How about the Chinese vices? Are they a stench to Heaven as the Hindu's? I can testify that they certainly are not open, and they certainly are not aggressive, and they certainly do not claim vice as a right; for I went through Vancouver's Chinatown with only a Chinaman as an escort (not through "underground dens," as one paper reported it) after ten at night; and the vices that I saw were innocent, mild, pallid, compared to the white-man vices of Little Italy, New York, or Upper Broadway. We must have visited in all a dozen gambling joints, two or three midnight restaurants, half a dozen opium places and two theaters; and the only thing that could be remotely constructed into disrespect was the amazement on one drunken white face on the street that a white woman could be going through Chinatown with a Chinaman. Instead of playing for ten and one hundred dollars, as white men and women gamble up-town, the Chinese boys were huddling intently over dice boxes, or playing fan-tan with fevered zeal for ten cents. Instead of drinking absinthe, one or two sat smoking heavily, with the abstracted stare of the opium victim. In the midnight restaurants some drunken sailors sat tipsily, eating chop suey. Goldsmiths were plying their fine craftsmanship. Presses were turning out dailies with the news of the Chinese revolution. Grocery stores, theaters, markets, all were open; for Chinatown never sleeps. CHAPTER X WHAT PANAMA MEANS I It now becomes apparent why British Columbia was described as the province where East meets West and works out Destiny. On the other side of the Pacific lies Japan come to the manhood of nationality, demanding recognition as the equal of the white race and room to expand. Behind Japan lies China, an awakened giant, potent for good or ill, of half a billion people, whose commerce under a few years of modern science and mechanics is bound to equal the commerce of half Europe. It may in a decade bring to the ports that have hitherto been the back doors of America an aggregate yearly traffic exceeding the four billion dollars' worth that yearly leave Atlantic ports for Europe. Canada is now the shortest route to "Cathay"; the railroads across Canada offer shorter route from China to Europe than Suez or Horn, by from two to ten thousand miles. Then there is India, another awakened giant, potent for good or ill, of three hundred million people--two hundred to the square mile--clamoring for recognition as British subjects, clamoring for room to expand.