a labor contract, there is always a stipulation that
his body shall be taken back to China if he dies; if the government sells
a gang of Coolies to a foreigner for the usual five-year term, it is
specified in the contract that their bodies shall be restored to China in
case of death. On the Pacific coast the Chinamen all belong to one or
another of several great companies or organizations, and these companies
keep track of their members, register their names, and ship their bodies
home when they die. The See Yup Company is held to be the largest of
these. The Ning Yeong Company is next, and numbers eighteen thousand
members on the coast. Its headquarters are at San Francisco, where it
has a costly temple, several great officers (one of whom keeps regal
state in seclusion and cannot be approached by common humanity), and a
numerous priesthood. In it I was shown a register of its members, with
the dead and the date of their shipment to China duly marked. Every ship
that sails from San Francisco carries away a heavy freight of Chinese
corpses--or did, at least, until the legislature, with an ingenious
refinement of Christian cruelty, forbade the shipments, as a neat
underhanded way of deterring Chinese immigration. The bill was offered,
whether it passed or not. It is my impression that it passed. There was
another bill--it became a law--compelling every incoming Chinaman to be
vaccinated on the wharf and pay a duly appointed quack (no decent doctor
would defile himself with such legalized robbery) ten dollars for it.
As few importers of Chinese would want to go to an expense like that, the
law-makers thought this would be another heavy blow to Chinese
immigration.

What the Chinese quarter of Virginia was like--or, indeed, what the
Chinese quarter of any Pacific coast town was and is like--may be
gathered from this item which I printed in the Enterprise while reporting
for that paper:

CHINATOWN.--Accompanied by a fellow reporter, we made a trip through
our Chinese quarter the other night. The Chinese have built their
portion of the city to suit themselves; and as they keep neither
carriages nor wagons, their streets are not wide enough, as a
general thing, to admit of the passage of vehicles. At ten o'clock
at night the Chinaman may be seen in all his glory. In every little
cooped-up, dingy cavern of a hut, faint with the odor of burning
Josh-lights and with n