to sin—for the remainder of their days. The girls are dressed in silk or cotton tunics and trousers, similar in shape and color to those worn by the married ladies, but far less costly, are painted gaudily on cheeks and lips, and wear on their heads the checked cotton handkerchiefs which are the badge of prostitution. They are jeered and "hi-hied" by the crowd of common Chinamen waiting outside the gates, as they pass out to enter the open express wagons waiting to receive them and carry them away to the dens in Murderers' Alley and along the Barbary Coast. As fast as the groups of coolies have been successively searched, they are turned out of the gates, and hurried away towards the Chinese quarter of the city by the agents of the "Six Companies." Some go in wagons, more on foot; and the streets leading up that way are lined with them, running in "Indian file," and carrying their luggage suspended from the ends of the bamboo poles slung across their shoulders. By nightfall the throng has dispersed, the work of the officers is over, and the vast wharf is cleared for the delivery of the immense cargo in the hold of the steamer.
This cargo is made up of articles in a great measure strange to the people of the Atlantic States; and for their benefit the list is copied out in full from the manifest, as follows: For San Francisco: 90 packages cassia; 940 packages coffee, from Java and Manila; 192 packages fire-crackers, 30 packages dried fish, cuttle-fish, shark's fins, etc.; 400 packages hemp; 116 packages
