Stroll by daylight through the region bounded by Montgomery, Stockton, Washington and Broadway streets, and you will have but a faint idea, a very inadequate conception, of the real character of the locality. A few red-faced, frowzy females will glance inquiringly at you from their seats just inside the doorways of the minor "dead- falls;" little dens, with the bar stocked with well-drugged liquors—which to taste is to look death in the face and defy him—on one side of the front room, a sofa on the other, and at the rear an arched opening hung with tawdry red and white curtains, communicating with an inner room, into the hidden mysteries of which you and I do not care to penetrate. Spanish-American women, clad in solemn black, and wrapped to the eyes in their dark rebozos, fallen and hopelessly degraded, but still preserving something of the grace of manner and speech which distinguish the females of their race above all others, flit quietly past, fixing their flashing black eyes inquiringly upon your face, but making no salutation. Chinese porters or "coolies," swinging heavy burdens on the ends of pliant bamboo poles balanced on their shoulders, and changed rapidly from side to side as they trot quickly along, meet you at every turn. A couple of small, wiry, supple little fellows, with black skins, straight black hair, with little black eyes which twinkle like those of a snake, carrying huge baskets, filled with soiled clothing, on their heads, may attract your attention next; they are Lascar or Hindoo washermen from the Laguna, in the western part of the city, where they work. You will
