existence
of this organization was not suspected until during last summer some of
its victims appealed to a city missionary to save them from a life of
vice. Thereupon suit was brought by Chinese in the courts for money which
they claimed these women owed; and, on an examination, I was told, no
attempt was made to conceal the fact that a regularly formed commercial
organization was engaged in either buying or kidnapping young women in
China, bringing them to San Francisco, there furnishing them clothing and
habitations, and receiving from them a share of the money they gained by
prostitution.

But the Chinaman is here; treaty laws made by our Government with his give
him the right to come here, and to live here securely. And this is to be
said, that if we could to-day expel the Chinese from California, more than
half the capital now invested there would be idle or leave the State, many
of the most important industries would entirely stop, and the prosperity
of California would receive a blow from which it would not recover for
twenty years. They are, as a class, peaceable, patient, ingenious, and
industrious. That they deprive any white man of work is absurd, in a State
which has scarcely half a million of people, and which can support ten
millions, and needs at least three millions to develop fairly its abundant
natural wealth; and no matter what he is, or what the effect of his
presence might be, it is shameful that he should be meanly maltreated and
persecuted among a people who boast themselves Christian and claim to be
civilized.

[Illustration: SAW-MILL.]

CHAPTER VI.

THE MENDOCINO COAST AND CLEAR LAKE--GENERAL VIEW.

Some of the most picturesque country in California lies on or near
the coast north of San Francisco. The coast counties, Marin, Sonoma,
Mendocino, Humboldt, Klamath, and Del Norte, are the least visited by
strangers, and yet with Napa, Lake, and Trinity, they make up a region
which contains a very great deal of wild and fine scenery, and which
abounds with game, and shows to the traveler many varieties of life and
several of the peculiar industries of California.

Those who have passed through the lovely Napa Valley, by way of Calistoga,
to the Geysers, or who have visited the same place by way of Healdsburg
and the pretty Russian River Valley, have no more than a faint idea of
what a tourist may see and enjoy who will devote two weeks to a journey
along the sea-coast of Marin and Me