I once beheld an episode of Chinese immigration.

[nzbc]

I once beheld an episode of Chinese immigration. The steamer I was travelling by lay two days in Port Chalmers, and alongside was a strange-looking hulk that had just arrived with four hundred Chinamen from Hong Kong. I saw none of the four hundred, only the Chinamen officers but somehow, in the darkness, I think, seventy of the poor creatures were taken on board my vessel en route for the West Coast. They were put in the luggage hold, and their food, boiled rice, was lowered to them there. Once I went to the edge to see them receive it, but I never repeated the experiment. They were pushing, jabbering, and yelling, and the awful smell that steamed up from them recalled to me the worst stories of slave-ships. Was this material to build a colony with 'I do not think such a scene could be enacted now, but tho greed of gold is a terrible force Then we are told that the Chinamen within the colony are actually on the decrease. That may be so. Statistics may, or may not, be exact. But we know there is no decrease within and near our cities. The trade of greengrocery has passed over to them in Wellington, and has been prevented from passing in Christchurch only by the vigorous action of the Fruiterers' Association. Our laundresses feel their encroachments. Our market gardeners are retiring from their competition, worsted in tho fight. At least one of our goldflelds has been wholly resigned to them; Round Hill, in Southland. True it is, that on the diggings, as among the cabbages, the Chinese can teach us a great deal. Patient, industrious, frugal, law-abiding they are; but aliens withal. They live far below the standard of colonial comfort that they may save money enough to return to China with. Lest they should die here, arrangements are made for interment in their native land. They might be encouraged to marry and thus incorporate with our race, subject to our sanitary regulations, &c. Being here they have a right to be treated just the same as other people. "We owe that to them and to ourselves. THE CHINESE QUESTION
Star , Issue 5614, 11 July 1896, Page 7 paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/cgi-bin/paperspast?a=d&cl=search&d=TS18960711.2.79&srpos=10&e=-------100--1----0chinese+fruiterers+west+coast--