackers of every size, from those which pop in the slightest and most 
delicate manner, to those which make a report like a young cannon, are 
burned by the cartload at a time; but the feast of the dead is a more 
quiet and solemn affair. The rich merchants, clad in the costliest silk 
and broadcloth, go on the first day, riding in the finest carriages 
procurable, and followed by express-wagons, loaded with pigs roasted 
whole, rice, fancy dishes, liquors, and other eatables and drinkables 
without number. A messenger or herald rides on the outside of each 
carriage, and as he goes along throws off, right and left, handfulls of 
squares of thin, yellow paper, in the centre of which is a small, 
impressed character, or a bit of gold or silver foil, for what purpose I 
could never ascertain. Next day, the artizans and manufacturers go in 
plainer carriages, clubbing together to make a load; on the next, the poor 
laborers and public women, riding in overcrowded express-wagons, carrying 
their meat-offerings with them in the same vehicle; and on the last day, 
the Miserably poor, the rag-pickers and garbage collectors, trudge humbly 
along on foot over the dusty road to the city of the dead, each Carrying 
in his hand the trifling offering, which his extreme poverty permits him 
after months of economy to provide for the occasion. 

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At the cemetery the graves are almost buried beneath the offerings of 
yellow papers, which are blown about by the winds until they form in 
drifts, like the snow in the streets of the cities of the Atlantic coast. 
Red candles, of vegetable wax, are lighted and stuck in the ground by 
thousands; and a cloth being spread upon the ground at the foot of each 
grave by its particular visitor, the feast is arranged upon it, the cups 
filled with sam-shoo, tea, etc., and then the living friend, bowing with 
solemn politeness, invites the disembodied spirit or spirits to come and 
help themselves. After that, he walks around and chats gaily with his 
living friends, smokes, drinks a little rice wine, and then, quietly 
packing up the eatables, which are none the worse for the service they 
have done, and placing them in the wagon again, spills the drinkables on 
the ground, and returns to the city (proudly conscious of having done his 
duty well, like a man and a C-hinaman), to dine upon "the funeral baked 
meats" himself. The spirits, as their name would indicate, take only the 
etherial part of the feast, and the living men get the most substantial, 
and to them at least most valuable portion of the comestibles 

An old and venerable member of the Christian church-a bright and shining 
light of the faith, who resides at Auburn, New York--once told me, while 
engaged in distributing tracts in the English language, which they could 
not read, to the poor native Protestants of Mexico, that he had learned, 
from long experience, that the true secret of Christian charity was to be 
able to do good unto others without costing 

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yourself a cent. He had followed out that idea all his lifetime, and the 
Lord had 50 prospered him in things worldly and things spiritual, that he 
was more satisfied, day by day, that he was on the right track, and had 
the thing down to a science. 

The Chinaman his not been able to quite come up to this standard in his 
observance of the ceremony of the feast of the dead, but he comes pretty 
bear it, and in a few thousand years more may succeed in reaching it; but 
he will be a terribly mean Chinaman when that time arrives! 

The feast of the dead, like our Christmas services, winds up with social 
gatherings, friendly reunions, a "feast of reason and a flow of soul," and 
a good time generally. The Buddhist temples are then decked out in 
strangely fantastic style, quite unintelligible to the white American. The 
ceremonies at the temple at this time appear to be devoid of any marked 
religious character. 

This year--1872--the feast of the dead came late in August, and I had the 
honor of assisting. We were going home at midnight (a party of half a 
dozen, who had been indulging in that peculiar little game at which if you 
don't bid you lose, and if you do bid you go back and lose two bits more, 
so much affected in California on the last night of the feast), and had 
stopped at the corner of Dupont and Washington streets, to listen to the 
babel of many tongues, the screeching of the Chinese one-stringed fiddles, 
the dulcet notes of the tom-toms, and the clashing of the gongs in the 
gambling-houses, where infatuated 

[image caption: CHINESE BURIAL RITES.]

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Celestials were betting themselves poor at the game of "Tan," or in the 
restaurants where others were dining convivially. It was a glorious 
moonlight night, such as one rarely sees, save on the Pacific coast, or in 
the tropics. The whole air was loaded with the fumes of burning "joss 
sticks," or incense candles, made, from powdered sandal wood, fragrant 
gums, etc., the blue smoke of which rose from every door-way, open Window, 
crack, crevice, or cranny in the houses where the blue-bloused sons of 
China congregate, resting on the Chinese quarter like a fog on a Jersey 
salt-marsh, or a cloud of mosquitoes on a Mississippi river-bottom. While 
we were standing there, a party of Chinese boys placed a row of these 
little joss-sticks upright along the edge of the gutter by the sidewalk, 
leading down to the centre of the block northwards, and set them all 
burning at once. As the cloud of fragrant smoke rose up from them, a well-
dressed Chinaman appeared and directed a servant where to place a large 
tray, or salver, on which was neatly arranged a hot lunch, prepared in the 
most attractive style of the first-class Chinese culinary artist. The 
lunch being duly arranged on the edge of the sidewalk, he kneeled before 
it, chin-chinned repeatedly until his forehead nearly touched the 
curbstone, and then, to avoid the curious and irreverent throng of 
Caucasians, who were fast gathering about him, arose and hustled away the 
lunch into the house from which he came. A huge mass of curiously curled, 
and twisted, and convoluted, and cornuted--and I don't know what not else--
tissue paper, forming some emblematic 

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figures, which resembled in shape, and color, and design nothing which 
Caucasian mind ever conceived, or could comprehend if described--and I 
don't know how to describe it--was lying in the street in front of the 
line of joss sticks, and, as he arose to go, a boy touched off a pile of 
fire-crackers concealed within it, and in an instant it disappeared in a 
blaze of glory. This appeared to be a part of the programme. 

We followed along the line of joss-sticks, and found that it terminated at 
the entrance of the narrow passage which leads in between two gambling-
houses to the centre of the block, where stands the Buddhist temple, 
erected by the famous Chinese physician, Lipo-Tai, in demonstration of his 
gratitude to the Supreme Intelligence for his escape from instant death 
some years since by a gas explosion, which killed his companion, and 
disfigured him for life. A crowd of visitors, Chinese and Caucasian, were 
moving in and out, and we passed in with the throng. At the end of the 
passage we came to a stairway, which zigzags up on the outside of the tall 
brick building to the upper story, terminating on a balcony hung with 
Chinese lanterns of the most brilliant and striking patterns, each as 
large as a flour-barrel, from which you enter the temple proper. At the 
last landing, below the top of the stairway, we stopped to look at a 
gigantic statue representing a "devil-man" sentinel, placed in an alcove, 
in a half-sitting, half-standing position, menacing the intrusive 
unbeliever, seeking for the Holy of Holies, with outstretched arm and 

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fist doubled up, like a pugilist's in a prizefight. A hideous mask 
answered for a face, while the eyes, lighted up from within, glared on the 
visitor with something of the weird. effect produced by 

Torches which have burned all night, 
Through some impure, unhallowed rite," 

When viewed by the true believer. The devil-man winked inquiringly at us, 
and we winked back at him, said "Press," and then passed on unmolested. 
One of the party observed this pantomime, and enthusiastically exclaimed, 
"Well, you fellows of the press have got a good thing of it, haven't you? 
If I don't mean to practice that, and try it on, when the time comes, on 
old St, Peter, may the ____" We requested him to spare our sensitive 
feelings, and he did so, and did not finish the sentence. 

The temple was ablaze with light, crowded by a wondering throng, filled 
with the choking blue smoke of the incense, and as hot and close as the 
furnace-room of an ocean steamer in the tropics. The images representing 
Buddha, or Foh, the guardian deities of the southern, middle and northern 
districts of China, the Queen Mother of Heaven and her attendants, the 
black gentleman of whom it is always safe to speak respectfully, if not 
admiringly, and other objects of mingled admiration and contempt to the 
average Chinese mind, were all on their shrines in the different 
apartments or halls of the temple, and the usual lamps were burning before 
them. But the visitors appeared to pay no attention to them, and, for the 
time being, at least, regard them with no respect. 

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The extraordinary decorations for the occasion formed the attraction for 
the evening. Fronting the great folding door-on the wings of which are 
painted a hideous monster. armed sentinels, etc., depending from the 
ceiling by crimson silken cords--hung a whatnot-like arrangement, 
representing in miniature the stage of a Chinese theatre, upon which a 
"celestial star dramatic company," in all the elaborate silk and gold 
embroidery, decked garments, etc., which pertain to their wardrobe, was 
grouped with really artistic skill and effect. The scene represented a 
tableau in one of their historic dramas, and each figure, which was from 
two and one half to three feet in height, was a perfect counterpart in 
miniature of one of the well-known Chinese actors of the Jackson street 
theatre, which is visited by every stranger from the east of the Rocky 
Mountains, who comes to see the wonders and curiosities of California. The 
features, which were of some hard material like plaster of Paris, were 
moulded with such cunning skill, that the expression was as perfect as 
life itself; and each actor could be recognized in an Instant by any 
person who had seen him once upon the real stage. Five similar groups, 
each representing a scene in a play illustrating the history and 
traditions of the Central Flowery Empire, hung in different parts of the 
same principal apartment. In one corner we saw two curious phantom 
horsemen, mounted on nondescript, half human, half animal, phantom steeds. 
The framework of these figures was of the lightest split-rattan, and the 
superstructure light tissue paper of various 

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brilliant colors. "What do they represent?" we asked of a polite Chinaman, 
who came bowing out of a side room to meet us, and show us around free of 
charge. He told us forty graceful fictions in ten breaths, and was 
"joshing" us all the time. I did not blame him, for two reasons: first, he 
did not know himself; and, secondly, his people are an imaginative race, 
and it is the custom of the country--their country, not ours, I mean, of 
course. In China--blessed country!--there are no professional politicians, 
and the lying is more evenly distributed among the people than with us. 

