Chinamen.

Cromwell Argus, Volume IV, Issue 199, 2 September 1873, Page 7

Chinamen.

A contributor to the Dunedin Guardian, in describing a visit be paid to the Lunatic Asylum, has the following observations upon Chinamen : “ Did yon ever see a mad Chinaman 1 There are six of them in die Lunatic Asylum, who are said to be imd. Now there, if you will, are cases for the Hon. Captain Fraser. How does anyone know that they are mad 1 Who made the nodical examination ? It is no joke to talc to a Chinaman at any time, even through the medium of an interpreter, hut to question him as to his madness I regard as nearly impos sible. As for their own doctors or interpreters pronouncing them mad, that I look upon as sheer nonsense. Anyone who was in Victoria ten years.ago will bear me out in this. Chinamen, as a rule, are peaceful, industrious fellows, wiio will work ground on which Europeans would starve, and whose pertinacity in growing cabbages amongst paving stones by the aid of liquid manure is beyond praise, as is indeed their ingenuity in robbing hen roosts and cleaning out puddling machines ; but as for their going mad I do not believe it. It is just a piece of what was the custom of Bendigo in the happy old days. If a robbery were committed and a Chinaman were suspected, the Chinese policemen went into the camp, brought up a Chinaman, and a

number of witnesses who swore the thing home to him at once. As the accused could never speak English, and his only mode of communication was the interpreter, it followed that the people in Court, were quite ignorant whether he admitted his guilt or protested his innocence. Knowing, too, that Chinamen will swear that there is no hole in a ladder, or will swear one right through an iron pot, 1 am doubtful of the result of any legal process in which the}' are concerned. That is one idiosyncrasy about tl*, a. Another is that you never can telH'l—uher from which. There is but one Chirianian whom I should undertake to recognise again. Two fellows caught him cleaning out a‘ puddling machine in California Gully, Bendigo, in 1863. As usual in such cases they were countrymen of mine, Germans. As they put it themselves in evidence at the Police Court the next day, “ they chastised him vid a hoe,” —that is, they operated on his head and face for ten minutes with a thing weighing about 141bs. I could swear to him wherever I met him.”