ent Caucasian. But
John, according to his own testimony, never owned a rich claim. Ask
him how much it yielded per day, and he would tell you, "sometimes
four, sometimes six bittee" (four or six shillings). He had many
inducements for prevarication. Nearly every white man's hand was
against him. If he found a bit of rich ground, "jumpers" were ready to
drive him from it: Mexicans waylaid him and robbed him of his dust. In
remote localities he enclosed his camp by strong stockades: even these
were sometimes forced and carried at night by bands of desperadoes.
Lastly came the foreign miner's tax-collector, with his demand of four
dollars monthly per man for the privilege of digging gold. There
were hundreds and thousands of other foreign laborers in the
mines--English, German, French, Italian and Portuguese--but they paid
little or none of this tax, for they might soon be entitled to a vote,
and the tax-collector was appointed by the sheriff of the county, and
the sheriff, like other officials, craved a re-election. But John was
never to be a voter, and so he shouldered the whole of this load, and
when he could not pay, the official beat him and took away his tools.
John often fought this persecutor by strategy. In localities where no
white men would betray him he signalized his coming from afar. From
the crags of Red Mountain on the Tuolumne River I have often seen the
white flag waved as the dreaded collector came down the steep trail
to collect his monthly dues. That signal or a puff of smoke told the
Chinese for miles along the river-valley to conceal themselves from
the "license-man." Rockers, picks and shovels were hastily thrust into
clumps of chapparal, and their owners clambered up the hillsides
into artificial caves or leafy coverts. Out of companies of fifty
the collector finds but twenty men at work. These pay their tax, the
official rides on down the river, the hidden thirty Mongolians emerge
from cover; and more than once has a keen collector "doubled on them"
by coming back unexpectedly and detecting the entire gang on their
claim.

John has been invaluable to the California demagogue, furnishing
for him a sop of hatred and prejudice to throw before "enlightened
constituencies." It needs but to mention the "filthy Chinaman" to
provoke an angry roar from the mass-meeting. Yet the Chinaman is
not entirely filthy. He washes his entire person every day when
practicable; he loves clean clothes; his kitchen-uten