and a promiscuous crowd of Chileiios, Peruvians, and other Spanish- American cut-throats, playing "pool," with any amount of small change changing hands at every game. "That sharp-nosed fellow with the billiard-cue in his hand murdered a peddler at New Almaden a few years, since, but his woman swore him clear. That hook-nosed villain smokine there inthe corner, is a horse-thief from San Jose; he has been over the Bay (z. e., in State Prison, or San Ouentin, across the Bay from San Francisco) three times, and will go again soon, I reckon. That little fellow there with the scar on his face is a monte dealer; and that one with one eye is a burglar." And so our official friend runs on through the list, and we retire.
We next enter a low room on the ground floor of a rickety, old frame-building, which has stood here since 1849, and passing the screen which shuts off the view from the street, find a bar stocked with every species of liquid poison, at "5 cents a glass." A rough-looking Irishman is behind the bar; two miserable, bloated, loathsome-looking, drunken white females are quarrelling with each other in front; on the settee ranged along the wall sits a third wreck of female humanity, swearing like a pirate, and cursing "the perlice" at every breath; while a man with a face like a diseased beef's liver, who once represented a Western State in Congress, is patting her on the back caressingly, and endeavoring vainly to quiet her, lest the police outside should hear her and make a raid on the establishment. In one corner, a party of Kanaka
