The Young Explorer; Or, Claiming His Fortune by Jr. Horatio Alger (read aloud TXT) 📖

Leaving Ben and his companion for a time, we go back to record an incident which will prove to have a bearing upon the fortunes of those in whom we are interested.

One morning two men, Taylor and O'Reilly, who had been out prospecting, came into camp, conveying between them, very much as two policemen conduct a prisoner, a terrifled-looking Chinaman, whose eyes, rolling helplessly from one to the other, seemed to indicate that he considered his position a very perilous one.

At that early period in the settlement of California, a few Chinamen had found their way to the Pacific coast; but the full tide of immigration did not set in till a considerable time later, and, therefore, the miners regarded one as a curiosity.

"Who have you got there, O'Reilly?" inquired one of his mining-comrades.

"A yeller haythen!" answered O'Eeilly. "Look at the craythur! Ain't he a beauty jist wid his long pigtail hangin' down his back like a monkey's tail?"

"Where did you find him?"

"He was huntin' for gold, the haythen, jist for all the world as if he was as white as you or I."

Mr. Patrick O'Reilly appeared to hold the opinion that gold-hunting should be confined to the Caucasian race. He looked upon a Chinaman as rather a superior order of monkey, suitable for exhibition in a cage, but not to be regarded as possessing the ordinary rights of an adopted American resident. If he could have looked forward twenty-five years, and foreseen the extent to which these barbarians would throng the avenues of employment, he would, no doubt, have been equally amazed and disgusted. Indeed, the capture of Ki Sing was made through his influence, as Taylor, a man from Ohio, was disposed to let him alone.

Soon a crowd gathered around the terrified Chinaman and his captors, and he was plied with questions, some of a jocular character, by the miners, who were glad of anything that relieved the monotony of their ordinary life.

"What's your name?" asked one.

The Chinaman gazed at the questioner vacantly.

"What's your name, you haythen?" repeated O'Reilly, emphasizing the inquiry by a powerful shake.

"My name Ki Sing," answered the Mongolian nervously.

"Where did you come from, old pigtail?"

"My name Ki Sing, not Pigtail," said the Chinaman, not understanding the meaning of the epithet.

This answer appeared to be regarded by the crowd as either witty or absurd, for it elicited a roar of laughter.

"Never mind what your name is, old stick in the mud! We'll call you whatever we please. Where do you come from?"

"Me come from 'Flisco."

It is well known that a Chinaman cannot pronounce the letter r, which in his mouth softens to l, in some cases producing a ludicrous effect.

"What have you come here for, Cy King, or whatever your name is."

"My name Ki Sing."

"Well, it's a haythen name; anyhow," remarked Mr. Patrick O'Eeilly. "Before I'd have such a name, I'd go widout one intirely. Did you hear the gintleman ask you what you came here for?"

"You bling me," answered Ki Sing shrewdly.

There was another laugh.

"That Chinee ain't no fool!" said Dick Roberts.

"What made you leave China?" he asked.

"Me come to Amelica fol gold."

"Hi, ho! That's it, is it? What are you going to do with your gold when you find it?"

"Cally it back to China."

"And when you've callied it back, what'll you do then?"

"Me mally wife, have good time and plenty money to buy lice."

Of course, Ki Sing's meaning was plain, but there was a roar of laughter, to which he listened with mild-eyed wonder, evidently thinking that the miners who so looked down on him were themselves a set of outside barbarians, to whom the superior civilization of China was utterly unknown. It is fortunate that his presumption was not suspected by those around him. No one would have resented it more than Mr. Patrick O'Reilly,