But the greatest attractions that night were two monster statues, twin 
giant ghost-warriors, who stood on either side of the hall in front of the 
great altar. These figures. were each fully eighteen feet in height, and 
were perfectly proportioned. They were costumed in half-armor, worn over 
long robes of the most brilliant hues, elaborately ornamented and 
embroidered, and each wore the cap of a high mandarin, surmounted by the 
crimson ball, indicative of the first rank, and a tall, variegated plume. 
The face of one had something of serene dignity and power in beatific 
repose upon it, and he held his right hand aloft, with the thumb, fore and 
fourth fingers slightly bent, and the middle and third fingers nearly 
straight--as do always the images of Buddha, or Foh, the representations 
of the incarnation of the Supreme Power and Intelligence, which are seen 
upon every shrine of the faith--while the right foot rested upon and 
crushed down to the earth a hideous, open-mouthed, writhing dragon. 

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The second was the counterpart of the first in all, save that his face was 
covered by a hideous, frowning mask, his raised right hand was open, with 
the palm turned full toward the spectator, and with his foot he trampled a 
snarling and struggling yellow and black spotted tiger. We asked the 
meaning of these giant figures of our obsequious Chinese attendant, and, 
as before, he told us a cock-and-bull story as gigantic in proportion as 
the figures themselves. The excuses urged in his behalf in the first 
instance are equally good in this. 

We ascertained that the statues, like the phantom horsemen, despite their 
imposing appearance, were nothing but rattan, tissue and gilt paper, and 
bits of looking-glass-trifles light as air, almost, which even a breath 
might knock over and demolish. If they were intended to represent ghosts 
of the mighty dead' of the days when there were giants in the land, they' 
came near the mark; for anything more thin and unsubstantial to all the 
senses, save that of sight, could never have been conceived. Only the 
cunning hand of a celestial artist could have put them together, preserved 
their anatomical proportions, and made' them stand there, erect, the very 
impersonation of hollow imposture. We noticed that the celestial crowd 
laughed and talked, and wandered about without the slightest regard for 
the religious character of the place, and we came away amused and 
interested, but not a whit the wiser for any insight into the hidden 
meaning of all this pageant--if any meaning there was--than when we came. 

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Coming back to Dupont street, I met a man whom I had last seen while on a 
hostile raid into the Hualapai Indian country, in Arizona, and our 
conversation, after the first greetings were over, turned upon one of the 
strange, peculiar characters with which the Pacific coast abounds--one we 
had both known--old "CONCATENATION BILL." 

When and where he picked up the sobriquet, or it picked up him, we never 
knew; but, once attached to him, it became a part of his personality, and 
stuck to him thenceforth, through good report and through evil report, for 
the term of his natural life, and will be inscribed upon his tombstone, 
should fortune so far change her mood as to permit him to have one, which 
is a matter for doubt. It was doubtful if he knew himself It was probably 
all he had to show for his months of labor in some early mining-camp, when 
he left it; and, as the camp itself is doubtless long since played out, 
and numbered with the things which have been, but are not, what matters it 
where it was located, or who toiled in it? In any event, it usurped the 
place of the name given him in baptism--if he ever was baptised--and, like 
most California nicknames, was appropriate. 

"You are out of luck," said a rough-looking miner, to whom he had detailed 
his misfortunes, wanderings and misadventures for an hour. 

"Out of luck! Well, I wish to Heaven I was; you may gamble on that, but I 
ain't. Why, God bless you, stranger, I'm just in a perfect streak of luck 
from morning to night, and from one year's end 

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to another; and the cussedest luck! Why, I have had more luck than would 
sink a ship, and have got it yet!" 

I will be just to the memory of my departed friend; he had. 

He came across the plains in '49. He started with a good outfit supplied 
him by friends in Illinois, who fitted him out "on shares" as a 
speculation. He left them confident of large dividends, and those who are 
yet above ground are still waiting for them. His best horse was stolen 
from him on the first night out from "St. Joe," and he traded off the 
other and the double harnesses for a yoke of oxen, with a cow thrown in. 
One of his oxen was gobbled up by Indians on the Platte, and having sold, 
given away, or thrown away half his provisions to lighten his load, he 
started on with the cow yoked in with the remaining ox. 

The cow pegged out on the headwaters of the Humboldt, and he abandoned his 
wagon and rode the remaining ox down to "the Sink," where it also gave up 
the struggle, and left him alone in his misery. From thence he made the 
remainder of the journey on foot, camping by night with any family or 
party who would give him a supper and the use of a spare blanket. 

All things must have an end some time, and he finished his journey at 
last, arriving at Placerville late in the autumn, worn out, ragged, and 
seedy to the last degree--the very impersonation of persistent bad luck--
but still hopeful of the future, and obtained a situation as waiter at a 
hotel, with good wages. At 

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the end of the second month, he actually had money ahead, and being of a 
commercial turn of mind, tried his hand at "busting" a faro bank. He did 
not quite succeed in the operation--he never quite made a success of 
anything he undertook--but he won eleven hundred and eighty dollars 
nevertheless. 

There was a gushing young lady, who tended bar in a dance-house in 
Placerville, who had made his acquaintance before he made this "ten-
strike," and now she suddenly discovered that he was a really good-hearted 
fellow, and not bad-looking. She suggested that it would be a good thing 
for them to go into partnership, matrimonial and financial, and start a 
hotel at Coon Hollow, a new and promising camp not far from Placerville--
which was then more familiarly known as "Hangtown." The financial 
partnership was to be immediate and absolute; the matrimonial one, 
conditional and prospective. The arrangement, though it might have pleased 
him better if slightly modified, on the whole met with his approval; they 
rented the hotel, and she started down to Sacramento to purchase the 
necessary outfit for the bar before starting in at "keeping tavern." She 
took his money with her, and-aid not return. Bill borrowed fifty dollars 
of a sympathizing friend, followed her down to Sacramento, and there 
learned that she had gone "to the Bay" in company with a big red-headed 
fellow, known as "Sandy Bob," who came out with her from New York, and 
who, if not her husband, should have been. "No use following any further 
after her!" 

Bill knocked around Sacramento until his borrowed 

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fifty dollars were all expended, then got a situation as "assistant bull-
whacker" on an up train, and made his way up into the mountains to 
Fiddletown, where he came across a friend, who took him into partnership 
in a placer gold-claim, which at the moment did not promise largely. They 
"struck it rich," for a wonder, in two weeks sold out for a "big stake," 
and star.ted for San Francisco. On the way down the river, on the steamer, 
Bill was induced to take a hand in a little friendly game of draw-poker, 
just to pass away the time, and succeeded not only in passing away the 
time, but also with it all his own money, and all his confiding partner's 
share as well. In San Francisco he met with various adventures, finding 
temporary employment in a dozen different kinds of business, only to be 
thrown out of each in turn through some unfortunate occurrence, and find 
himself "dead broke" every time. When the Frazer River excitement broke 
out, he went up there, and came back "busted." Then he joined in the mid-
winter rush over the Sierra Nevada to the newly-found Washoe silver mines, 
and found his way back again in the spring as poverty-stricken as ever, 
Then he drifted southward, fished for sharks, and gathered abalones at San 
Pedro, and for a time made himself generally useless on a stock-ranch. The 
Arizona gold excitement of 1862-'63 took him across the desert to the 
Colorado River. In the first camp he struck on the eastern side of the 
Colorado River, he set to work with a will to secure a valuable quartz 
claim--everybody was hunting up and locating quartz claims at that time. 
He would 

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go out in the morning with claim-notices written out in advance, and tramp 
over the red volcanic mountains all day long in the burning sun, vainly 
seeking for an unclaimed lead. All the quartz leads in the country 
appeared to have from one to a dozen claim-notices stuck up on them. Just 
as hope was abandoning him, a friend suggested to try "extensions." If he 
could not find new claims, he could at least locate extensions on those 
taken up by others, and if the original claims prospected well, his 
extensions would eventually become valuable. The idea struck him 
favorably. 

Next morning he was off bright and early, with his pocket full of ready-
written extension claim-notices. Luck was still against him; he found 
extensions located in every claim in the mountains. Late in the evening he 
was making his way back to camp, footsore, weary and dejected, when he 
stumbled upon a claim-stake on a mesa at the head of a caon, and getting 
down on his knees to examine it, was filled with delight at the discovery 
that there was no extension-notice fastened to the other side of it, He 
could not make out the words of the notice, but it was a claim, and that 
was quite enough for him. Pulling out an extension-notice, reading: 

"We, the undersigned, claim 200 feet each on the first northerly extension 
of this claim, and intend to work the same according to the laws of the 
United States and of this district. (Signed)..........
"JOHN SMITH,
"Job JONES et al.," 

he fastened it on the northern side of the stake, and started on toward 
camp with a lighter heart. 

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Descending into the caon, he came upon another claim-stake, and repeated 
the performance of putting up an extension-notice. Fortune had favored him 
at last! Two extensions located within an hour-he was a millionaire 
already, in prospect, at least, when he returned to camp. That night he 
hardly slept at all. His heart beat high with hop-visions of untold wealth 
floated unceasingly before his half-closed eyes. Next morning he was up 
betimes, and invited his companions in the camp to go up with him before 
breakfast and take a look at his locations. They went up the caon and 
found that the last extension located was the result of an error. All 
sorts of locations besides mining-claims were' being made--town sites, 
mill sites, etc., etc.; the last claim on which he had taken up an 
extension was for a slaughter-yard. The discovery lowered his spirits a 
peg, but he was still hopeful, and went on with the party up to the mesa 
to examine the first location. 

