The shops in Bakersfield, as throughout our travels, are kept principally by the Jews, who are great pioneers. No people are growing up more ardently with the new West; and where they are found business is pretty sure to be good.
The Chinatown is a district of compact little streets, of an extent that indicates a population almost equal to that of the rest of the place. An irrigating ditch surrounds it like a moat. The cabins along this, picturesquely reflected in it, are gray and weather-beaten, varied with patches of bright Orientalism, and shaded by a line of tall poplar-trees. The Spanishtown, close by, is a cluster of dance-houses and corrals, between which swarthy Joses and Juanitas are seen passing.
As if this were not foreignness enough already, we stumble upon a camp of strolling gypsies, their tents pitched on the borders of Spanishtown. They are English, and have come from Australia, dropping their "h's" all along the way, no doubt, as liberally as here. They are like types of Cruikshank and Dickens. An apple-faced Mrs. Jarley appears in a large velvet bonnet with plumes. A very tightly-dressed, slender individual, with a weed on his hat, might pass for Sam Weller. He is a horse-tamer and jockey. At his heels follows a belligerent bull-dog. Behind one of the tents a child of nine, Cassie by name, with fine, dark eyes, is making a toilet before a bit of cracked mirror. She pastes down her wet hair into a semblance of the "water-waves" of fashionable society. When interrupted with a compliment on the arrangement she affects displeasure, and tosses it all abroad again with a native coquetry.
The Mrs. Jarley-looking woman is the fortune-teller. She declares that there are persons whose fortunes she would not tell for twenty no, not for fifty dollars.
