rs. To these were added the names of two who are worth over two
millions. These men will not return to China, because the property tax
is so high there. Like many of our own citizens, these Chinese find
their great satisfaction in accumulating wealth, and so go on adding
daily to their possessions. We have said that there are thirty thousand
Chinese in this district, but we were officially informed that forty
thousand would be much nearer the true aggregate.

The impression prevails that the open immigration of this race has
ceased at San Francisco, but the arrival of several hundreds by steamer
the day before we visited their miserable quarter of the town, was duly
announced in the papers. These came by the way of Japan. A sickening
odor adheres to one's clothing for hours after returning from the
Asiatic section of San Francisco,--a flavor of musk, opium, stale
tobacco, and sandal-wood, the latter being freely burned as an incense
before the Chinese gods; for amid all his filth and vileness, John does
not forget scrupulously to fulfil the conventional requirements of his
idolatrous faith.

After a few days devoted to renewing acquaintance with the familiar
localities of the city, passage was taken on board the Union Steamship
Company's mail-packet "Zealandia" bound for Australia. Once before the
Golden Gate, as the entrance into the harbor of San Francisco is called,
had been passed by the author when bound upon a twenty days' sea-voyage.
Japan then formed the objective point, the route being a northerly one;
but the "Zealandia" was bound for the tropics and the far southern
sea,--that vast region forming the largest expanse of ocean in the world
and containing fully one half of its water surface. The Pacific measures
nine thousand miles from north to south, and is ten thousand miles broad
between Quinto, South America, and the Moluccas, or Spice Islands; while
at the extreme north, where Behring Strait divides the continents of
Asia and America, it is but about forty miles in width, and in clear
weather one can distinctly see the shore of Asia from that of our own
continent.

The harbor of San Francisco presented much the same busy scene which so
impressed us five years before; it was full of commercial activity and
the occupations incident to various forms of maritime life. The noise of
steam-whistles from the ferry-boats, the hoarse signals from ocean-going
vessels starting on long voyages, and the boatswain's sh