question him, and he answers "yes" and "no" alternately to everything we ask him. "Why," says one of our party, "this must be Chief Crowley?" "Yes, Chief Clowly!" replies our celestial cicerone. "And this must be Capt. Lees?" "No Capt. Lees all same," responds John. "Why, blame me if he is not repeating every word after me like a parrot; he don't understand a word of what we are saying." Further questioning establishes the fact that such is the case, and despairing of gaining any useful knowledge under such circumstances, we give a quarter to the least repulsive-looking female in the band who are making night hideous with their unearthly music, and depart in disgust.
One more sight before we leave the neighborhood. The officer leads us a few doors farther down the alley, and enters a low door into a room, dimly lighted by a China nut-oil lamp. Stretched on the floor of this damp, foul-smelling den, are four female figures. These miserable wretches are the victims of the most fearful and loathsome disease with which the vengeance of God has cursed sinful humanity, and having been pronounced incurable by the Chinese doctors, and refused admission, under our laws, to the alms house and public hospital, are here dying, by inches, a slow, lingering, horrible death. One of them, at our request, lifts from her face a cloth which hid it, and in place of mouth, lips, cheeks and nose, we see a horrible cavity, formed by the eating away of the flesh until the bare bones are exposed, as in the grinning effigy of a death's head on some ancient tower.
