Round the World | Page 7

in broken English shouted, "Crazee
manee; he makee firee, firee!" I jumped round and saw a Chinaman.
Such an expression--Shakespeare alone has described it--
"And with a look so piteous in purport, As if he had been loosed out of
hell To speak of horrors."
Fire! that epitome of all that is appalling at sea, the danger each one
instinctively dreads, but no one mentions. One ran one way and one
another. The doctor (a real canny Scot, who sings "My Nannie's awa'"
like Wilson) was over the rail and down the hold in a moment. I ran to
Captain Meyer's room on the upper deck and roused him. He too was
down and in the hold like a flash--brave fellows that they are, these
"true British sailors." I waited the result, knowing that if fire had really
started, a general stampede of Chinamen would soon come from the
hatches; but all was still. How long those few moments seemed! In a
short time the captain returned, looking, in his night-clothes, like a
ghost. One of the crazy men had broken loose from his chains, and the
Chinamen were panic-stricken. The watchman wanted the most
startling alarm, and found it, undoubtedly, in that word fire. It is all
over; but when he next has to sound an alarm let him "take any form
but that."
We have a reverend missionary and wife, with two young lady
missionaries in embryo, who are on their way to begin their labors
among the Chinese. They are busily engaged learning the language.
Poor girls! what a life they have before them! But apart from all
question of its true usefulness, they have the grand thought to sustain
them, and ennoble their lives, that they go at the call of what seems to
them their duty. We watch the Chinese eating and laugh at their
chopsticks, but we forget that one reason why John Chinaman prides
himself upon being at the pinnacle of civilization is that he uses these
very chopsticks. (None of the races of Asia, and until recently he knew
no other, have ever got beyond chopsticks, the use of which was first
taught China, while most of them don't even have them yet.) Let us not
forget that our ancestors were using their fingers--barbarians that they

were--when the Chinese had risen, centuries before, to the refinement
of these sticks, for the fork is only about three hundred years old.
Shakespeare probably, Spenser certainly, had only a knife at his girdle
to carve the meat he ate, the fingers being important auxiliaries. We
must be modest upon this chopstick question. It costs the ship eleven
cents (5-1/2 d.) per day a head to feed these people, and this pays for a
wholesome diet in great abundance, much beyond what they are
accustomed to.
While on the subject of the Chinaman I may note that of course we did
not get through California without hearing the Chinese problem
warmly discussed. It is the burning question just now upon the Pacific
coast, but it seems to me our Californians' fears are, as Colonel Diehl
would put it, "slightly previous." There are only about 130,000 Chinese
in America, and great numbers are returning as the result of hard times,
and I fear harder treatment. There is no indication that we are to be
overrun by them, and until they change their religious ideas and come
to California to marry, settle, die, and be buried there, it is preposterous
to believe there is any thing in the agitation against them beyond the
usual prejudice of the ignorant races next to them in the social scale.
I met the owner of a quicksilver mine, whose remarks shed a flood of
light upon the matter. The mine yields a lean ore, and did not pay when
worked by white labor costing $2 to $2.50 per day. He contracted with
a Chinaman to furnish 170 men at one-half these rates. They work well,
doing as much per man as the white man can do in this climate. He has
no trouble with them--no fights, no sprees, no strikes. The difference in
the cost enables him to work at a profit a mine which otherwise would
be idle; and to such as talk against Chinese labor in the neighborhood,
he replies, "Very well, drive it off if you please, but the mine stops if
you do." The benefit to the district of having a mine actively at work
has so far insured protection. This is the whole story. Our free
American citizen from Tipperary and the restless rowdy of home
growth find a rival beating them in the race, and instead of taking the
lesson to heart and practising the virtues which cause the Chinaman to
excel, they mount the rostrum and