Millions of Chinamen instead of thousands might now be in possession
of that great region of our land, and great cities like Canton and
Fuchau, Pekin and Tientsin, might rise up on the view instead of
San Diego and Los Angeles, Sacramento and San Francisco, with their
idolatry and peculiar life and customs. Another question may be asked
here by way of speculation. What would have been the effect of Chinese
occupation of the Pacific coast on the Indians of all the region
west of the Rocky Mountains? Would the followers of Confucius have
incorporated them into their nationality, supplanted them, or caused
them to vanish out of sight? What problems these for the ethnologist!
Doubtless there would have been intermarriages of the races with new
generations of commingled blood. And what would have been the result
of this? There is a story which I have read somewhere, that long
years ago a Chinese junk was driven by the winds to the shores of
California, and that a Chinese merchant on board took an Indian maiden
to wife and bore her home to the Flowery Kingdom, and that from
this marriage was descended the famous statesman Li Hung Chang.
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