When they arrived at the stake, and Bill bent down to read the notice, his 
face turned pale and he started back affrighted, as did Robinson Crusoe 
when he saw the footprint of the cannibal on the island of Juan Fernandez. 
As I am a man and a Christian, he had located and agreed to work an 
extension on a claim for a graveyard. 

The joke got back to camp ahead of him, and Bill shot out of the place-an 
hour later. like a second Mazeppa, followed by a 

----- 'loud shout of savage laughter, 
which on the wind came roaring after," 

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from the lungs of every prospector within a mile of it. 

He paused in his flight at a new camp near La Paz, and there had better 
luck for the moment. He located on a small vein, or deposit, of "silver-
copper glance," and sold it to a San Francisco capitalist for three 
hundred dollars. With this money he started a modest and unpretending 
"dead-fall," proposing to supply the honest miners with liquor and cards 
at a handsome advance on original cost. The first day's business was a 
success, and he began to entertain high hope of a change for the better. 
Vain hope! On the second day a stranger came into his shanty for a drink, 
and fell down dead with heart disease before reaching the counter. Bad 
news travels fast. In half an hour the rumor had gone abroad through the 
whole camp that the respected and lamented deceased (who had emigrated 
from Northern California or Southern Oregon on account of a lawsuit 
involving the question of title to a horse) had died just after, instead 
of just before, imbibing a glass of Concatenation Bill's best whisky. 

It was the warm season, and the gold and copper-seekers of that district 
were an excitable set at any time, with no wholesome restraint upon their 
actions in the shape of courts and legal enactments. In an hour fifty men 
had assembled, and were engaged in sampling his liquor, and testing it as 
a Committee of the Whole, with a view of deciding whether it would kill or 
not. It did not directly kill those who drank it then and there, without 
paying a cent for it, but it led to a fight, in which two honest miners 
were laid 

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out with bullet-holes through them; and the indignant citizens, with the 
crude idea of justice prevailing among them, held him responsible for this 
result, and immediately organized a Vigilance Committee, with the 
intention of going for Bill as soon as daylight came, to enable them tv 
hunt up his hiding-place m the chaparral. Luckily for him, he learned of 
their good intentions in season, and before morning broke over the Weaver 
Mountains, he broke in that direction himself. They heard of him the next 
day at the Granite Wash, forty miles east of the river, and their ardor 
having cooled down a little meantime, concluded to drop the matter and 
pursue him no farther. 

He next turned up at Wickenburg, on the Hassiyampi, in Central Arizona. 
Wickenburg was a lively place at that time. Jack Snelling was acknowledged 
to be a capital fellow when perfectly sober, but inclined to be playful at 
times, and indulge in little praCtical jokes, which generally resulted in 
somebody being sent out of town feet foremost, and perforated like a 
colander. It so happened that Jack was festivelyinclined on the day on 
which Bill arrived, and had been going around town compelling all the 
traders to close their shops and go home, on pain of instant death. Jack 
was much respected in that community, and his will was law. As 
Concatenation Bill rode down the single long, tortuous street which 
comprised the city at that time, Jack sighted him, and mistaking him for a 
man who had once insulted him by refusing to drink with him, went for him 
the moment he alighted, and thrashed him within an inch of 

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his life before he discovered his mistake. Bill accepted his apology and a 
drink, but thought that busIness was opening a little too briskly in 
Wickenburg to be permanent, washed the blood from his face, bound a piece 
of raw beef on one of his eyes, and struck out for a new location at 
sunrise next morning. 

In the course of his wanderings, he was seen at Hooper & Co's store on the 
Gila, and for a time Was at home around Tucson. 

Two or three years after his adventure at La Paz, Concatenation Bill came 
down Bill Williams' fork from Prescott, near Date Creek, and for some 
weeks Was one of the fixtures of the Great Central Mining Company's camp, 
at the copper mines near Aubray City, twelve miles above the mouth of the 
fork. Nobody asked him to stop, and nobody seemed to care to invite him to 
leave; so he partook liberally of the hospitalities of the camp, never 
missing a meal nor paying a red, until it was whispered round among the 
miners that he was a heavy stockholder in the company, and it would be 
well to be on the good side of him. 

It was in midsummer, and the heat was something terrible. All day long the 
naked red mountains absorbed the heat of the burning sun, and all night 
long they gave it back to the inhabitants, as the baker's brick oven 
absorbs the heat of the burning wood fire, and gives it back to the loaves 
within it, when the coals and embers have been raked out. Sleep, until far 
into the morning hours, Was an impossbility, indoors or out, and the 
miners were wont to spread 

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their blankets on the floor of the long veranda, at the hacienda, and, 
lying down upon them, while away the earlier part of the night, fighting 
mosquitoes and swapping lies, which were about equally abundant at that 
time in camp. 

Some years previous to this time, the Mojaves of the Colorado Valley, 
becoming tired of inglorious peace, and panting for war and its triumphs 
and renown, concluded to go on an expedition up the Gila, and clean out 
the Pimos and Maricopas, their old friends and allies against the Apaches. 
The campaign opened auspiciously. The first skirmish resulted in the rapid 
retreat of the Pimos, with the loss of four bucks and one squaw, toward 
their main village, farther up the valley. But the second fight resulted 
differently, and the Mojaves retreated in confusion toward the Colorado, 
with the loss of half their force, and with their thirst for military 
glory whipped clean out of them. 

Now it happened, almost as a matter of course since trouble was going on, 
that Concatenation Bill was in the vicinity when the fight took place--or, 
at least, had heard the particulars from some one who had been--and, as 
was his custom, had worked up the incidents and details into a wonderful 
romance, like unto that of the adventures of the Cid, of which you may be 
sure he was the central figure and hero, and he never tired of relating 
it, with endless variations, to any crowd who could be got to listen to 
the story. No one about the camp knew aught to the contrary; so, for want 
of contradiction, the story was accepted for its face, and became one of 
the acknowledged and 

Page 267

respected legends of the fork. But for an unfortunate incident which I 
shall proceed to relate, it is probable that it would have passed into 
history and been handed down to posterity, with all the claim to reverence 
and credence which attaches to the story of William Tell, the tyrant 
Gessler, and the apple; or the infant G. W., his hatchet, and the old 
man's cherry-tree. 

One day, just as the sun was sinking down in the orange-hued western sky, 
and the sweating cook was ringing the welcome bell to call the toilers at 
the mine to supper, a game-looking young frontiersman, clad in buckskin 
garments, and a broad-brimmed vicua hat, rode down the steep declivity of 
the red mountain, and made his way into camp. He was tendered the 
hospitalities of the place, as were all strangers then, and turned in with 
the other "boys" on the veranda at night. Stories came on in due course, 
and, at a hint dexterously thrown out by one of the party, Concatenation 
Bill started in with the true and affecting history of the "Great Indian 
Fight on the Gila." And thus he began: 

"Well, you see, boys, the old chiefs of the Pimos and Maricopas were all 
out of practice, and when they found things had gone agin 'em on the first 
fight, they looked about for a leader who knowed jest how to put up the 
pins for a victory. Pretty soon they pitched on me, and I drawed up the 
plan for the next day's operations right away. I stationed the braves at 
the right points, then laid for the Mojaves, and got 'em. 

Page 268

"They came up the river, yelling like so many devils, and drove our 
pickets in like chaff before 'em; but when I got 'em jest in the right 
spot, I give the word, and we riz on 'em. I never did feel much 
compunction at taking life before, leastwise the life of a damned redskin; 
but the fact is, that slaughter was dreadful, and it came to be a perfect 
butchery before we got through. I swear to man that the Gila riz over a 
foot; though mind, boys, I don't say it was all owin' to the blood which 
ran into it. There was about two thousand dead Mojaves a floatin' down the 
stream, an' it's likely they lodged and choked it up at some pint where it 
was narrer like, an' so set the water back, more or less. Right in the 
thickest of the fight, when it seemed for a few minutes as if the Mojaves--
who was game to the last; I'll say that in justice to 'em was goin' to get 
the best of us, after all, I sailed in myself, and went for their big 
chief, and downed him with a blow from the butt of my revolver; an' I was 
jest cockin' my weapon to give him a settler, when old Ickthermiree, his 
second in command, an' about half a dozen leftenants, lighted on me all at 
onst, an' we clinched and went down all in a heap. I got one arm loose, 
an' pulling out my old Arkansas toothpick, commenced slashin' 'em right 
and left, when 

Concatenation Bill never told us what happened after that. 

When he commenced the story, the stranger, who was lying some feet away, 
listened attentively for a few moments, then rose slowly to a sitting 
posture, and then to his feet, As the story progressed, he 

Page 269

moved quietly toward the spot where Bill was lying, and at length startled 
that worthy by suddenly appearing over him, towering up like a giant in 
the moonlight, every feature convulsed with excitement. 

You did that, stranger?" he yelled from stentorian lungs, every syllable 
being evidently enunciated under pressure of rage suppressed, until it was 
ready to burst him. 

"Yes, me!" was Bill's slightly less confident reply. 

The stranger bounded about four feet into the air, cracked his heels 
together with such force that the report sounded like that of a musket, 
swung his revolver round to the front, 50 as to have it ready for instant 
use, and as he came down yelled out: 

"Well, by the great horn spoon, stranger, that is singular! There wasn't 
but one damned white man thar, or I hope to be dropped into hell this 
minute; AN' I'M THE MAN!" 

The camp was as silent as death in an instant. Every man expected to hear 
the report of a revolver, or the sounds of a deadly hand-to-hand struggle, 
and waited in breathless anxiety for the crowning catastrophe. 

"You the man?" 

"Yes, by the bloody jumping tom-cats of Jerusalem, ME! Take a good look at 
me, stranger. I kin jest eat any ten men that dar dispute it." 

