America, midway between Europe and Asia, was destined to be the
meeting-ground of Occident and Orient. It was in the exciting days of
'49 that gold became the lodestone to draw to California men from the
oriental lands across the Pacific. The Chinese for the moment overcame
their religious aversion to leaving their native haunts and, lured by
the promise of fabulous wages, made their way to the "gold hills." Of
the three hundred thousand who came to America during the three
decades of free entry, the large majority were peasants from the rural
districts in the vicinity of Canton. They were thrifty, independent,
sturdy, honest young men who sought the great adventure unaccompanied
by wife or family. Chinese tradition forbade the respectable woman to
leave her home, even with her husband; and China was so isolated from
the world, so encrusted in her own traditions that out of her
uncounted millions even the paltry thousands of peasants and workmen
who filtered through the port of Canton into the great world were
bound by ancient precedent as firmly as if they had remained at home.
They invariably planned to return to the Celestial Empire and it was
their supreme wish that, if they died abroad, their bodies be buried
in the land of their ancestors.

The Chinaman thus came to America as a workman adventurer, not as a
prospective citizen. He preserved his queue, his pajamas, his
chopsticks, and his joss in the crude and often brutal surroundings of
the mining camp. He maintained that gentle, yielding, unassertive
character which succumbs quietly to pressure at one point, only to
reappear silently and unobtrusively in another place. In the wild
rough and tumble of the camp, where the outlaw and the bully found
congenial refuge, the celestial did not belie his name. He was indeed