Millheim Journal. [volume] (Millheim, Pa.) 1876-1984, 1882-11-02
A Camp of chinese Laborers.

Camping and travelling In the forest
was q delightful experience. spite Of
rain and fatigue but no one of our
party was sorry one morning to be met
on the rivers bank by an engineer, who
brought a package of letters, and the
information that the camps of the Chi
nese graders on the railroad were just
across the river, that there was wagon
road to the end of the track, and that
he had skiff and two rowers to set us
across the turbulent current. We had
traversed the whole distance (six hun
dred nliles) between the ends of the rail-
road, which are advancing to meet next
year on the summit of the Rocky Noun
tains. The news that we should see q
locomotive that very day was received
with enthusiasm. 1t meant beds, baths,
clean clothes, newspapers, kilograms,
napkins, silver forks, and hundred
other things never noticed or appreci-
ated until out of reach. We rearranged
our luggage. bestowed our bedding
upon the half-breed Indian, the Ken
lucky negro, and the white lad, who
Jointly managed the pack-train, got over
the river, and we're soon driving through
the camps of three thousand Chinese
laborers. 1t was Sunday, ana work on
the grade was suspended. The canvas
town swarmed with men. Some were
having their heads shaved, others were
combing and winding their pig-tails !;
others stripped to their waist. were en-
joying a sponge bath. One man was
on his knees going through some reli-
gious ceremony over chicken before
dissecting it for the pot. There were
Chinese stores, Chinese restaurants, and
Chinese gaming tents. For fifteen
miles the woods were literally full of
Mongolians. 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
merchants. and a 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
camps to be slaughtered for the Sunday
dinner, or carrying bundles and boxes,
and boards for tent-hoOring, suspended
to bamboo poles, balanced on the shoul-
ders in 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 i'll San
Francisco. The usual estimate of the
effectiveness of their labor is that three
Cinnamon are equal to two white men !;
but the superintendent of construction
on the railroad asserts that he prefers
the Chinese man for man, to such white
labor as can be bad on the Pacific coast.
The railroad operations have caused to
grow up at Cabinet Landing, a gro
tesque 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 faciE
ties for all the coarser forms of vice.
Across the river from this pandemonium
of frontier dirt, drunkenness and de-
bauchery, is another transient railroad
town, where the engineers and overseers
1--we, with their wives and children, in
clean tents, prettlly embowered with
evergreens-