The silence grew deeper. Concatenation Bill lay as motionless as a dead 
man for a moment, looking up at his opponent in the moonlight, silently 
weighing him and taking his measure; then apparently 

Page 270

fully satisfied that he was a man of his word, and able to carry out his 
promises, slowly turned over on his side, drew the corner of his blanket 
up over his head, and in a voice as free from excitement as that of a 
child playing on its mother's bosom, drawled out: 

"Well, I reckon that lets me out!"

A peal of laughter, wild and long, from all but two of the party, rang out 
upon the still air of the desert, and was answered on the instant by a 
loud yap-yap-yap-ya-hoo-oooo, from the startled wolves which were prowling 
around the camp by dozens. The stranger stood there in silence and in 
doubt for a moment, then walked sulkily back to his blankets and lay down. 
Again, and yet again, the loud laughter pealed forth upon the night, but 
not a word or sound of any kind came from the blankets where Bill was 
lying, to denote his consciousness of aught which was going on around him. 
He had played that hand for all it was worth, and was fairly raised out at 
last. 

When the summits of the distant Harcuvar Mountains were glistening with 
the rays of the rising sun, the miners of the fork were up and stirring, 
as was their wont. The breakfast-bell sounded, and a rush was made for the 
dining-room. A familiar face was missing, and for the first time in weeks 
there was a vacant place at the table. Concatenation Bill was gone. The 
camp which had known him so long was to know him no more forever. In the 
grey dawn he had stealthily risen, folded his blankets, packed up his 
traps, saddled his hipshot mule, and as silently as a ghost departed, not 
deigning even to say good bye 

Page 271

to anybody about the premises. What became of him we never satisfactorily 
ascertained. The road to La Paz he had already traveled too often; that 
toward Salt Lake was Hualapais; and that to Prescott and Tucson was 
swarming with Apaches. Had he taken "the road which Ward's ducks went?" We 
shuddered at the thought, but he may have done so in sheer desperation. 

A few days later, the writer and a party of frontiersmen friends paused 
beside a lowly grave on the road to Skull Valley, over which some 
wandering Mexicans had erected a cross of stones, in testimony of the 
supposed fact that there rested the remains of a Christiano. There was an 
empty bottle by the side of the grave, and on the label the letters "C. 
B." Did they stand for "Cognac Brandy" or "Concatenation Bill?" 

The party were about equally divided on the question of the probabilities; 
but it is a rule on the frontier never to miss an opportunity out of 
respect to a mere uncertainty; so from our pocket-flasks we reverently 
drank to the memory of the illustrious departed, the hero of the "the 
Great Indian Fight on the Gila; "then rode away into new scenes and 
dangers new, and thenceforth to all that reckless party, save the writer, 
poor Concatenation Bill was as dead, and almost as nearly forgotten, as 

"The little birds that sang 
A hundred years ago." 



Page 272

CHAPTER XII. A CRUISE ON THE BARBARY COAST. 
Night Scenes in San Francisco.--Low Life.--Scene in a Recently Suppressed 
Gambling House.--Visit to the Chinese Quarter.--How John Chinaman Loses 
His Money.--The Thieves and Rounders of San Francisco.--How they Live and 
where they Lodge.--The Dance-Cellars.--Opium Dens and Thieves' Ordinaries 
of the Barbary Coast.--How the San Francisco Police treat Old Offenders, 
etc., etc. 

EVERY city on earth has its special sink of vice, crime and degradation, 
its running ulcer or moral cancer, which it would fain hide from the gaze 
of mankind. London has its St. Giles, New York its Five Points, and each 
of the other Atlantic and Western Cities its peculiar plague spot and 
curse; it is even asserted that there are certain localities in Chicago 
where vice prevails to a greater extent, and life, virtue and property are 
less secure than in others. San Franciscans will not yield the palm of 
superiority to anything to be found elsewhere in the world. Speak of the 
deeper depth, the lower hell, the maelstrom of vice and iniquity-from 
whence those who once fairly enter escape no more forever-and they will 
point triumphantly to the Barbary Coast, strewn from end to end with the 
wrecks of humanity, and challenge you to match it anywhere outside of the 
lake of fire and brimstone. 

Page 273

Stroll by daylight through the region bounded by Montgomery, Stockton, 
Washington and Broadway streets, and you will have but a faint idea, a 
very Inadequate conception, of the real character of the locality. A few 
red-faced, frowzy females will glance inquiringly at you from their seats 
just inside the doorways of the minor "dead-falls;" little dens, with the 
bar stocked with well-drugged liquors-which to taste is to look death in 
the face and defy him--on one side of the front room, a sofa on the other, 
and at the rear an arched opening hung with tawdry red and white curtains, 
communicating with an inner room, into the hidden mysteries of which you 
and I do not care to penetrate. Spanish-American women, clad in solemn 
black, and wrapped to the eyes in their dark rebozos, fallen and 
hopelessly degraded, but still preserving something of the grace of manner 
and speech which distinguish the females of their race above all others, 
flit quietly past, fixing their flashing black eyes inquiringly upon your 
face, but making no salutation. Chinese porters or "coolies," swinging 
heavy burdens on the ends of pliant bamboo poles balanced on their 
shoulders, and changed rapidly from side to side as they trot quickly 
along, meet you at every turn. A couple of small, wiry, supple little 
fellows, with black skins, straight black hair, with little black eyes 
which twinkle like those of a snake, carrying huge baskets, filled with 
soiled clothing, on their heads, may attract your attention next; they are 
Lascar or Hindoo washermen from the Laguna, in the western part of the 
city, where they work. You will 

Page 274

see coming forth from the various narrow alleys which intersect the main 
streets, and are known by the expressive designations of "Murderer's 
Alley, "China Alley," "Stout's Alley," etc., any number of Chinese 
females, clad in their loose drawers or pants of blue or black cotton 
goods, straight-cut sacques of broadcloth, satin, or other costly or cheap 
material, according to their condition and social rank; shoes of blue 
satin, richly embroidered with bullion, and with thick soles of white felt 
and white wood, anklets or bangles, and bracelets of silver, gold, or jade-
stone, and lustrous blue-black hair, braided in two strands, hanging down 
the back from beneath coarse-striped gingham handkerchiefs, thrown over 
the head, and tied beneath the chin as a badge denoting slavery, and a 
life of hopeless infamy; or, if the owner happens to be the wife of a 
laborer, tradesman or gambling-house proprietor, wonderfully gotten up 
with a species of transparent mucilage, and fashioned into a rudder-like 
structure sticking out fully a foot behind, supporting a number of skewer-
like pins of gold or silver, each six or eight inches in length, and 
putting to shame by its size and cleanly appearance, the waterfalls of our 
Caucasian belles--shuffle along in groups of three or four, talking and 
laughing together like so many little children, or exchanging compliments, 
which would never bear translation into English, with the male 
blackguards, loafers and plug-uglies of their race. These women are 
intellectually only children, and are more to be pitied and less condemned 
than the fallen of their sex of any other race. Every second 

Page 275

building is occupied as a saloon, in which nobody seems to be stirring, 
and has a basement, over the door of which is painted the name of the 
establishment, as "The Roaring Gimlet," "The Bull's Run," "The Cock of the 
Walk," " Star of the Union," "Every Man is Welcome," etc., etc., but now 
closed and apparently unoccupied. There are strains of ear-splitting music 
coming occasionally from the Chinese gambling-houses, and from time to 
time, as you walk along, you see rows of Chinamen seated at low benches in 
basements, industriously engaged in making up "every choice brand of 
Havana and Domestic cigars," as the signs over the doorways inform you. 
But for the most part, the dirty shops, saloons and basements have a 
thriftless, tumble-down, hopeless and half-deserted appearance, and you 
finally make up your mind that you have stumbled into a part of the town 
where nothing in particular is ever going on, and which is in a great 
measure deserted and going into gradual but certain decline and decay. 
Such is the "Barbary Coast" by daylight; but by gaslight or moonlight it 
is quite another thing, and you would find it difficult to realize that 
this was the sleepy, half-deserted locality you saw in the morning. 

It is Saturday evening, in the middle of the rainy season, when no work is 
doing upon the ranches, and work in the placer mines is necessarily 
suspended, and Me town fairly swarms with "honest miners" and unemployed 
farm-hands, who have come down from the mountains and "the cow counties" 
to spend their money, and waste their time and health in 

Page 276

"doing" or "seeing life" in San Francisco. The Barbary Coast is now alive 
with "jay-hawkers," "short-card sharps," "rounders," pickpockets, 
prostitutes and their assistants and victims; we cannot find a better 
night on which to pay a visit to the locality. Half a dozen of us, more or 
less, make up the party, and we start out. The evening is pleasant, and 
Montgomery and Kearny streets are filled with the beauty, fashion, and 
wealth of San Francisco. A military company, in brilliant uniform, with a 
full and very superior band, returning from a target excursion, pass up 
the street, attracting the attention of the throng for a moment; and then 
come, in turn, a party of horsemen and horsewomen, gaily mounted, coming 
in from the Cliff House at Point Lobos, or just starting out for a night-
ride, who dash down the street at a gallop, are glanced at, criticised, 
and forgotten. The drift of the crowd is toward the various places of 
amusement, and we go op with the tide. Turning up Washington street, we 
stop in front of what was, a few years since, the principal theatre, and 
looking into a saloon adjoining the main entrance, a scene which we 
witnessed there, less than three years ago, is recalled vividly to our 
recollection. There is a snug little saloon, and everything is as neat and 
orderly and business-like in appearance as possible. At the rear of the 
room is a green door, on which hangs a card inscribed in large letters, 
"Club Room--Now Open." Near the door sits a well dressed, gentlemanly man, 
who scrutinizes the face of each man as he passes through the saloon, and 

