“This is a regular den of thieves. Not a single one of these fellows works at any honest trade for a living. They are the bummers and outcasts of Chinadom,” said the officer. “Here, Sam Yap, you dirty rascal, have you robbed anybody’s hen-roost yet to-night?—I suppose not, though; they don’t generally get out at that kind of business until along just before morning, when the streets are almost deserted, and they can move about without much danger of being overhauled and searched. All these fellows are on it, but this one is the worst in the deck. I have had him up at least twenty times, and the next time I am going to vag him. Yes, I am, you bloody old chicken murderer!” said he, holding the candle up to his face that we might all get a good look at him. It must be admitted that it was not a prepossessing face.
He then went to one of the openings in the wall, and pulling back the screen of old bagging, showed us a party of ten or a dozen such fellows gathered around a low table of rough boards, playing dominoes for “copper cash,” as the brass coin of China, the value of which is one tenth of a cent of our money, is commonly designated. They stopped a moment, and looked up suspiciously at us, and then at a sign from the officer, whom they appeared to recognize, went on with the game. They played it rapidly, with all sorts of exclamations and facial contortions for accompaniments. The dominoes are the same as ours, but they play the game quite differently. I don’t know exactly how it is done, but they seemed to win and lose rapidly. In the centre of the court there was a small brick building, which seemed to be the receptacle of all the filth from the neighborhood. It did not seem to have any connection with the street sewer, or if it had any, it was choked up, for the planking around was literally floating in the foul liquid from it, which oozed up between the cracks at every step as we walked over it, giving off a stench, which, in any other city of Christendom would breed a pestilence in twenty-four hours.
IN A CHINESE HOUSE.
Behind this, near the opposite wall, we stumbled upon a bundle of filthy rags, which turned partially over as the foot of our guide came in contact with it. The officer held down his candle, and on examination we found that within the rags there was a human being, a man in the last stage of consumption, induced, no doubt, by opium smoking. He could not or would not answer our questions, and his glazed vacant eyes showed that death was close at hand to claim him. He was lying on the wet, dirty boards, without even a blanket under him, and had undoubtedly been placed there to die, having no friends, and belonging to neither of the “Six Companies” with which all prosperous or even partially respectable Chinese in California are connected. The officer turned his head over, and called our attention to the fact that his queue had been cut off, which showed that he had been convicted of theft at some time, and was thenceforward debarred from respectable Chinese society, doomed to associate only with the pariahs of his race.
We had seen enough, more than enough, in fact, of this neighborhood, and our guide led us out to the street by the way we came.
The Shrimp said that there was another place just above, on the same street, which he wanted us to visit before we went into a first-class opium house. We went with him to a large four-story building, which appeared to be divided into apartments of the smallest dimensions, in which the Chinese swarmed like bees in a hive. He said that there were over six hundred persons, all of the poorer class, sleeping in this single building every night. In front of the building was a narrow opening in the sidewalk, with a stairway just sufficiently wide to allow one person at a time to descend into the subterranean regions below. Down this he dived like a rat into his hole, calling out to us to follow and look sharp for our heads. The caution was not unnecessary, as I soon found to my cost. At the bottom of the stairs he lighted his candle again, and passing through a low opening in the wall, showed us the way under the street.
A HORRIBLE DEN.
Here, congregated in total darkness, were some twenty of the poorest class of Chinese stowed away for the night. Some were lying on piles of old rags, evidently picked up by the chiffonniers in their daily rounds, and put aside for this purpose, as having no commercial value, and of no use otherwise. Some were lying on rude benches knocked together from pieces of dry goods boxes, and one, who evidently held a higher position than his fellows, probably a man who had at some time drawn a twenty dollar prize in a lottery, or had a run of luck at the game of “Tan,” was stowed away in a bunk in a kind of alcove formed by an arch in the wall, before which was hanging an old tattered chintz curtain. He had an old blanket over him, and was doubtless looked upon with envy and hatred as a “bloated aristocrat” by his less fortunate fellow-citizens. We could hear the ceaseless tramp of the crowd on the sidewalk, and from time to time the rattling of the carriage wheels over the rough cobbles above our heads.
The atmosphere was that of a charnel-house, thick with noisome exhalations from the foul and rotting rags, and the fouler persons, of the denizens of this worse than Black Hole of Calcutta. Water dripped from the roof constantly, and the walls were covered with mould and great patches of thick, oozy slime. What a place for a human being to sleep in and die in! In the five minutes we were there our clothes became clammy from the foul moisture. What must be the condition, physical and mental, of that poor wretch stretched in the rags in yonder muddy corner?
AMONG THE OPIUM SMOKERS.