The Evening Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News, and Echo. WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 30, 1888.

Auckland Star, Volume XIX, Issue 204, 30 August 1888, Page 4

The Evening Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News, and Echo.

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 30, 1888.

For the cause that lacks assistance, For the wrong that needs resistance, Tor the future in the distance, And the good that we can do. :

The action of the: Legislative Council upon the Chinese Bill for a 'while threatened to prevent the enactment b* restrictive legislation.this session, but after repeated conferences between committees of both Houses the Bill: has passed. If Dr.; Pollen and some of his colleagues in the Council had been allowed to have their way, the Celestial stranger, shut out from the other colonies, might have found a happy hunting ground in New Zealand. Upon a motion by Colonel Brett to amend the clause limiting the number of Chinese brd'ught to the colony by any vessel,:so that the proportion allowed should be five for every one hundred tons, instead of one to every hundred tons, the names in favour of the amendment were the Hons. Col. Brett, Messrs; Buckley, Fraser, Holmes, Martin, Peter, Pharazyn, Pollen, Scotland^ Shrimski. If the alteration proposed had been adopted and sanctioned by the House of Representatives, the mail steamers might have landed a hundred and fifty Chinese per month, and a steady stream could have been poured in weekly by the Union-Company's steamers. The Bill, as finally passed, however; although not ;j to ;,prohibition, will limit the influx very materially, and we hope that before another; year the whole of the Australasian colonies will have cpme to an agreement upon the attitude to be adopted towards Mongolian immigra--tion. :I : - : - '■:-■ " Johnnyy" as he exhibits himself in New Zealand at present, hardly seems a proper subject for such an .outbreak; of popular resentment. His vegetables have become almost a household, necessity,: and there is little in his general demeanour to provoke hostilities; In California, however, .he .appears in a. much more objectionable aspect' and in Sydney and Melbourne, the evil has assumed a pro: nounceH character, The municipal and, police authorities are perfectly pewerless to eepewlth theiyile associa-

tions which appear to be inseparable from a dense Chinese population. In Sydney, despite the frequent police raids that, have been made, the Chinese quarter is a menace to the moral and physical health of the inhabitants of the city. Within the last fortnight, two representatives of the " Sydney News " and a gentleman unconnected with the press, being sceptical about some of the stories tola of Chinese habitations, paid a visit in company with an officer of police, and the results of this unsavoury excursion are graphically described in the " News." The reality, they declare, surpassed the worst reports they had ever heard of Chinese filth. We have only space for one or two passages : — • •

Leaving Elizabeth-street and journeying along the northern side of Goulburn-street for a disfcance of some few yards, a casual visit was paid to sundry houses occupied by Chinamen" of the very lowest grademen who are known to •be not only vile in their habits, but criminally bad — receivers of stolen property, and so forth. In two instances, they were occupied by Chinese in the ratio of twelve to a room as many feet square, and each and every one reeked with the fumes of opium. The special features alluded to consisted in the ingenious contriving of secret doors and concealed trap hatches, which were only discovered after the most careful search by the well-nigh baffled but astute police officer. These appurtenances, upon being opened, discovered ricketty staircases and ladders, winch in their turn led the way to a series of apartments and holes hidden away in the recesses of the roofs, and in which dozens of miserablelooking creatures killed their time in playIng at fan-tan or in sucking away at opium pipes. But even these horrible sights had yet to be eclipsed, and eclipsed from a source least of all expected. Our guide led the way to a dingy opening from Goulburn-street into a thoroughfare whose only merit was its darkness. Offensive and rancorous odours roso up on every side, and as the party continued their walk in silence, and with handkerchiefs pressed tightly over thair mouths, : civilisation seemed to have come to a full stop, and Eastern savagery to have commenced. Door after door, hut after hut, and hovel after hovel, was passed in- rapid succession —the more rapid the better—and then the leader makes a sudden halt, and invites his followers to note what appears to be a neat terrace of newly-whitewashed and cleanlooking workmen's cottages, Thesecottages strike the observeraspresentingquitearelief in their cleanliness and external order to the dismal and malodorous habitations surrounding them, and it was not without some feeling of suspicion that the party obeyed the man's behest to "more closely examine, signor." The subsequent investigation, however, revealed what had hitherto escaped all observation, andthat was that those seeming cottages possessed no doors or or windows, and that all means of ingress and egress had been cut off. This startling appearance becomes heightened by tho deadly quiet that reigns inside the building, and for all the information its sombre exterior might afford a passer-by might, with every exercise^ of reason, go on hia way under the impression that he was leaving behind him the catacombs of a city. The newly - constituted guide/ however, now-takes upon himself to enlighten the party, and points to'a low wooden doorway hidden awuy come distance along the lane. Through this aperture the explorers are invited to enter, arid Soon the whole party of five are standing in the foul black darkness, concealing unheard-of filth. A hujriecL,. scampering across tho rotten flooring denotes the passage' of a herd of healthy rats, and then one of the party , striking a match illuminates the gloom that ! could have been before well felt. The eight presented, defies description and baffles imagination. Tho clean terrace of " workmen a cottages "had .disappeared, and in their place existed a filthy Mongolian dungeon. If a hollow square can be conceived^'lined on each side with a wooden balcony, which in its turn, served as an exterior to series of bunks fastened to the outer walls; if it can "then be understood that in these non-venti-lated arid pestilential crevices 132 Chinamen were sleeping profoundly in a space that would have afforded but ill accommodation for a dozen Europeans; and if, in order that another part of the picture can be presented and understood, it can be appreciated that to-morrow's vegetables for sale in tho streets lay huddled up below in this detestable hole, then some faint idea of this newly-found-out barracks will have been given. Ascending the balcony by means of a weak and unhealthy-looking wooden ladder, the party entered some seventeen or eighteen so-callod apartments, and without exception found each place literally swarming with sleeping Celestials and risky' rats. The entire square appeared to have a superficial area of about 4,200 ft, I but the rooms (?) in which the inhabitants iof this mansion paid their respects to Somnusl himself could not have provided the capacity per man usually afforded a dog in his kennel. This dormitory, as was before stated, extended, along the entire square, and opium smoking and other Chinese delights abounded.

Without following this adventurous party in their explorations further, beyond noting that among, other delicacies in this (i black hole '■ they discovered a decaying bullock's head and the half-eaten carcase of a rat hanging upon vthe walls, enough has been said to show that the inhabitants of New Zealand are wise in nipping the evil in the bud.