companled by bright-eyed, richly-dressed children, who follow mechanically in their mother's footsteps, furtively glancing-at the strange crowd as they pass through it. These are the wives and offspring of Chinese merchants resident here, who married before coming to California; you had better take a good look at them now, while you can, for they—the women and female children—will be kept in the strictest seclusion from the moment they set foot in their husbands' and fathers' houses, and they may live many years, and die, here in the midst of a great Christian city, and yet never be looked upon by Caucasian eyes. You may purchase exquisite pictures, on rice-paper, of these "first-chop" Chinese ladies, at the bazaar of Chy Lung & Co., on Sacramento street, but the living married Chinese women or respectable young girls you will never so much as catch a glimpse of, except on such an occasion as this.
Following the Chinese ladies comes an Englishman returning from the Indies, a broad, burly fellow, with dogged resolution, self-complacency, and a stout, unconquerable determination to grumble at everything he meets in "this blarsted country, you know," traced upon every lineament. His feet are encased in clumsy thick-soled gaiters, his nether limbs in gray, very scant cassimere pantaloons, which hang limp as withered cabbage leaves round his ankles; a coat, broader than it is long, covers his shoulders, and reaches down just below his waist, and on his head is a hideous Monitor-shaped hat, as large as the shell of a green turtle, and as unmanageable and badly out of place
