CHINATOWN

Press, Volume LXII, Issue 12507, 21 May 1906, Page 8

CHINATOWN

ITS SECRETS REVEALED

'Strange is tho scene where Sau Francisco's Cuiiiatowa stood," cays Mr W. W. Everton, who reached Los Angelas among the refugees. "No neap oi smoking ruins murke tho site of the wooclen warrens, where the eLant-eyed men of tho Orient dwelt in thousands Tho place is pitted with deep holes, and seared with <Lark passageways, from whoso depths ooine smoko wreathe. All the wood has gone and the winds are ctleaking the ashes. "Men—white ini>n —never knew the depth of Chinatown's underground city,' , t-jaid Mr Evertoii. "They often talked ci theio subterranean runways, and Dianv of them had gone beneath the street levels two and threo stories. But now that Chinatown has been unmasked f or the destroyed buildings were only a mask—men from tho hillsides have looked on where in places they can sco passages 100 feet deop. The tire swept tiiis Mongolian section clean. It left not a shred of tho painted wooden in one. It ate down to the ground, and the interior lies bare. "Joss houses and mission schools, grocery stores and opium dens, gambling hells and theatres—all of them went. Tiio buildings blazed up like the tissue paper lanterns vied when the guttering candles touched their sides. "From this place I, following thejire saw hundreds of fright-crazed "yellow men flee. In their arms they bore tb»i.r opium pipes, their money bags, their silks and their children. Beside them ran the baggy-trousered woniea of the surface. Far beneath the 6treetlevel in those cellars aoid passageways were other lives."