it, when the frightened Celestial flung from him into the bay half a dozen boxes of the poison. Bladders of it, flattened out like pancakes, were found concealed in the linings of blankets or bed-quilts, and the stuffed under-garments worn by some of the men. In all, several thousand dollars' worth thus fell into the hands of the officers, and a moiety of its value will go into the treasury of Uncle Sam, if the costs cannot be made large enough to swallow up all his share.
Fifteen or twenty Chinese girls—the poor raft and boat born women of Canton, trained, from childhood, to lewdness, and as utterly ignorant of the ways of virtue or any sense of shame or moral responsibility as so many blocks of wood—were landed also; some steamers bring them by hundreds, in spite of the efforts of the "Six Companies" to discourage the traffic. These women signed contracts, in China, to serve their masters a given number of years for their passage-money, board and clothing, and, despite our laws, will submit to live and die in a slavery more horrible than any other that ever existed on earth; all efforts of our authorities to break it up having proved utterly unavailing. As they land, they are searched in no delicate manner by the officers, and then received by their purchasers, and delivered into the charge of the sallow old hags in black costume, with bunches of keys in the girdles at their waists, who are called "old mothers," and who will hold them in horrible bondage and collect the wages of their sin—if they who have no moral responsibility can be said
