I was told that the wood from which the largest hotel in Chinatown, its Palace hotel so to speak, was constructed in the early days, was brought around Cape Horn, and cost $350 per thousand feet.

This was before saw-mills were erected in the forests among the foothills and on the slopes of the Sierras.

The kitchen of the big boarding house was a novelty.

It was nothing in any respect like the well-appointed kitchens of our hotels with their great ranges and open fire-places where meats may be roasted slowly on the turnspit.

On one side of the kitchen there was a kind of stone-parapet about two feet and a half high, and on the top of this there were eight fire-places.
As the Chinamen cook their own food there might be as many as eight men here at one time.