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Rh it, grew more beautiful by the contrast as we approached them.

The Spring Valley Water Company, which derives its water supply for San Francisco from the head of the Pillarcitos Creek, in the redwoods, some forty miles south of the city, and has a beautiful lake for a reservoir in the mountains, was here building another reservoir, equal in size to anything on the continent. A dam, seventy feet high, with foundations sixty feet deep, has been thrown across the valley; and the waters of the San Andreas, thus thrown back, form a lake two miles and a half long, and containing one thousand million gallons. This is held as a reserve supply for dry seasons. John Chinaman did the work, with white men as superintendents, and, as is his custom, did it well. He was then at work, in the same quiet, methodical way, making bricks for the barriers of the flood-gates. John is a law unto himself, and can do a wonderful amount of minding his own business within a given time. Pay him regularly what you agree to, give him his New Year's holidays, and a chance to supply himself with chicken and duck for his Sunday dinner and rice for his regular daily rations at fair rates, and he is contentment itself. The question of woman suffrage does not worry him, eight-hour laws he holds in contempt, and no lazy, jaw-working demagogues can fool him with their plausible sophistries into agrarian combinations, strikes, and riots. He is a philosopher in his way, and not without claims to respect and better treatment than he usually gets from his Caucasian "betters."