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By Root 4057 0

solemnly to the hall, where a flight of nine scrubbed steps led to the pavilion in which the ancestral tablets were kept. Here he deposited his gifts and made obeisance to those from whom his family honor had descended. He then left the pavilion and joined the members of his family, standing at attention while his father prayed and while his uncle began a bombastic speech: "I am going to buy land on this side, and some more on this side, and what you have seen so far is really nothing. There will be a spacious hall, and where our tablets now stand, we will have not wood but the finest stone. The Kees will be known for their magnificence." And then his crafty eyes fell upon the extensive family gathered before him and he sighed to himself: "All those poor idiots starving here year after year when they could be making their fortunes in America." But he knew from experience that the Kees were not the kind of people who would venture forth to unknown lands, and he became lost in admiration of himself for having had the courage to do so.

He was therefore in a receptive frame of mind when a surprising event occurred in the Golden Valley, one totally without precedent.

It was on April 19, 1865, when the fields were beginning to recover from the flood, that a merchant from Canton appeared in the Low Village, leading an American. Normally, any stranger who had wandered from the quays of Canton would have been executed, but this man was different, for as a scholar he had requested freedom to travel inland, and it had been granted, so that now he stood in the bright spring sunlight, looking with an appreciative eye upon the strange world thus uncovered to him.

It took the Cantonese merchant about four seconds to recognize that in this village Uncle Chun Fat was the man to deal with, so he said directly, "The stranger has come all the way from the Fragrant Tree Country to hire people to work in the sugar fields."

Chun Fat stood enraptured, and his mind leaped back to that memorable day when his ship had stopped in Honolulu and he had been allowed to come on deck to see the great green hills behind the city. How marvelously beautiful those few hours had been, for storms had swept down from the heights and Chun Fat had watched the copious rain spread out like a blanket of benevolence over the rich land. "The Fragrant Tree Country!" he cried. "To go there would be like going to heaven itself."

Excited with a wild joy he ran into his house and reappeared with a sandalwood box which he had purchased in Canton for the preservation of his silks, and he passed it around his family, explaining: "Smell it! In the country of which he speaks the air is like this twenty-four hours a day."

"Is it better than America?" his nephew asked.

Chun Fat hesitated. He had loved the wild cold mountains of California, and the lusty grandeur of San Francisco and the Mexican women with their songs, but he could not forget the Fragrant Tree Country. "It is a softer land," he said.

"Could a man make money there?" Mun Ki pressed.

"It's gentler," his uncle replied, and Mun Ki's mind was made up in that instant, for he thought: "If my uncle loves a land more for its beauty than for its money, it must be a wonderful land indeed."

Mun Ki was therefore the first to step forward and volunteer. "I'll go to the Fragrant Tree Land," he announced firmly, and when the American in the dark suit held out his hand, the Cantonese merchant shouted in Punti, "Take the hand, you idiot! Take it!"

This infuriated Uncle Chun Fat, who snapped: "We do not require a Cantonese fool who has shoes like rags to tell us how to act. Stand back or I'll break your head." Then, to the American, he said, in English, "Me Chun Fat, long time California. My boy, he go."

The American again extended his hand graciously and said, "I am Dr. John Whipple. I would like to hire about three hundred men for the sugar fields."

Uncle Chun Fat looked at the slim, gray-haired American in the expensive suit and instinctively recognized him as a big boss. "How much you offer to pay that one?" he asked,