and swarming with Celestials in holiday attire. The ubiquitous Eastern tourist, whom we had met prowling about the Joss-houses by night, was here in full force-the male tourist, at least; we saw no ladies in China Town that day but ourselves. They gazed after us with our Chinese escort, especially when we turned up a flight of sawdust-covered stairs, whither one enterprising tourist-whether he was from New York or London I know not-looked strongly inclined to follow us. Sam Lee led us into a large, airy, well-furnished room-the first such apartment we had seen in China Town-where a little Chinese lady, gorgeously attired, came forward and shook hands with us. She played hostess prettily, offered us chairs, and bade her waitingmaid bring us sweetmeats and wine. She could speak a few words of English, but to our attempts at conversation she only replied by a perpetual ripple of laughter, looking shyly aside, too bashful to talk, but evidently thinking the position an extremely humorous one. Her hair was wonderful to look upon, brushed off the temples and standing out in large stiff loops like glossy wire. On her head she wore a profusion of gilt leaves and artificial flowers. Her dress, a kind of blouse over a clinging skirt, was of rich blue silk exquisitely embroidered in green and gold. As she became more at home with us, perceiving our interest in her toilette, she showed us that the dress she wore was the outer of five or six similar garments, all of fine silk; she let us look at her wide loose sleeves, sleeve inside sleeve, the under-sleeve of all of white silk edged with pink. She then sent her little maid to fetch some of her other dresses to show us-silks heavy with rare gold embroidery, over which we sighed with envy. Sam Lee was much pleased at our admiration. He was smoking an olaborate work of art in the shape of a pipe, and on my complimenting him on its beauty, he straightway handed it to me, saying, "You smokee him!" I perceived by his smiling and gracious air that this was a compliment that I was expected to appreciate and accept, and rising to the occasion I took the pipe and doubtfully drew a few experimental breaths. I hoped that it was going to be handed round, and pleased myself picturing the countenances of the other ladies when it came to be their turn to puff at the pipe of peace; but, alas! I was the only one selected for this honor. Before we left the little Chinese lady kindly consented to show us her tiny feet. If the height of the caste is in inverse ratio to the size of the feet, she must be a lady of very high dignity; for her foot was about as long as my middle finger. The feet are not merely dwarfed, but doubled down at the joint and crushed into a misshapen thing like a hoof, so that the so-called "shoe" they wear is more a bag than a slipper, with a strip of silk wound round and round up to the ankle. The foot is not, as we had previously sup posed, cramped in an iron shoe from infancy, but bandaged when the poor little victim is seven or eight years old: the suffering of course is great. We went next, under Sam Lee's ascort, to another apartment on the same floor, to visit a friend of his, a merchant, whose name I forget, but Sing Yang will do as well as any other, and comes quite near enough to the sound. Sing Yang, then, was a very fine specimen of a courteous and dignified gentleman, of a grave and intellectual cast of countenance; he spoke English almost perfectly, and his manner as host might have done credit to any nation. He was clad in a rich blue silk. Sam Lee wore only cotton, being in mourning for his mother, in which case silk is prohibited. In Sing Yang's handsome apartment many guests were assembled, Chinese, of course; some were smoking, all appeared beaming with good nature. As each fresh guest entered, radiant with smiles, and voluble with New Year's greetings, he salaamed, and the host salaamed, and everybody who knew the new arrival salaamed, till a general knocking together of heads seemed imminent, the salute consisting of a clapping together of the hands and bowing forward nearly to the ground. There were two tables loaded with cakes and sweets, and I had a narrow escape of committing a sacrilegious deed. I saw on one t ble a plate of tempting-looking sweetmeats; and, as others were being handed about and tasted all around the circle, I was about to take one of these candies, when luckily I perceived in time a candle and a joss-stick burning on the table, and realized that these sacred dainties were offerings to the gods. We mentioned to Sing Yang that we had just had the pleasure of seeing a lady of his nation with tiny feet. "Ah," he responded proudly, "I got one like that! I shall order her come in." He then proceeded to tell us that he had only lately been married; his wife had never beheld a man until