this vast semi-civilized immigration any danger to republican institutions; nevertheless, it is a movement fraught with mighty consequences for good or ill, and the question demands and must receive a most careful consideration in all its bearings. Commerce, religion, politics, capital and labor, education, our whole social fabric, must be affected more or less. Occident and Orient stand face to face at last, and the meeting must signalize a notable era in the history of mankind.
The customs agents search the person of every Chinaman as he lands, and go through the luggage of every group or mess as thoroughly as possible, in quest of opium, the one blighting curse of China, for which she may thank Christian England, and for which her children will run any risk and bear any privation. The deadly drug is so costly in proportion to its bulk, that, next to gold and precious stones, it offers the greatest inducement for smuggling and on the arrival of every steamer and sailing vessel from China, large seizures are made by the officers. On this occasion one officer detected and confiscated forty boxes of opium, each worth eight or ten dollars in coin, which had been concealed in the false bottom of a box containing merchandise of comparatively small value. To do them justice, we should say that one of the Chinese companies' agents directed the officer's attention to the box, and so caused him to make the discovery. Another officer discovered a suspicious protuberance on the person of a Chinaman, and had just reached out his hand to examine
