A Smuggler's Paradise

Looking at the map one may see tha' the northwest corner of the. .state o: Washington is torn off, and the space that is left is filled with water, dottec with an archipelago. The island o: Vancouver fits partially into the gaping corner as if it had been torn out b; somo gigantic convulsión. The tatter and debris of the rent form the archi pelago. Our national interest centerec in that corner long1 ago when that por tion of the boundary was in dispute, unt the tensión of a war feeliog was onl; relieved when a foreign arbitrator sefctled tho boundary, and gave us th island of San Juan, the most importan in the group. The city of Victoria writes .lulian Ralph in Harper's Maga zinc, confines nearly all the population on that corner of Vancouver island: the city of Vancouver is the m;iiii settle ment on the British Columbia shore and on our borders are such little placee as Whateom, New Dungeness, and Por Angeles, in the stat of Washington Port Townsend, on Puget sound, is the principal American town near by, anc the headquarters of the scanty f orce o: customs officials who are supposed to guard against the smugg-ling, and who are entitled to the presumption that they are doing their best in this direc tion. Victoria has only twenty thou sand population, Vancouver fewer still and the islands only here and there a house. Deer abound upon these islands which are heavily timbered, and the waterways between them feel the keels of but few vessels - of none at all, exoept the smallest craft, outside the main channels. It would be hard to imagine a more difficult región to pólice, or a f airer field for smugglers. Old London itself has scarcely a greater tangle o: crooked and confusing thoroughfares than this archipelago possesses, anc these waterways are so narrow anc sheltered that mere oarsmen can safely and easily travel many of them. It is a smuggler's paradise. Those who transport the Chinamen are all white men. The resident Chinese act as their confederates and as the agents of the smuggled men, but do no part of the actual smuggling, that is to say, the boating-. The great smuggling is of opium. The introduction ol the Chinese themselves is of small account, so f ar as the defiance of our laws is concerned, as compared vvith the introduction of opium. Yet that extensive business also iscarried on by white men. The Chinese can not pass to and fro as white men can, therefore they leave the traffic to the whites. These white men are of the class one would expect to find in such business. A government employé in Victoria told me that I would "be surprised to know what important and respectable persons were connected with the smuggling," but as he gave me no further enlightenment, and as I failed to obtain any proof that any number of socalled respectable men profited directly by the business, I did not and do not believe that there are many such. Those who do the smuggling of the Chinese are unprincipled and reckless charaoters. They make their bargains with those Chinese whose business it is to arrange for the carriage of their countrymen into our country. The boats employed are small sail-boats, and quite as small steam-launches. When the owner of one of these boats has secured a sufficient number of Chinese to make the venture profitable if it succeeds, the ourney is made at night, without com jliance with the law which requires vessels sailing after dark to display ights at their sides. At times the contrabands are landed near Whatcom, at times near Port Angeles or New Dungeness. San Juan island, within our Dorder, is only twelve miles from Victoria, and has a few Chinese resident upon it. At times Chinamen are carried there. Once there they can cross to the mainland with more freedom, and with a possibility of obtaining testimony to the effect that they are and ïave long been domiciled on American soil. The sinugglers charge twenty dojars to twenty-five dollars for landing each Chinaman on our coast; twenty dollars is the ordinary and usual charge. AVherever the Chinamen are anded they find either men of their own nationality to secrete them, or white men awaiting their arrival, and ready to take them to some Chinese quarters. Once on land the danger of arrest is greatly lessened, and after a newly-smuggled Chinaman has made his way to one of the larger towns or cities near the coast, his fear of detention by our government vanishes entirely.