Page 277

seems to be connected in some mysterious manner with what is going on in 
the interior room. Numbers of men, mostly young, and dressed like 
mechanics or small shop-keepers, clerks, etc., enter the saloon as we 
stand drinking at the bar, and pass quietly inside. At length a man 
approaches the inner door, who is recognized by the man sitting in the 
chair as an objectionable or suspicious character, and the latter, with a 
quiet motion of the hand toward the outer door, says, "I don't think, sir, 
the man you are looking for is inside!" or, "This ain't the place for you, 
stranger; better walk the other way;" and we hear a noise inside as if a 
chain had been let down and something had been bolted, which is quite 
likely the case. The bluffed individual departs without a word, satisfied 
that there is nothing to be made by parleying, and we advance toward the 
door-keeper--for such he really is--in turn. He looks sharply at us, 
recognizes us by a quiet nod, and glances inquiringly toward the rest of 
the party. "Only strangers from New York going the rounds; no shenanegan 
or cops in disguise; honor bright!" we reply. "All right; go ahead!" and 
we enter the door, turn to the right, go down a flight of steps, through a 
narrow passage, and, following the gas-lights, reach and enter a third 
door; passing which we find ourselves in a wide, low hall, furnished with 
long tables covered with glazed cloth, lighted brilliantly with gas, and 
crowded with men who are gathering in groups around the different tables. 
The air is close and hot, and the smell none of the most agreeable. 
Perhaps two 

Page 278

hundred men are in the room, but there is no hum of conversation, and even 
the smokers hardly place their cigars to their lips often enough to keep 
them lighted. At the tables are seated dealers, dressed in long black 
robes, which completely hide every article of every-day clothing which 
they have on, with wire masks which conceal their features, though 
partially transparent, and slouched hats, which hide every trace of hair, 
making subsequent identification absolutely impossible. This is done to 
prevent policemen--who will, in spite of every possible precaution, 
occasionally get in, disguised in such manner as to defy detection--from 
being able to identify the dealers and prosecute them. The assistants of 
the dealers are dressed in the same manner, and the players never see the 
faces, recognize the clothing, or hear the natural voices of the men with 
whom they are, by a stretch of the imagination, supposed to be playing. 
The silence is only broken by the chink of coin, and the monotonous voice 
of the dealer: All set; all made; roll! Black wins! All set; all made; 
roll! Red wins!" At one table Monte is dealt, at another Faro, at another 
Rouge-et-noir, at another Diana, at another " Chuck-a-luck," at another " 
Poker dice," and so on. You can be accommodated with almost any game you 
want, and it makes little difference in which you invest. "You pays your 
money, and you takes your choice!" You will notice that the players all 
appear to be of the classes before alluded to; there are none of the 
flashily-dressed clerks from the fancy dry-goods stores, no 

Page 279

cashiers from large manufacturing, commercial, or banking houses, no stock-
brokers and others, such as you may see in the more high-toned and 
fashionable hells of Montgomery, California, or Sacramento streets. The 
players draw their money from their pockets with the air of men who earned 
it by the sweat of their brows, and are loth to part with it, but cannot 
withstand the temptation to indulge in the all-absorbing passion which 
consumes them. Some of these men are taking their first lessons at the 
gaming table; others have been depositing four fifths of their earnings 
here regularly every week for years, and will do so for years to come. The 
walls are hung around in places with cards, detailing the rules of the 
game, and everything looks and speaks "business." There are no luxurious 
chairs and sofas, no costly pictures, no soft carpets, and no sideboard 
loaded with substantials and delicacies, champagne, oysters, rich wines, 
and fiery liquors in glittering cut-glass and silver decanters and stands, 
with obsequious negro or Chinese servants, to press you to partake 
gratuitously of the good things spread before you, as in the high-toned 
hells. The business of the place is naked gambling, and there is no effort 
to hide it or soften it with the "social amenities." The players barely 
glanced at us as we entered, and the games go on. A man with the 
appearance of a mechanic, reaches over the monte table and chucks a pile 
of silver half-dollars down on a particular card. The dealer draws the 
cards with a steady hand, the player wins, and the assistant, without a 
word, shoves toward him the 

Page 280

amount of his winnings, in gold or silver. Again the player wins, and 
again, but the dealer never alters his monotonous drawl for a moment, and 
appears utterly indifferent to the result. The player, urged on by nods 
and expressive looks from his companions, "presses his luck," and the 
wrong card is drawn out; the assistant reaches out his rake, and hauls his 
pile toward the bank. The player draws a long breath, with a half-
muttered, half-suppressed curse, and takes from his pocket a $20 piece, 
which he pitches, with an affectation of carelessness, down upon the 
nearest card. That, too, goes with the rest into the pile before the 
cashier of the bank; another and another follows, and at last the player 
wins again. Then he loses again, and again, and, suddenly starting up, 
strikes his hand upon his empty pocket, and walks quietly out of the room, 
without a word. Another victim takes his place, and so it will go on all 
night. Now and then a man will leave the room "ahead of the game," but you 
notice that the bank, be the game what it may, wins six times out of ten 
on the average, and, of course, must in the long run always break the 
players. We have had enough of this--let us go elsewhere, you say; and we 
walk out, our exit attracting as little attention as did our entrance. 

Times have changed sadly of late, as any old Californian will tell you. 
The Police are around now every night, watching for all such "sinful
games," and such scenes as we have just been depicting are no longer to be 
witnessed in San Francisco, though gambling in a different way is just as 
common as ever. 

Page 281

And now, where? As we have seen how our Caucasian fellow-citizens, when 
unrestrained by the officers of the law, fool away their money at the 
gaming-table, suppose we go up to Dupont street and see how the Mongolians 
do that sort of thing. We pass up Washington street a couple of blocks, 
leaving the City Hall, with the gloomy "calaboose" in its basement, and 
the bright little garden-plat of a plaza on our left, and turn to the 
right into Dupont street. We are close on the Barbary Coast. A moment 
since we were exclusively among Caucasians, male and female, well dressed, 
and for the most part talking our language; we have gone hardly ten steps, 
and seem to be in another world. The uncouth jargon of the Celestial 
Empire resounds on every side. The stores are filled with strange-looking 
packages of goods from the Orient; over the doorways are great signs, with 
letters in gold or vermillion, cut into the brilliant blue or black 
groundwork, the purport whereof we know not. Little 'women in black or 
blue silk sacques and loose trousers, hair wonderfully gotten up, and 
slippers with soles an inch or. two in thickness, such as we saw running 
around by daylight, gaze at us with their almond-shaped black eyes, and 
nod knowingly at the policeman who has kindly volunteered to accompany us. 
Men with long queues hanging down their backs to their very heels, and 
clad in the costume of a far-off land, crowd the sidewalks, and jostle 
each other and ourselves around the lottery-shops and the doors of their 
own gambling-houses The air is redolent of a strange, dreamy odor, which 
you 

Page 282

recognize as that of opium-and tobacco mingled, and if it be during the 
time of the Chinese New Year's holidays in February, there is an incessant 
roar, as of musketry, from the explosion of fire-crackers, which are 
thrown into the streets in packages and by the box, from every store, 
gambling-house, restaurant and dwelling, until the atmosphere is one blue 
cloud of powder-smoke, and the pavement is covered with the red husks of 
millions of the popping nuisances. We notice numerous narrow doorways, 
with cloth signs, with huge Chinese characters over them. These are the 
entrances to the gambling-houses. At each sits a vigilant guardian, or 
doorkeeper, as silent as the Sphynx, with his hands tucked up into his 
sleeves, and his face as rigid and impassive as that of the great image of 
Josh in the Buddhist temple a few blocks away. He speaks to no one unless 
accosted; and you would never dream what a thinking he keeps up, and how 
much he takes in with those little half-closed eyes of his. Behind him we 
see an open door, a long narrow passage, and another door at the end. From 
the inner retreat comes strange, discordant--to our ears-and not over-
attractive music, the air being almost always the same, and closely 
resembling 

"The boat lies high, the boat lies low, 
She lies high and dry On the Ohio!" 

Chinamen are entering or coming out at every moment, and why should we not 
enter too. We approach the door, and the wooden-looking doorkeeper 
suddenly starts up as wide-awake as you or I, and 

Page 283

stamps his foot on the floor., We see the door fly shut, as in a 
pantomime, no human agency being visible, hear a bar fall "chump" against 
it from behind, hear the rattling of a chain, and it is all up with us 
there. We might kick at the thick door until we were tired, and 
expostulate with old Confucius there until morning, and it would avail us 
nothing. He knows what he is there for, and we need not waste our precious 
time on him, "No shabbe!" is the only answer we can get to all our 
inquiries; and he does not even wink when we shake two four-bit pieces 
under his nose. Better luck next time, perhaps! We try again a few doors 
further down the street--same result. It is evident that our friend the 
policeman is not looked upon' with favor by the sentinels at the gateways 
of the palaces of sudden wealth, and we suggest to him that he withdraw to 
the opposite side of the street, and still keep an eye on us. Attempt No. 
3. We see a peculiarly pleasant-looking Chinaman, whose face is familiar 
to us, at one of the doorways, and approach him: "Good evening, John." 
"Good eening, gentlemen." "Look here, John; these gentlemen come allee way 
from New York. No policeeman; wantee see you house; makee littee talkee; 
no more! You shabbee, John?" John, with bland, benevolent expression of 
countenance, which promises well, and raises our expectations to the 
highest pitch, bows gently, and thus delivers himself: "You likee see me; 
have littee talkee, eh? Welly good! Me likee see you, allee same. You come 
to-morrow, four o'clock!" Bang goes the door, 

