repositories of the dead in the Roman Catacombs. Two
hundred and twenty-five persons were lodged in this dark, mysterious
labyrinth. In another house there were five hundred and fifty people
lodged in seventy-five rooms. Possibly the owners of tenement houses
in our large cities, who crowd men and women into a narrow space
and through unpitying agents reap a rich harvest regardless of the
sufferings of their fellow-beings, have been taking lessons from the
landlords of Chinatown. I said to myself, as I went to and fro through
these narrow passages, dimly lighted with a lamp, and the lights were
few and far between, if a fire should break out, at midnight, when all
are wrapt in slumber, what a holocaust would be here! And whose would
the sin and the shame be? There are good and ample fire-appliances for
the protection of the city, but the poor Chinamen hemmed in, as in a
dark prison-house, would surely be suffocated by smoke or be consumed
in the flames. When the old theatre was burned down, twenty-five men,
and probably more, perished, although there were means of escape from
this building. I was told that the wood from which the largest hotel
in Chinatown, its Palace hotel so to speak, was constructed in the
early days, was brought around Cape Horn, and cost $350 per thousand
feet. This was before saw-mills were erected in the forests among the
foothills and on the slopes of the Sierras. The kitchen of the big
boarding house was a novelty. It was nothing in any respect like the
well-appointed kitchens of our hotels with their great ranges and open
fire-places where meats may be roasted slowly on the turnspit. On one
side of the kitchen there was a kind of stone-parapet about two feet
and a half high, and on the top of this there were eight fire-places.
As the Chinamen cook their own food there might be as many as eight
men here at one time. I asked the guide if they ever quarreled. His
answer was significant. "No! and it would be difficult to bring eight
men of any other nationality together in such close proximity without
differences arising and contentions taking place; but the Chinamen
never trouble each other." There was only one man cooking at such a
late hour as that in which we visited the kitchen, about half-past ten
o'clock at night. He used charcoal, and as the coals were fanned the
fire looked like that of a forge in a blacksmith's shop.

On our way to the Chinese Restaurant we stepped into a goldsmith's
sh