The true northerner. [volume] (Paw Paw, Mich.) 1855-1920, 1882-11-03
A Camp OF Chinese Laborers.

Camping and travelling in the forest
WAS delightful experience, spite OF
sasn and fatigue; but no one OF our par
" was sorry one morning to be met on
sle rivers bank by an engineer, who
drought package of letters, and the
information that the camps of the Chi
sese graders on the railroad were Just
ACROSS the river. that there was wa
gon-road to the end of the track, and
Mat he had slliff and two rowers to
s"t us across the turbulent current. We
had traversed the whole distance (six
hundred miles,) between the ends Of the
inilroab which are advancing to meet
next year on the summit OF the Rocky
Mountains. The news that we should
See locomotive that very day was re-
eeived witt, enthusiasm. 1t meant beds,
baths, clean clothes, newspapers, tele-
grams, napkins, silver forks, and a
hnndred other things never noticed or
appreciated until out of reach. We re-
arranged our luggage, bestowed our
bedding upon the half-breed Indian,
the Kentucky negro, and the white lad,
who jointly managed the pack-train,
got over the river, and we're soon driv-
ing through the camps of three thousand
Chinese iaboEers. 1t was Sunday, and
work on the grade was suspended. The
canvas town swarned with men. Some
were having their heads shaved. others
were combing and winding their pig
tails; others stripped to their waist,
we're enjoying n sponge bath. One
man was on his knees going
through some religious ceremony
over chicken before dissoct-
ing it for the pot. There were Chinese
stores, Chinese restaurants, and Chi
nese gambling tents For fifteen miles
the woods were literally full of Mongo-
lians. Not feature of their Asiatic
life do they abandon, save that, from
the necessity of working in mud and
dust, they wear American boots. Their
basket hats, blue blouses, and loose
trousers are supplied by Chinese mer-
chants, and large portion of their
food--their rice and dried fish, and all
their sweetmeats and dainties-comes
across the Pacific. The road was lined
with Cinnamon driving fat hogs to the
eamps TO he slaughtered for the Sun
day dinner, or carrying bundles and
boxes, hnd boards for tent-hooring, sus-
pended to bamboo poles, balanced on
the shoulders IL the exact style of the
pictures on the tea-chests.
The Chinese labOrers on the railroad
earn one dollar and sixteen cents day,
and are hired by gangs of forty from
agents of the SIX Companies in San
Francisco The usual estimate OF the
effectiveness Of their labor is that three
Cinnamon are eqpal 60 two white men
bat the superintendent of Construc-
Gon on the railroad asserts that he pre-
fprs the Chinese, man for man, to such
white labor as can be had on the Pacific
coast. .Irr I|Fr
The railroad operations have caused
TO grow up at Cabinet Landing, gro
teeque and hideous town of tents and
shanties clinging to the hillside among
the pines,--a town subSiSting on the
wants and Weaknesses OF the working
men, and haunting in their faces facili-
ties for all the coarser forms of vice.
Across the river from this papdemo-
Mum of frontier dirt, drunkenness, and
debauchery, is another transient rail
road town, where the engineers and
sverseers live, with their wives and
children. in clean tents, prettily embow-
red with evergreens.-E y. Sndlley,
20, The Century.