with a handful of sliced bamboos and
chairs swinging from the poles over their shoulders, are becoming quite
numerous; chair mending and reseating must be profitable. These little
rivulets, growing larger and more varied day by day, all spring from
that great fountain of Asiatic vitality--the Chinese Quarter. This
surface-skimming beguiles for an hour or two; but the stranger who
strolls through the streets of Chinatown, and retires dazed with the
thousand eccentricities of an unfamiliar people, knows little of the
mysterious life that surrounds him.

Let us descend. We are piloted by a special policeman, one who is well
acquainted with the geography of the quarter. Provided with tapers, we
plunge into one of the several dark recesses at hand. Back of the highly
respectable brick buildings in Sacramento Street--the dwellings and
business places of the first-class Chinese merchants--there are pits and
deadfalls innumerable, and over all is the blackness of darkness; for
these human moles can work in the earth faster than the shade of the
murdered Dane. Here, from the noisome vats three stories underground to
the hanging gardens of the fish-dryers on the roofs, there is neither
nook nor corner but is populous with Mongolians of the lowest caste. The
better class have their reserved quarters; with them there is at least
room to stretch one's legs without barking the shins of one's neighbor;
but from this comparative comfort to the condensed discomfort of the
impoverished coolie, how sudden and great the change!

Between brick walls we thread our way, and begin descending into the
abysmal darkness; the tapers, without which it were impossible to
proceed with safety, burn feebly in the double night of the
subterranean tenements. Most of the habitable quarters under the ground
are like so many pigeon-houses indiscriminately heaped together. If
there were only sunshine enough to drink up the slime that glosses every
plank, and fresh air enough to sweeten the mildewed kennels, this highly
eccentric style of architecture might charm for a time, by reason of its
novelty; there is, moreover, a suspicion of the picturesque lurking
about the place--but, heaven save us, how it smells!

[Illustration: "Rag Alley" in Old Chinatown]

We pass from one black hole to another. In the first there is a kind of
bin for ashes and coals, and there are pots and grills lying about--it
is the kitchen. A heap of fire kindling wood in one corner,