32 



NATURAL SCIENCE 



[July 



The village itself looks as though it has been imported from China 

 in its present condition, a huddled little town of unpainted shanties 

 sprinkled closely along a crowded street, with a few shops, a joss- 

 house, and a sky-line of picturesque scaffolding for fish-drying. 

 There will be a crowd of mushroom-hatted fishermen, a din of 

 chaffering, a mixture of nets, trawl lines and baskets, distinctly 

 unpleasant odours, placards of crimson and tinsel spattered with 

 Chinese characters. The people are Cantonese, many of whom have 

 been living here for two generations. They are classed as a 

 peculiar poor grade of Chinaman, and are, I am told, looked upon 

 at home as mere barbarians, if for no better reasons, that they have 

 lived in China only two or three centuries, and are unable to trace 

 their descent for more than seven generations. To the stranger, how- 

 ever, they certainly appear very industrious, honest (except in bargain- 

 ing), kindly and painstaking. They are excellent fishermen, and in 



Fig. 3. — The Chinese Fishing Village at Monterey. A corner of the beach. 



several instances very intelligent collectors. Their little fleet of 

 boats is often out before sunrise ; between seven and ten they have 

 become scattered along the coast, and their trawl lines are put out, 

 often six or more (each about five-eighths of a mile long) to a boat ; 

 about noon-time they return, their skiffs sometimes gunwale-deep 

 with fish-rock cod, black bass, flounders, mackerel, with an occa- 

 sional wolf-fish, 1 their little latteen sails making the picture a still 

 more foreign one. In a few moments after landing, the fish are 

 carried off in shoulder baskets, to be shipped to San Francisco, and 

 the boats are drawn high up on the beach (Fig. 3). The little colony 

 also carries on a very successful squid-catching industry, so that at 

 night there is often as much life and excitement in Chinatown as 

 during the day. The amount of a catch will often be measured by tons. 

 1 Sebastodes (nebulosus) and melanops, Scomber (colias), Platichthys, Anarrhichthys. 



