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314 in the San Francisco summer trade-winds as a balloon in a western tornado. Surely we have seen somewhere the counterpart of this figure also; yes, it was years ago, when we were laid up with a broken leg, and the fever of our waking hours was followed by the nightmare in our troubled sleep.

The custom-house officers have done their work here quickly, and perhaps effectually, and now all is ready at the forward gangway. A living stream of the blue-coated men of Asia, bearing-long bamboo poles across their shoulders, from which depend packages of bedding, matting, clothing, and things of which we know neither the names nor the uses, pours down the plank the moment that the word is given, "All ready!" They appear to be of an average age of twenty-five years—very few being under fifteen, and none apparently over forty years—and though somewhat less in stature than Caucasians, healthy, active, and able-bodied to a man. As they come down upon the wharf, they separate into messes or gangs of ten, twenty, or thirty each, and, being recognized through some (to us) incomprehensible free-masonry system of signs by the agents of the "Six Companies" as they come, are assigned places on the long, broad-shedded wharf which has been cleared especially for their accommodation and the convenience of the customs officers. Each man carries on his shoulders, or in his hands, his entire earthly possessions, and few are overloaded. There are no merchants or business men among them, all being of the coolie or laboring class. They are all dressed in