that, the
law-makers thought this would be another heavy blow to Chinese
immigration.

What the Chinese quarter of Virginia was like--or, indeed, what the
Chinese quarter of any Pacific coast town was and is like--may be
gathered from this item which I printed in the Enterprise while reporting
for that paper:

CHINATOWN.--Accompanied by a fellow reporter, we made a trip through
our Chinese quarter the other night. The Chinese have built their
portion of the city to suit themselves; and as they keep neither
carriages nor wagons, their streets are not wide enough, as a
general thing, to admit of the passage of vehicles. At ten o'clock
at night the Chinaman may be seen in all his glory. In every little
cooped-up, dingy cavern of a hut, faint with the odor of burning
Josh-lights and with nothing to see the gloom by save the sickly,
guttering tallow candle, were two or three yellow, long-tailed
vagabonds, coiled up on a sort of short truckle-bed, smoking opium,
motionless and with their lustreless eyes turned inward from excess
of satisfaction--or rather the recent smoker looks thus, immediately
after having passed the pipe to his neighbor--for opium-smoking is a
comfortless operation, and requires constant attention. A lamp sits
on the bed, the length of the long pipe-stem from the smoker's
mouth; he puts a pellet of opium on the end of a wire, sets it on
fire, and plasters it into the pipe much as a Christian would fill a
hole with putty; then he applies the bowl to the lamp and proceeds
to smoke--and the stewing and frying of the drug and the gurgling of
the juices in the stem would well-nigh turn the stomach of a statue.
John likes it, though; it soothes him, he takes about two dozen
whiffs, and then rolls over to dream, Heaven only knows what, for we
could not imagine by looking at the soggy creature. Possibly in his
visions he travels far away from the gross world and his regular
washing, and feast on succulent rats and birds'-nests in Paradise.

Mr. Ah Sing keeps a general grocery and provision store at No. 13 Wang
street. He lavished his hospitality upon our party in the friendliest
way. He had various kinds of colored and colorless wines and brandies,
with unpronouncable names, imported from China in little crockery jugs,
and which he offered to us in dainty