she married him, and had never seen a man except himself since. This day, being the New Year, she was to make her first appearance in public, and bring us tea. We waited with interest for the entrance of the bride. The next time the door opened, however, it was to admit a smiling and salaaming visitor, who led a little white child about three years old. It was dressed as English and American children are, and lisped its pretty imperfect English when we pefted it and asked its name. This little Bessie, notwithstanding her English name and English aspect, turned out to be the child of the Chinese who led her by the hand, and who proudly owned the relationship. mallied Englee lady," he said; and Sing-Yang added confidentially to us that his friend had married an English teacher in a school. Such union is, however, of very, very rare occurrence. "Me come The next arrival who, in answer to Sing-Yang's hospitable in" (or the Chinese equivalent to come in!), flung open the door, caused a sensation in the company- that is, as much sensation as can easily be caused among the ca'm Chinese. He was a "hoodlum "--that indescribable and espe. ial product of San Francisco, who must be seen to be realized. There he stood, rakish hat, wry necktie, hoodium from top to toe, while behind him pressed a group of brother hoodlums, all evidently out for a lark. Come to pay a New Year call!" he said jauntily. Then his eye fell on us, installed in our rocking-chairs, and he hastily took off his hat, from the crown of which fell some cigars. Sing-Yang, to whom the intruders were of course strangers, advanced to them with dignified chill courtesy. "You must excuse me-I have ladies here!" he said, waving his hand towards us. Exeunt hoodlums discomfited, even forgetting to pick up the cigars; but effecting their retreat in good order. Then Sing-Yang bolted the door. Presently from an inner room the bride at last made her appearance, She was supported by two waiting-maids; she carried a fan in one hand and a tray of little cups of tea in the other. Like her neighbor in the opposite room, she was resplendent in silk and gold embroidery, her cheeks painted with vermilion, and her hair arranged in huge stiff glossy bows. But she was so painfully shy that we could not look in her face, and it would have been positive cruelty to speak to her. She leaned on her maids, and bent her head till her face almost touched the tray she carried, and tried to hide her features entirely behind her fan. Etiquette demanded that she should walk around the circle and offer a cup of tea to every guest, and our hearts were moved to compassion for the poor little bride as she fulfilled her duty, trembling in every limb and hiding her face, her maids guiding her shaking hand as she offered each guest the tea. It was the first time she had seen a man except her husband; and it certainly could not be said that, with her downcast eyes and hidden face, she saw man now. The tea was served without milk or sugar, with a small plum or raisin in each cup, and was pronounced by such as were epicures in tea-which I am not!-to be delicious. On our way home from China Town, we passed a group of roughlooking men in soiled and shabby garments, most of them swarthy, bearded and unkempt, standing on the street-corner, apparently having an open-air debate in undertones. 66 'Kearneyites," whispered one of our party. served another. "Sand-lotters," ob They stared at us as we drew near with rather suspicious than approving glances. We wondered why our party attracted their attention, until we remembered that we all carried in our hands conspicuous red Chinese New Year cards; and that the Kearney cry is, "The Chinese must go!" The Sand-lotters looked at us, and I looked at the Sand-lotters, and speculated inwardly-In whose power would I rather be? in whose power rather see the city that I love?— in that of these men, the Communists - California, the firebrands of that fair state, the mob incarnate, yet with all of our own blood and our own race-or in that of the smooth, sleek-spoken Chinese, inoffensive, industrious, frugal, patient worker by day, smoking opium in his dark and dirty dens of vice by night-his secret silent life beyond the reach of our laws, beyond the influence of our civilization! It is well that law and order in this city of San Francisco are strong-stronger than either or all of the parties that are struggling for supremacy. For there are turbulent and violent elements here; and the conflict is not over yet.