Page 284

down comes the bar, the chain rattles inside, and John, with a face 
wreathed in smiles, inwardly chuckling over his own astuteness, and the 
weakness of the outside barbarians who took him, an old Mongolian, for a 
greeny, bows almost to the floor, and says with condescending politeness, 
"Good eening, gentlemen; hope you hab bellee good sleep!" "Why, blame the 
scoundrel; he has moved the previous question and us also, and that cuts 
off all debate!" exclaims one of our party. And he looked so pleasant and 
accommodating. "Come again to-morrow, four o'clock," indeed! There is a 
Celestial joke for you! We had better give up the attempt to see the 
inside of a Chinese gambling-house, and go farther down the Coast in 
search of amusement. We retrace our steps, and go a little way up 
Washington street to an alley, perhaps fifteen feet in width, running 
through the block northwards to Jackson street. This is "China Alley," and 
is occupied solely by Chinese prostitutes. The houses are all small brick 
affairs, coming flush up to the edge of the alley, and have windows with 
wickets in them, made by setting one pane of glass in a frame by itself, 
and hanging it on hinges. There is a front and a rear room to each of 
these little dens; and, as we walk along, we can see all the arrangements 
of the outer rooms Each of these places appear to be inhabited by from two 
to half a dozen Chinese girls, some of whom are dressed in hoops and long 
dresses "Melican" style, but for the most part are clad in the costume of 
their own country. These poor creatures are all slaves, bought with a 
price in China, and imported 

Page 285

by degraded men of their own race, who, despite our laws, contrive to hold 
them to a life-long servitude, which is a thousand times more hopeless and 
terrible than the negro slavery of Louisiana or Cuba could ever be. They 
have been reared to a life of shame from infancy, and have not a single 
trace of the native modesty of women left. They are, as we have said, mere 
children in point of intellect, havIng no education whatever, and no 
experience of the world outside of the narrow alleys in which they have 
always lived, and the emigrant ship in which they were brought over to 
this country. They have their likes and their dislikes, of course, and 
become attached to each other in a childish way, frequently being seen 
walking together on the streets, hand in hand, like little Caucasian 
sisters going home from school. At very long intervals, some of these poor 
untutored children of the East become imbued with Western notions of 
liberty and right, and making their escape from the clutches of their 
masters, become joined in lawful marriage to some laborious washerman, or 
other countryman, and endeavor to settle down to an honest life; but their 
chances of escaping kidnapping, and being dragged away to some distant 
locality, beaten, and reduced again to prostitution and slavery, are very 
slim indeed. The owner in such cases has always a personal grudge, as well 
as a pecuniary loss, to urge him on to vindictive measures; and he will 
willingly spend ten times the value of his escaping chattel to get her 
back again, and have his revenge. Besides, the safety of this peculiar 
institution demands 

Page 286

that the most rigorous measures should be taken in every case, as an 
example to deter others from following in the same vicious course. The 
girls cost $40 each in Canton, but are valued here at about $400, if 
passably good-looking, young and healthy, and readily sell at that figure 
in cash, or approved paper. Each colony of half a dozen girls is under the 
immediate control of an "old mother," herself a retired prostitute, who 
jealously watches over each, and receives from them the wages of their 
shame as fast as earned. From each wicket all. the way down the alley a 
female head may be seen protruding, and there is a constant fire of jokes 
and repartee going on between the occupants of the dens on each side of 
the alley, while every passer comes in for his share of personal notice. A 
girl, with hair carefully braided and decked with artificial flowers, and 
cheeks and lips cunningly painted so as to resemble those of her frail 
Caucasian sisters, notices us looking toward her wicket, and instantly 
raising her hand, taps at the window, but at the moment catches a glimpse 
of the policeman behind us, and shuts the wicket, and turns away as if she 
had not seen us at all. The alarm runs down the whole alley in an instant; 
there is a rattling of wickets, as if a hurricane was sweeping through the 
place, and in half a minute all is as silent as the grave, and not a head 
to be seen. It is a special misdemeanor under our city ordinances for a 
Chinawoman to tap on a window to attract the attention of anybody on the 
street; and the girls well know what is in store for them if they are 
caught at it by the police. 

Page 287

We walk through the alley, and we emerge upon Jackson street, stumble upon 
Ah Ting, a Sacramento street merchant, as shrewd and smart as any down-
east Yankee, who is walking with the swell Chinese doctor, Li-Po-Tai, who 
created such an excitement in San Francisco on his arrival, a few years 
since; and, laying all nonsense aside, really does perform some almost 
miraculous cures. Ah Ting is our friend; he will get us into a Chinese 
gambling-house at once. He sends off the policeman, as one too many in the 
party, and walking across the street, approaches the guardian of one of 
the temples of finance, confidentially says a few words to him, and in we 
go. The room is bare and plain; nothing attractive in its decorations, and 
the air is blue with the smoke of opium and flavored tobacco, from the 
little cigarritos between the lips of nearly every man in the room. There 
are, perhaps, fifty Chinamen, of the lower class, crowded around a long 
table, behind which sits the banker, a benevolent-looking old fellow in 
huge spectacles, satin blouse and skull-cap. In one corner of the room is 
the band, consisting of a woman, richly dressed, and painted, with a hair-
rudder standing out from behind her head in startling proportions, playing 
on a three-stringed guitar, a pock-marked scoundrel of the male sex 
playing on a. two-stringed fiddle, which he holds between his feet, and 
another who beats the infernal tom-tom with sticks, making discord of what 
might otherwise be considered an apology for music. From time to time the 
woman breaks forth in a wild, plaintive air, in a voice not bad in itself, 
but pitched at a 

Page 288

key as high as the ordinary whistle of a steam-engine. This, Ah Ting tells 
us, is "the Song of the Jasmine Flower," and we agree with one of the 
party, who suggests that the aforesaid jasmine flower must have grown on a 
hill-side, in hard stony soil, exposed to high winds, and had a hard time 
of it generally. The game which is being dealt is "Than," or "Tan," a kind 
of "odd and even" affair; we came to the conclusion that it would be odd 
indeed if anybody ever got even by playing at it. It looks all fair enough 
to an outsider. The dealer has on the table before him a pile of "copper 
cash," or Chinese bronze coin, each about the diameter of our old-
fashioned copper cents, now out of use, but only about one fourth as 
heavy, and with a square hole in the centre. These coins are of the value 
of the thousandth part of a Mexican dollar, or a tenth part of one cent; 
and in trade in China are used mostly strung on strings of a hundred or a 
thousand each, for convenience in handling and to save counting. Picking 
up a handful of these coins, apparently at random, before the eyes of the 
players, he puts them down on the table and covers them instantly with a 
common Chinaware bowl inverted. The players then make their bets on the 
number coming out odd or even, and also on guessing the exact number, the 
bank always taking the chances against the betters on either side. He then 
raises the bowl, and with a wire, about fourteen inches in length, crooked 
at the end, pulls the coins rapidly into little parties of four each, so 
that anybody can count them almost at a glance. If you bet on odd, and an 
odd number is 

Page 289

found to have been under the bowl, you win; if you hazard a guess at the 
actual number and hit it--about as much chance of your doing so as of your 
being hit by lightning in San Francisco--you win; or, if you bet that the 
last little pile drawn out will contain four, three, two, or only one 
coin, and hit it, you win. It all appears as fair as the day, and yet you 
cannot but notice that the bank gets rich and the players poor, by regular 
degrees, all the time. Of course there must be a percentage in favor of 
the bank somewhere, but you cannot see where it is if you watch the game 
all night. The lower classes of the Chinese are inveterate gamesters, and 
must all know that there is such a percentage, which must ruin the player 
in the long run; but, like gamblers of other nations, they keep at it as 
long as they have a cent, and return to it the moment they have made 
another raise of a dollar or two. We have been admitted as a special 
favor, and of course must 'patronize the house," so we select a Chinaman 
who speaks a little English, and ask him to act as an agent in the 
transaction. He is only too willing to accommodate us. A half-dollar is 
staked on "odd" and we lose; another on "even," and we lose again; then 
one on the exact number, and our agent turns to us and explains, with many 
shrugs, bows and apologies, that he regrets very much that we did not win 
that time, as, had we done so, we should have doubled our money as many 
times as there were pieces in the pile. We regret as much as he does that 
our luck did not run that way, and tell him so with as many bows, shrugs 
and apologies in return. "Well, hopee you 

Page 290

catchee him next time!" Not if we know ourself, oh ingenuous and 
unsophisticated son of the Occident! That game is played out, so far as we 
are concerned! We have seen all we can see, and learned all we care to 
learn here, so we will go on somewhere else in our search for useful 
knowledge. "Good night, John"--to the banker. "Good night, John; please 
you come again uddah time!" he replies, and we part company, with 
assurances of distinguished consideration all round, and emerge on the 
street again. 

