“Which I wish to remark,
And my language is plain,
That for ways that are dark
And for tricks that are vain,
The heathen Chinee is peculiar,
Which the same I would rise to explain.”
—Bret Harte.
Certain learned archaeologists maintain that there are marked racial similarities between the American Indians and the Chinese—physical characteristics dating from unknown centuries, when the widely sundered continents were probably one.
However that may be, in the days of gold in California the greatest animosity existed between the Indians and the Chinamen. The feeling began, presumably, through intermarriage and flourished like the celebrated milkweed vine of the foothills, which has been known to grow—I quote a '49er, now dead, which is perhaps taking an advantage—12 inches in a day.
The tale is told of a Chinaman crossing a suspension footbridge, high over a winter torrent, from one part of a mining camp to another. An Indian ran to meet him. John Chinaman started back as quickly as he could on the swaying bridge. The faster Indian caught him, and, though miners on both shores sought to save the unfortunate “Chink” by a rain of bullets, it was too long range, and the Indian threw him to certain death in the river.
But the Indians did not always win, and this, then, is the tale of an encounter between Hop Sing and Digger Dan.
“In a game which held accountin', On an old Sierra mountain—”
“Whassa malla, to-o much nail-o ketchem clo'e (clothes)?” snorted Hop Sing, coming around to the side verandah with two pins in his hand, to where Miss Jo Halstead was embroidering an antimacassar in bright worsteds.
“Oh, Sing, did you hurt your hand?” she cried.
“'Nother boy heap mad.”