-IZA DUFFUS HARDY, in Belgruvia. AN EARLY CELTIC COLLEGE. On the wide space of sea between the south-east coast of Mull and the mainland of Lorne, to the west of Scarba and Jura, there is a group of six small islands called the "Garveloch Islands." They lie out of the steamboat track of tourists to Oban and the Hebrides, and are therefore rarely visited. In the magnificent archipelago which bursts upon the gaze of the traveler as he emerges from the Crinan canal and passes out through the wide portals of the Dorus Mohr, this group of islands may escape notice altogether, and yet when sailing close to them they exhibit some of the finest sea-cliffs on the west coast of Scotland. Rising two or three hundred feet sheer from deep water, they form for nearly three miles, a sublime rampart, on which the elements have carved their grand runes in many a fissure and rugged ledge. Here and there they have crystallized into splendid basaltic columns not unworthy of Staffa and the Giant's Causeway; and at short intervals enormous trap-dykes run up through them, some of which have been excavated by the action of the waves, forming caves and clefts into which the sea dashes with a sullen roar. The natural brown of the basalt is deepened in some places by the beating upon it of incessant tempests into a kind of black bloom, giving to the cliffs a peculiarly stern iron look, repellent of all life; in other places they are brightened by the most brilliant mural vegetation; lichens giving them a golden or hoary appearance, and mosses softening their haggard features with a tinge of verdure. Myriads of sea-fowl have made their nests in the ledges of the precipices; and their white forms may be seen clearly relieved against the dark background, as they rise in clouds frightened by the shouts of the boatmen, and fill the air with their deafening cries. While on some projecting point a scart or green-crested cormorant sits, and stretching forth its long neck looks down at the spectator sailing past with its wild uncanny eye, seeming the very demon of the solitude. It is hard to realize, what the signs around emphatically indicate, that this region, so peaceful now, was once the scene of the wildest convulsions. These lofty cliffs were unheaved by subterranean fires, and those mountains of Mull which look so quiet and cold in the serenity of heaven flared as active volcanoes upon the lurid horizon. Soundings here show in one place a sudden abyss six or seven hundred feet deep, and in another a shallow tableland that comes within a few fathoms of the surface, indicating violent plutonic disturbance. The mountains of Mull are supposed to have been no less than 14,000 feet high, excelling Etna in sublimity; and their reduction to their present low level, the highest point having an elevation of less than 3,000 feet, shows to what a tremendous process of denudation they have since been subjected. Judging from the evidence of the curious leaf-beds of Ardtun in the neighborhood, this great volcanic outburst took place at a comparatively recent period of geological history. The fossils found in these remarkably-preserved beds, intercalated between thick deposits of volcanic ashes, are analogous with the existing flora of the eastern sea-board of North America from the mouth of the St. Lawrence to Carolina; and they tell us that islands now utterly bare and destitute of wood were at this period covered with luxuriant forests of deciduous trees, ere they were overwhelmed like the neighborhood of Naples with a succession of fiery deluges. If we wish to form some idea how these ancient geological forests looked, we have only to go to any part of eastern North America, where the aboriginal woods have not been cut down. The Puritan fathers saw the very same kind of vegetation when they landed on the shores of New England two centuries ago. Immeasurably older than this volcanic region are Iona and the outer Hebrides with their Laurentian rocks. They are fragments of a lost country, against whose iron shores the unbroken force of the Atlantic dashed at a time when Skye and Mull and the Garveloch Islands lay as mud at the bottom of a wide sound, and the Alps, Himalayas, and Andes, the highest but youngest mountains of the earth, had not yet reared their snowy crests to heaven. It is most interesting to compare the geological with the civil and ecclesiastical history of this region, and to trace the striking points of resemblance between them. The inconceivable antiquity of the rocks of Iona formed a fitting scene for those primitive Christian missions which go so far back in our short human history, that they seem almost lost in the mists of fable. The later fiery eruptions which played so important a part in the formation of Mull and the Garveloch group were paralleled by the wild scenes of human strife which those places witnessed from the sixth to the fourteenth century. During the time of St. Columba they formed the battleground between the Scots of Dalriada and the heathen Picts, when sanguinary fights between the two rival nations were continually taking place and no human life or possession was safe. Pictish pi |