Our policeman rejoins us, and we go on down to Pacific street, the 
roughest and least pacific of the streets on the Barbary Coast. The whole 
street, for half a dozen blocks, is literally swarming with the scum of 
creation. Every land under the sun has contributed toward making up the 
crowd of loafers, thieves, low gamblers, jay-hawkers, dirty, filthy, 
degraded, hopeless bummers, and the unsophisticated greenhorns from the 
mines, or from the Eastern States, who, drawn here by curiosity, or lured 
on by specious falsehoods told them by pretended friends met on the ocean 
or river steamers, are looked upon as the legitimate prey of all the rest. 
The number of prematurely-old young men, mere boys in years, but 
centenarians in vice and crime; sallow, wrinkled, pimpled, dirty, stoop-
shouldered, disgusting in language and action, who drift up and down the 
Coast as we stand looking on, astonishes you. They seem to make up the 
bulk of the passers on the sidewalks. You never see this class of fellows 
even in this locality by day; they seem to shun the light of the sun, and 
only crawl 

Page 291

forth at night to feast on unclean things, and fatten on rottenness and 
corruption. Some of them have parents in California, doubtless, but the 
great majority have left homes in some far-off land, where they are often 
spoken of with pride by confiding mothers, sisters and brothers, who know 
nothing of their actual status in society here--well for them that they do 
not. "I have a son in California. I have not heard from him in several 
years, but he was doing well when he wrote last," says a fond mother in 
the Atlantic States. Well for you, oh mother, that you cannot stand with 
us this evening, and see him floating with the tide, a hopeless wreck, 
along the slime-covered shores of the Barbary Coast! From the "deadfalls," 
as the low beer and dance cellars are designated, which line both sides of 
the street, and abound on all the streets in this vicinity, come echoes of 
drunken laughter, curses, ribaldry, and music from every conceivable 
instrument. Hand-organs, flutes, pianos, bagpipes, banjos, guitars, 
violins, brass instruments and accordeons mingle their notes and help to 
swell the discord. "Dixie" is being drummed out of a piano in one cellar; 
in the next they are singing "John Brown;" and in the next, "Clare's 
Dragoons," or "Wearing of the Green." Women dressed in flaunting colors 
stand at the doors of many of these "deadfalls," and you frequently notice 
some of them saluting an acquaintance, perhaps of an hour's standing, and 
urging him to "come back and take just one more drink." Ten to one the 
already half-drunken fool complies, and finds himself in the calaboose 
next 

Page 292

morning, with a broken head, utterly empty pockets, and a dim recollection 
of having been taken somewhere by some woman whom he cannot identify, and 
finding himself unexpectedly in the clutches of men be never saw before, 
who go through him like a policeman, taking from him watch, chain, and 
every other valuable, and pitch him headlong down a stairway; after which 
all is a blank in his memory. All these dens are open and in full blast, 
yet we see few persons going in or out who appear like customers, and they 
do not seem to be selling lager or whisky enough to pay for gaslight. Look 
in the papers tomorrow morning, and you will see items like this: 

ROBBED ON THE BARBARY COAST.--John Smith, a miner from Mud Springs, El 
Dorado County, came down on the Sacramento boat last evening, and put up 
at the What Cheer House. On his way to the hotel, he made the acquaintance 
of a man who claimed to know a friend of his who had worked with him at 
mining in 1858, on the south fork of the Yuba. The two started out in 
search of this mythical friend, and visited numerous deadfalls without 
finding him. They drank at each place they visited, however, and about one 
o'clock this morning Smith reached the calaboose in a half-stupified 
condition, and charged a girl known as "Pigeon-toed-Sal," whose 
headquarters are in a deadfall near the comer of Kearny and Pacific 
streets, and her male confederate, with robbing him of $800, her companion 
holding him down while she searched his pockets, and took the money from 
them. Officers Smith and Brown arrested Sal and her confederate, the 
"Billy Goat," and locked them up on the charge of grand larceny, but it is 
doubtful if the charge can be sustained, as the money was not recovered, 
and the friends of the accused will fee a lawyer with the money, and hire 
the witnesses for twenty-five per cent. to leave the State, or swear that 
Smith had agreed to marry the girl, and gave her the money 

Page 293

as a free present, telling her to purchase the necessary outfit for the 
wedding with it. It is, in all probability, the old story of the fool and 
his money. 

A few such items will enlighten you on the question of how the proprietors 
of so many of these well-named "deadfalls" manage to make a living. 

Three men come up the street as we stand on the sidewalk looking and 
listening, and two of them eye our friend the policeman uneasily as they 
pass. These two are unmistakably of the Algerine pirate class, and the 
third evidently a middle-aged greenhorn from the mining country. The 
officer comprehends the situation at a glance, and stepping forward, says 
emphatically, "Look here, Jack; I told you once before to get out of the 
jayhawking business, and not let me catch you on the Coast again. And you, 
Cockeye; when did you come back from over the Bay? I'll bag you both, as 
sure as I'm a living man, if I catch either of you on my beat again. You 
can go this time, but cuss me if it ain't your last chance. Toddle, blast 
you, and don't let me see you again!" The young fellows slink away without 
a word, like renegade curs caught in the act of killing sheep, and the 
officer addresses himself to their intended victim. "Look here, old 
fellow; those fellows picked you up at the wharf, or around the What 
Cheer, and pretended they used to know you at home. They are two State 
Prison thieves, and would have robbed you before daylight, sure. Now, you 
go back to your hotel, put your money in the safe, and go to bed, or I'll 
lock you up for a drunk; do you hear?" The 

Page 294

countryman stares a moment with blank astonishment, and then, with many 
thanks, tells the officer just what the latter had already told him, and 
leaves the Barbary Coast in all haste. 

"Do you want to see what they arc doing in these places?" says the 
officer. "Come in here with me." We enter what appears to be an ordinary 
"corner grocery," with piles of potatoes, onions, soap, candIes, and other 
ordinary goods, in boxes and bags, stacked up in front. Everything looks 
quiet and respectable, but the German or French proprietor of the place 
glances anxiously at our escort, who pushes open a green Venetian blind, 
which serves as a door at what appears to be the back of the room, and 
motions for us to enter. Here, in an inner room, for which the grocery in 
the front is but a screen in reality, we find some twenty rascally-looking 
negroes from Panama, the West Indies, Peru and Guiana, sitting round dirty 
tables, playing draw-poker and other swindling games, with greasy, fairly 
stinking cards, for money which we know they never honestly earned. 
"Hulloa, that is you, is it? You are a healthy crowd, you are! One, two, 
three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine 'old cons.' One, two, three, 
four, five, six, seven chain-gang customers; and six that ought to be 
hanged, and will be, sooner or later." Having thus classified the 
occupants of the place, for our and their benefit, the officer leads us 
out once more on the street. 

We next enter a similarly appearing establishment, in which there are a 
billiard-table in the back room, 

Page 295

and a promiscuous crowd of Chileos, Peruvians, and other Spanish-American 
cut-throats, playing "pool," with any amount of small change changing 
hands at every game. "That sharp-nosed fellow with the billiard-cue in his 
hand murdered a peddler at New Almaden a few years since, but his woman 
swore him clear. That hook-nosed villain smoking there in the comer, is a 
horse-thief from San Jos; he has been over the Bay (i.e., in State Prison, 
or San Quentin, across the Bay from San Francisco) three times, and will 
go again soon, I reckon. That little fellow there with the scar on his 
face is a monte dealer; and that one with one eye is a burglar." And so 
our official friend runs on through the list, and we retire. 

We next enter a low room on the ground floor of a rickety, old frame-
building, which has stood here since 1849, and passing the screen which 
shuts off the view from the street, find a bar stocked with every species 
of liquid poison, at "5 cents a glass." A rough-looking Irishman is behind 
the bar; two miserable, bloated, loathsome-looking, drunken white females 
are quarrelling with each other in front; on the settee ranged along the 
wall sits a third wreck of female humanity, swearing like a pirate, and 
cursing "the perlice" at every breath; while a man with a face like a 
diseased beePs liver, who once represented a Western State in Congress, is 
patting her on the back caressingly, and endeavoring vainly to quiet her, 
lest the police outside should hear her and make a raid on the 
establishment. In one corner, a party of Kanaka 

Page 296

sailors, from a Honolulu whaling-vessel, are holding a drunken pow-wow; 
but as we cannot understand a word of their language, we pass them with a 
glance. At the sight of our companion, the policeman, the woman on the 
sofa breaks out, like a maniac, in fresh curses and vituperation, and 
stepping to the door he gives a long, sharp whistle. Two answering 
whistles are heard, and in a few seconds two more policemen arrive, and 
start with the furious woman between them for the calaboose. 

Guided by the music of violins, guitars and a piano, and the tramping of 
many feet, we descend a narrow staIrway, and find ourselves in one of the 
most notorious dance-cellars of San Francisco. There is a low bar at one 
side of the room, near the entrance, and at the farther end a raised 
platform for the musicians. About forty young women and girls, ranging 
down to ten or twelve years of age, dressed in gaudy, flaunting costumes, 
and with eyes lighted up with the baleful glare of dissipation, are on the 
floor, dancing with as many men, of all ages: rowdies, loafers, pimps, 
thieves, and their greenhorn victims; while perhaps fifty men of the same 
stamp stand looking on and applauding the performers. The room is blue 
with tobacco-smoke, and reeking with the fumes of the vilest of whisky. 
Half a dozen men, or overgrown boys, are sitting or lying on the floor in 
various stages of inebriety, but they are unnoticed by the other occupants 
of the place. Every time a man takes a partner for the dance he pays fifty 
cents, half of which goes to the establishment and half to the girl, and 
at 

Page 297

the close of each dance he generally takes her to the bar and treats her. 
We notice with thankfulness that the females appear to be almost all of 
foreign birth, the exceptions being Spanish-Americans, with occasionally 
an Indian girl, who has been raised as a servant in some family in San 
Francisco, but, Indian-like, prefers a life of idleness, vice and 
degradation to one of comfort and honest labor. This place has been the 
scene of many a savage affray and brutal murder; and often have we seen 
the sawdust on its floor red with the blood of some victim of the knife or 
bullet. It is long past midnight, but the drunken orgies go on unchecked, 
and will do so for hours yet, if no bloody row occur to end them 
prematurely. 

