William Hepworth Dixon, White Conquest: Volume 2

[254] shore a scanty supply of food. They take in shoals of smelts, and pick up thousands of shell-fish. Whaling is too hard a business, but they sometimes get a haul of cod. They are fond of cuttlefish. In summer-time, as Ah Tim, one of the settlers, tells me, they live very well. The wood supplies them in fuel, the bay never fails them in fish. The little clearings near their tenements yield them peppers, cabbages, and herbs. By drying a part of their summer hauls they provide for the winter, when the waters are too rough for them to brave. The sale of some part of their dry stock gives them money enough to buy a little tea, joss-wood, and opium. For the rest a Chinaman can dream. “ Mee goot, opium pipe,” says Ah Tim; “ me smoke, me dine all-ee-same Melican mans.” A pinch of opium makes Ah Tim a king.

Ah Tim takes us into several tenements. The sheds are pretty much alike; all neat and tiny; more like dolls' houses than the residences of human beings. Most of them have scraps of red paper pasted on the walls, announcements of lotteries, of performances in the theatres, and of services in the great joss-house of San Francisco. Every Mongol