The new North-west. [volume] (Deer Lodge, Mont.) 1869-1897, 1886-07-16

1t may be questioned il any city in the
world can compare with New York in cos
moplitan characteristics Like every great
metropolis, it has its French, German, Irish,
Jewish and Italian quarters Unlike most,
it has colonies of Russians, negroes, Swedes.
Bohemians, Hungarians, and even Turks
And still more unlike the great capitals of
Europe, it has an oriental element varying
!. from ten To rweaty thousand in number
This element in New York is made up OF
sailors, cooks, peddlers, clerks, and occa-
siopally tradesmen and merchants. They
are brought together by the mighty dollar,
and usually remain in Gotham until they
have secured what seems to them a snug
sum aud to their far-of fellow-countrym men
q fortune The Chinese preponderate and
already have settlement OF their own in
Mott street. After the Chinese come Japan
ese, Hindus, Marois. Hawaiians and Las
cars. In one large boarding house on
Water street no less than twelve Asiatic
languages are spoken; in another on Baxter
street the proprietor has on his business
card: English, Chinese Manila, Japanese,
Danish, Hindustani. Cochinese, aud French
spoken here"
These eastern races herd rather than live
together. Rent in their own lands is SO
cheap that they can MOI bear the high rates
Of this country. For Mis- reason they viii
crowd ten and even twenty persons into a
room usually occupied by two Americans.
by cooperating similarly in buying and
preparing food, they succeed in reducing
the cost Of living to 20 cents day. 1t is
easy, therefore, to see how upon 50 q day
wages or profits one of them can amass
81, 500 In q few years, and with it buy
small farm in the frugal east.
ORIENTAL LODGING HOUSES,
The homes of these people are chiefly in
the Fourth and Sixth wards-Water,
Cherry, Oliver, Baster and Pell streets be-
ing their favorites-and comprise both
boarding and lodging nou es The proprie-
tors of some of these are quite rich. Chin
Chin, Cochinese, is wo: tn $4,000; Ak
wah, COCO, and La Cruz, $4,000
These boarding houses are of one general
type. You pass through dark hallway or
plunge down a gloomy cellar-stair and find
yourself in the ante-room or office. 1t has
q small desk or counter behind which either
the proprietor or a clerk perpetually SITS,
O few chairs and pile OF trunks, boxes and
barrels. Against the walls are shelves and
cupboards, on and in which are the goods
In demand by oriental races. To one famil-
lar with life in Cathay most of the articles
are fumiliar. Dried dragon fish from the
Japan seas, bamboo tips from Cochin China
and Siam, brown tobacco from Corea, and
yellow from Formose, opium from India
and Hong Kong, hasheesh from Calcutta
and Singapore, ginseng root, preserved GIN
ger, and Manila confections, and but a few
of the wares which supply the boarding
house keeper with profit Of seldom less
than 100 per cent
Behind the Office is the main living room.
This is generally long apartment of 20 by
40, whose walls are lined with hunks three
deep These hunks are sometimes separated
~ y9paT ii ions Is on shipboara, nns arsa gsa.
orally deep shelves running all around the
room. With separate hunks the room de-
scribed accommodates fifty dodgers or board
ers; with continuous shelves about eighty.
In the middle of the room are chairs,
tables, and generally more or less luggage
of the guests In some of the lower-grade
establishments where hygiene and the board
of health are bid defiance to, garbage and
dirt are piled up in the center of the living
room until miniature East river dump"
is produced. In these hunks the dodgers lie
day or night and frequently day and
night, according to their vocations. To-
bacco, opium, and hasheesh consume all
their energies and convert them for the
time being into almost veritable corpses. 1t
Is no uncommon sight to see at noon at
Cruz's hotel in Baxter street or Quong
Fats in Park street as many as thirty per-
sons lying in dead stupor.
KITCHEN AND LIvING-RooM.
To the rear of the living room is the
kitchen and work-room. The furniture is
painfully simple and consists usually of @
range or cooking stove, charcoal brazier,
o chopping- block, table, and few culinary
utensils Here the meals are prepared and
the crude opium of commerce converted
into the smokers paste Here also in the
early morning each guest takes his tub
bath and washes his daily supply of linen
and cotton.
No sight is more impressive or fearful
than one of these living rooms at 10 or II
D m. The dark floor and ceilings, the
gloomy and grimy furniture, the single
lamp. Pickering and smoking on the table,
the silence, and every where the hunks, each
containing o man courting slumber through
some narcotic drug, make up strange pic
ture You enter the apartment and each
inmate turns toward you-the japanese
6ercely and swiftly, the Hindu curiously
and slowly, and the Cochinese with the
lethargy of death. Every face belongs to
an unfamiliar or ugknewn race; every ari
Gle is a sealed book. A word from the pro
prietor and the eyes leave your face and re-
sumo their former occupations
Here and there at times are attempts at
ornament The black statue of Rama,
worshiped in Ceylon, the bronze image Of
Buddha, the allegorical portraits Of Health,
Plenty and Strength of Confucins, the cruci-
fix of European faith, and even the sharks
and tigers teeth of the Malay, are attached
TO the wall or displayed ON some fragment
ary mantelpiece.
The proprietor of one Of these places said:
sIt doesn't cost much to live. can board
. man for $l.75 a week-perhaps even less.
don't make much money on the board, but
do on tobacco, opium and the hasheesh. My
people drink very little; not SO much as 10
Seents . day. When they go off on spree
they order fashionable dinner and eat all
they can hold. Then they smoke five shells
Of opium [about two ouncesl and sleep for
twenty four hours How many houses are
there like mine No one just like lit or SO
good, but about thirty in the same busi-
mess" Five other proprietors made the
same remark. New York Letter.