or they crowd in together in
much the same way. As the gold fever attracted the Chinese to the
Pacific coast, San Francisco was made a headquarters and the Orientals
soon established themselves in a building on the side hill. As they
continued to swarm over, gradually the American tenants were crowded
out until a certain section was set apart for the Chinese residents
and Chinatown became as distinct a section of the city as the Bowery
in New York used to be, "where they do such things and say such
things." The time to see Chinatown was after dark, from ten at night
to four in the morning, and a day and a night spent in the district
would give you a very fair idea of Chinatown as it was.

The streets were narrow and steep, paved with rough cobblestone. The
fronts of the buildings had been changed to conform with the Chinese
idea of architecture. Wide balconies and gratings and fretwork of iron
painted in gaudy colors gave an Oriental touch. The fronts were a riot
of color. The fronts of the joss houses and the restaurants were
brightened with many colored lanterns, quaint carved gilded woodwork,
potted plants and dwarf trees. Up and down these narrow streets every
hour in the twenty-four you could hear the gentle tattoo, for he
seemed never to sleep, never to be in a hurry and always moving. Stop
on any corner five minutes and the sight was like a moving picture
show. It was hard to make yourself believe that you were not in China,
for as near as is possible Chinatown had been converted into a typical
Chinese community. You heard no other language spoken on the streets
or in the stores except by tourists, "seeing the sights." Chinese
characters adorned the windows and store fronts, the merchants in the
stores were reading Chinese newspapers, the children playing on the
streets jabbered in an unknown tongue, and every man you met had a
pigtail hanging down his back. The streets were full of people, but
there were no crowds and neither in the day nor night could you see a
drunken Chinaman.

The first floor of nearly every building in Chinatown was occupied by
a store or market. Most of the goods sold were imported from China. In
every store there was but one clerk who could talk fair English but
the bookkeeping was done in Chinese and money was counted in Chinese
fashion. In the botanic stores dried snakes and toads were sold for
use in compounding potions to drive away evil spirits and baskets of
ginseng roots were dis