290 By Stream and Sea. 



apartment; the licensed opium shops; the places of the 

 tailors, butchers, and bakers these all mark the whereabouts 

 of the Chinaman. In the heart of the town the countless 

 shops (all open to the street) admirably illustrate the indus- 

 trious character of the Chinese artisan ; illustrate also the 

 teeming numbers of the race, their sobriety, their quietness, 

 their skill. A blacksmith's establishment, I was told, 

 contained sixty inmates who all sleep in one barn-like 

 garret. 



Our transatlantic cousins appear to be at sixes and sevens 

 with their Chinese fellow-citizens, and to be anxious, by 

 legislation, to roll back the unwelcome tide of " Mongolian 

 invasion." A gentleman fresh from Queensland by the last 

 Torres Straits mail tells me, over a Manilla and sherry- 

 cobbler at Emerson's restaurant, that the northern portion 

 of that colony is waxing wild at the steady increase of 

 Chinese emigration, and that the rolling back theory is 

 already mooted there. As Queensland is to be my future 

 home, I naturally turn special attention to these folks whom, 

 my Queensland friend assures me, it will be my duty as a 

 good colonist, to regard as my future enemies, and endeavour 

 to stamp out and improve off the face of the country. I 

 peer and pry about everywhere ; I cross-question magistrates, 

 senators, high and low, the chiefs of the police, army men, 

 and merchants, and never a word can I tempt them into 

 saying against John Chinaman. As a Scotch resident, whose 

 clerks, shopmen, and porters are all of that race, poetically 

 put it to me, 



''What the devil would Singapore be without the 

 Chinese?" 



You see, you must live with a man to know him ; we have 

 the authority of a most ancient proverb for that ; and since 

 the British residents of Singapore give the dreaded Mongolian 



