his section is almost entirely peopled by
Mongolians, and such poor abandoned men and women of other nationalities
as seek among these repulsive surroundings to hide themselves from the
shame and penalty of their crimes.

It is not proposed in these Foot-Prints of Travel to remain long on this
continent. Americans are presumed to be quite familiar with their native
land; so we will embark without delay upon a voyage across the Pacific
Ocean to Japan, by way of the Sandwich Islands. Once on board ship, we
quickly pass through the Golden Gate, as the entrance to the spacious
harbor of San Francisco is called, steering south-southwest towards the
Hawaiian group, which is situated a little over two thousand miles away.
The great seas and oceans of the globe, like the land, have their
geographical divisions and local peculiarities, varying essentially in
temperature, products, and moods; now marked by certain currents; now
noted for typhoons and hurricanes; and now lying in latitudes which are
favored with almost constant calms and unvarying sunshine. By a glance
at the map we shall see that a vessel taking her course for New
Zealand, for instance, by the way of the Sandwich Islands, will pass
through a tract of the Pacific Ocean seemingly so full of islands that
we are led to wonder how a ship pursuing such a route can avoid running
foul of some of the Polynesian groups. But it must be remembered that
the distances which are so concisely depicted to our eyes upon the map,
are yet vast in reality, while so mathematically exact are the rules of
navigation, and so well known are the prevailing currents, that a
steamship may make the voyage from Honolulu to Auckland, a distance of
four thousand miles, without sighting land. When Magellan, the
Portuguese navigator, first discovered this great ocean, after sailing
through the straits which bear his name, he called it the Pacific Ocean,
and perhaps it seemed "pacific" to him after a stormy voyage in the
Caribbean Sea; but portions of its surface are quite as restless and
tempest-tossed as are the waters of any part of the globe. The Pacific
measures nine thousand miles from north to south, and is ten thousand
miles broad between Quito, South America, and the Moluccas or Spice
Islands. At the extreme north, where Behring's Strait divides the
continents of Asia and America, it is scarcely more than forty miles in
width, so that in clear weather one can see the shores of Asia while
s