Page:"Round the world." - Letters from Japan, China, India, and Egypt (IA roundworldletter00fogg 0).pdf/47

 ocean steamers, the only one we have, is a success, They cannot carry all the freight (principally teas) that is offered in China and Japan, and the number will soon be increased so as to make semi-monthly trips. These ships are the continuation of our national Pacific railroad, and the pioneers of a commerce the extent of which we cannot now realize between Europe and Asia across our continent. When they first appeared in Hong Kong, their size and elegant accommodations for passengers surprised the English, who build only screw ocean steamers, and they predicted that the first typhoon they encountered would send them under. But for four years they have run without accident, riding out in safety the fiercest storms, typhoons and cyclones of the Chinese and Pacific seas. Their great size and breadth of beam give them steadiness in rough weather, and also enables them to carry a large number of passengers.

This ship will accommodate fourteen hundred persons in the steerage, and is always full going east. These are all Chinese, who pay $45 each for passage to California, there to be kicked and cuffed by the roughs, denied all the rights which “a white man is bound to respect,” but economical and saving in his habits, patiently enduring insults, quiet and reserved in manners, in few years he saves enough of his earnings to return to Chins a rich man.

We have now on board seven hundred returning Chinamen, each with his little fortune of two or three hundred dollars, the saving of two to five years hard labor and exile from the “flowery kingdom” among “western barbarians.” What wonderful stories they will have to tell to their friends and neighbors! Stories as marvelous as the early voyagers four centuries ago, carried back from the far west to Spain and Portugal. The space on this ship is so large, and the discipline so perfect, that we see nothing of the Chinese unless we go forward among them. They occupy the whole main deck, 400 by 50 feet in size, and also a portion of the upper deck forward. Several are pointed out to me as wealthy merchants of San Franciseo, who could well afford if they chose to pay $300 for cabin passage.

They are all neatly dressed and clean in personal appearances, and politely answer in “pigeon English” all my questions. The Chinese are inveterate gamblers, and many groups are scattered around the deck