Do you want to see where these people lodge? Come along with me," says our 
official friend. We notice many large lamps with "Lodgings 25, 50 and 75 
cents per night," painted thereon, are hanging at the doors of dirty, 
dilapidated-looking buildings. We enter one of these places without 
ceremony. A wrinkled old hag sits in an outer band-box of an office, to 
receive the pay in advance from the customers of the establishment. "Who 
have you got in here to-night," demands the man of the star. "Well, we 
ain't began to fill up much yet; but there's Tom Reynolds, an' Constable 
Bob, an' Bluey, an' Callahan, and a few others. I hope you don't want any 
on 'em now, do ye?" replies the hag. Relieved by the assurance that the 
visit is only one of curiosity; not on behalf of the law, the old 
creature, with a chuckle of satisfaction, leads the way with the lamp, and 
we 

Page 298

go through the premises. The rooms where the lodgers at 25 cents a night 
are stowed away are fitted with bunks, like the forecastle of a vessel, 
and each lodger has a narrow straw mattress, a pair of blankets--perhaps 
dirty sheets as well--and a pulu pillow. The dozen bunking thus in one 
room have not money or valuables enough, all put together, to pay any one 
of the number for the trouble of going through the pockets of the rest, 
and they can rest in peace until evening comes again, when they emerge on 
the streets once more, to resume their pursuit of plunder. When one of 
these fellows makes a raise by "rolling a drunk" (i.e., taking the 
valuables from the pockets of a drunken man on the sidewalk), "cracking a 
crib," or "jayhawking a Webfoot" (robbing a green Oregonian), he will take 
a single bed at 37 1/2 cents in the next room, which is a little better 
furnished, and has two or three bedsteads in place of the bunks; and, 
should his luck be extraordinarily good, and a fat pigeon. fall in his way 
and get plucked, he will probably go one degree further, and invest 50 
cents in a room with one double-bed, and invite one of the frail females 
from the dance-cellar near at hand, or some one of the numerous deadfalls 
in the vicinity, to share his wealth with him. But for 50 cents a night a 
man could get a good bed at a second or third class lodging-house in a 
decent locality. Yes, but you forget that the patrons of such 
establishments as we are now in are all known to the police, and could not 
get admitted anywhere else, except in disguise, and then only for a short 
time, if they had any amount of 

Page 299

money to pay their way with. That is why they must sleep here or on the 
street. 

Bidding the old hag good morning, we next visIt a huge three or four story 
building, with a large area in the centre, and galleries all around the 
inside, cut up into almost innumerable little rooms, which are let, 
furnished, at so much per month, to the "pretty beer-slingers" and their 
male companions. Every girl attending in the beer-cellars has a male 
friend--sometimes l,er husband, but not often--who fights her battles, 
robs her of her earnings, and not unfrequently plunders, by collusion with 
her, the inebriated greenhorns whom she entices into her den after the 
dead-fall has closed for the night. 

Bang! bang! bang! What was that? We hear the sharp whistle of a policeman 
and several answering whistles, and run out to the street to see what is 
going on. The story is soon told. An officer has met three well-known 
thieves skulking through an alley with something in bags on their backs. 
On general principles, he orders them to halt, and is answered with a 
staggering blow with a slungshot by one of them. To draw his revolver and 
let fly at each in succession is the work of an instant. One of the 
desperadoes is shot through the heart and falls dead in his tracks; one is 
lying on the ground with his right thigh-bone shivered by the bullet, so 
that it will require amputation; and the third, barely hit in the side, 
has thrown up his hands, and stands waiting for the irons to be put on 
him. The police clear the field of action in a few minutes, and on 
searching the bags find 

Page 300

a quantity of valuable goods just taken from a grocery store on Pacific 
street, which the defeated party had broken open and plundered. (This 
occurred just as related quite recently; the two survivors are now in the 
State Prison--one of them with a wooden leg-and the officer is still on 
the police force.) 

The excitement being over, the officer conducts us through a narrow alley 
swarming with Chinese prostitutes, and reeking with a thousand separate 
stinks, each more abominable than the other, to see what he designates as 
a "Chinese Hoo-doo House." In a back room, hidden entirely from the gaze 
of passers in the alley, we find a crowd of the lowest class of Chinese, 
who are enjoying themselves in various ways. There is an altar at one end 
of the room, with a Joss, in gorgeous vermilion and blue, sitting erect at 
the back. His face bears the same expression of conscious power, rest, and 
complete self-satisfaction which is seen on that of his more aristocratic 
brother in the Buddhist temples on Dupont and Pine streets, and he holds 
the fingers of his uplifted hand in the same mysteriously significant 
position. But instead of rich satin garments and costly hangings of 
crimson silk and wonderful gilt filagree work, he is clad in tawdry cotton-
stuffs and surrounded by hangings of trifling value. The altar-ornaments 
are porcelain instead of bronze metal, and the meat-offerings before him 
are not such as would tempt the appetite of a well-regulated and healthy 
immortal, while the incense which is burning under his nose is redolent of 
tobacco and garlic rather than of sandal-wood and the costly 

Page 301

perfumes lavished on the altars of the high-class temples. In an alcove on 
one side of the room is a raised couch, spread with matting, and provided 
with braided split-cane pillows, for the accommodation of the opium 
smokers, two of whom are now stretched out at full length thereon, gazing 
into vacancy with fixed, staring eyes, unconscious of all that is passing 
around them, and wrapped in the wild hallucinations called into existence 
by the fumes of the deadly drug, which is sooner or later to utterly 
prostrate them, bodily and mentally, and send them, after awful 
sufferings, to fill untimely graves. Did not Christian England wage a 
savage war upon Heathen China, that the opium trade should not be broken 
up? Why then talk of abolishing it, now that it has become the curse which 
is destroying the whole Mongolian race? We are not missionaries, and did 
not come here to preach. Round a table, a party of coolies are engaged in 
gambling, for "copper cash," with dominoes; playing the game very rapidly, 
and with consummate skill, though in a different manner from that known by 
the name with us. On another table we see a strange collection of 
nondescript effigies, made of highly-colored paper and slips of pliant 
cane. One resembles in outline a goat, but has the head of an alligator, 
and the figure astride its back is that of a man with a cock's head on his 
shoulders. The next figure has the body of a lion, a horse's head, and a 
fish's tail, and is ridden by a man with the head of an ox, and a sword in 
his hand, A Chinaman, who appears to understand English, volunteers to 
explain these mysteries to us. We 

Page 302

question him, and he answers "yes" and "no" alternately to everything we 
ask him. "Why," says one of our party, "this must be Chief Crowley?" "Yes, 
Chief Clowly!" replies our celestial cicerone. "And this must be Capt. 
Lees?" "No Capt. Lees all same," responds John. "Why, blame me if he is 
not repeating every word after me like a parrot; he don't understand a 
word of what we are saying." Further questioning establishes the fact that 
such is the case, and despairing of gaining any useful knowledge under 
such circumstances, we give a quarter to the least repulsive-looking 
female in the band who are making night hideous with their unearthly 
music, and depart in disgust. 

One more sight before we leave the neighborhood. The officer leads us a 
few doors farther down the alley, and enters a low door into a room, dimly 
lighted by a China nut-oil lamp. Stretched on the floor of this damp, foul-
smelling den, are four female figures. These miserable wretches are the 
victims of the most fearful and loathsome disease with which the vengeance 
of God has cursed sinful humanity, and having been pronounced incurable by 
the Chinese doctors, and refused admission, under our laws, to the alms 
house and public hospital, are here dying, by inches, a slow, lingering, 
horrible death. One of them, at our request, lifts from her face a cloth 
which hid it, and in place of mouth, lips, cheeks and nose, we see a 
horrible cavity, formed by the eating away of the flesh until the bare 
bones are exposed, as in the grinning effigy of a death's head on some 
ancient tower. 

Page 303

With a sensation, beside which seasickness is delightful, we rush from the 
room and regain the alley, determined to see no more. 

One more sensation is yet in store for us. As we emerge on Jackson street 
once more, we are met by an officer, who tells us that another of those 
horrible, mysterious murders of fallen women, which have horrified the 
community over and over again, and baffled and set at defiance the 
detective powers of the city officials, has been perpetrated in Stout's 
Alley. He leads up into the alley, and along it to within a few yards of 
Washington street, and an officer at the door, who is keeping back the 
curious crowd.of men and women which was gathered on hearing the news, 
admits us to the house where the tragedy has been enacted. There are two 
rooms on the main floor, which had been occupied by the French woman, now 
dead. In the front one is a bed luxuriously furnished, a bureau, wardrobe, 
table, etc., and in the back room a wash-stand, stove, and some cooking 
utensils and crockery. Her male friend slept up stairs, and knew nothing 
of the tragedy going on below. The police are busily at work searching for 
clues, to lead to the detection of the murderer, but all in vain. On the 
floor in the front room, the body of the miserable victim is lying in a 
pool of blood, the skull fractured by a blow with a chair, which lies 
shivered by her side, and the throat cut from ear to ear with a dull 
knife, taken from the other room by the murderer. The bed is drenched with 
blood, and a pillow, thrown against the wall at the other side of the 
room, is saturated 

Page 304

with it. It is evident that the murderer arose from her side while she 
slept, dealt her a stunning blow with the chair, then ran into the back 
room and got the knife. On returning, he found her standing up on the 
floor, she having staggered to her feet and endeavored to make her way to 
the door, probably with some dim, undefined, instinctive impulse, to call 
for assistance. He has then got her down upon the floor, stifled her voice 
with the pillow, and finished his work with the knife. He has then risen, 
searched her trunk and bureau-drawers for money and valuables, felt his 
way into the back room, and there washed his hands and face, wiping the 
bloody water off them upon the towel, dressed himself, and then coolly 
departed. This much can be inferred by the marks of blood on the wall, of 
bloody hands upon the clothing in the trunk and bureau, on the lace 
curtains and on the middle door, but all else is idle conjecture, and the 
murderer carries the secret with him to the grave, despite the efforts of 
a really efficient and energetic police. Out in the street once more. The 
city is silent, and the streets deserted at last; we have seen enough for 
one night; enough for a life-time of this sort of thing, you say. Well, we 
will not quarrel with you on a matter of taste. And so, just as the first 
faint light of the grey dawn begins to flush the eastern horizon beyond 
the Contra Costa hills, we break up our little party, and wend our way to 
our several homes. Thus ends our long night's "Cruise on the Barbary 
Coast."