The head reeled. We felt stilled. We must get out in the fresh morning breeze. Something broke somewhere about the heart. We went out and got into our jinrikshas, and went away home as in midnight darkness, calling upon the name of our God all the way. Life on this hell-scorched earth has never held the same happy delusions for us since, but there is a city out of sight "whose Builder and Maker is God." That we will seek. CHAPTER 16. SLAVERY IN THE UNITED STATES. During the incumbency of a certain Mayor of San Francisco a surprising condition of things was brought into existence. There was a large tract of land in the heart of Chinatown owned by an American family, relatives, it is declared, of said Mayor, the passages entering which were deliberately blocked by gates, so as to stop all entrance excepting to patrons of the place. This section lay between Dupont and Stockton, Jackson and Pacific streets, and included within its enclosure Baker and New World alleys, connecting Dupont street with Sullivan Place, which divided this tract in two. Gates were erected at the entrance of the two alleys on Dupont street, and two gates blocked the entrance to Sullivan Place, at the end opening upon Pacific street. Within this region, both above and below ground, were housed numbers of Chinese slave girls, particularly in Baker alley, where, it is said, were placed the young girls of tender years, generally about fifteen years old, when first brought over the water, or when first initiated into brothel slavery, having served their apprenticeship as domestic slaves. We are informed that fully seven-tenths of the domestic slave girls found in Chinese homes in America--and every well-to-do Chinese family (except Christians) keeps at least one or two slaves--end their lives in immorality. Some of them when they become old enough are seized by their masters as concubines, others are sent to the brothels. Reports of conditions at Hong Kong which we have already quoted, speak of the special celebration of the entrance of a virgin into prostitution, and the high prices paid by patrons for this initiation, but leave it obscure as to the nationality of the men who initiate girls into the life of a brothel slave. But Chinese in San Francisco do not hesitate to make the charge that Chinamen recoil, through moral sense or superstition, from deflowering a virgin, and that this horrible privilege is purchased at a special price by the white, not the yellow patrons of Chinese houses of ill-fame. Baker alley has probably been the scene of more terrible brutality of this sort than any other part of San Francisco. Before the rubbish was cleared away, in the oasis of a broad desert of ashes in the burned city, we visited this region, and found carpenters busy at the work of reconstructing brothels. The slave pen was existent again, and we entered the gateway leading to it and gazed upon the rapidly growing structures within.