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Updated: June 15, 2025
Had Jack and Murray not been prisoners, with the possibility of the pirates changing their minds and cutting their throats, they would have been excessively amused at watching the proceedings of the crew, and rather enjoyed their cruise on board the pirate. On deck there was an erection like a diminutive caboose, but which was a temple or joss-house.
The word Joss, which we use for a Chinese idol or god, seems to be derived from the Portugese, Dios, or rather it is the Pidgin English of Dios. A Joss-House then is a Chinese idol or god-house. We are now standing before such a place of worship. This is on the corner of Kearney and Pine Streets, and is built of brick, and as we look up we see that it is three stories high.
For some have thought to trace in the older races an apathy as with the Chinese, a religion of moral maxims and some few joss-house superstitions, which they themselves full well know to be nought, worshipping their ancestors, but with no vital living force, like that which drove Mohammed's bands to zealous fury, like that which sent our own Puritans over the sea in the Mayflower.
Abram Sclanders' unhappy half-witted son haunted this boat-house, it seemed, storing his shrimping nets there, any other things as well, a venerable magpie's hoard of scraps and lumber; using it as a run-hole, too, when the other lads hunted and tormented him according to their healthy, brutal youthful way. A regular joss-house, he'd made of it.
As the hen is sacred in the eyes of the Chinaman, sacred as the peacock to Juno or the ibis to the Egyptians, they swear by her head, and an oath thus taken may not be broken. One of the images which I saw in the Joss-House was pointed out as the God of the Door; and how suggestive this title and this office!
The question was addressed to the policeman, not to me. Except for a formal greeting when we had met, Luella had spoken no word to me during the evening. "Here's the biggest joss-house in town," said Corson. "We might as well see it now as any time." "Oh, do let us see those delightfully horrible idols," cried Mrs. Bowser.
As I went in, a pungent cloud met me incense." "Incense?" "His rooms smelt like a joss-house; I told him so. He said he was experimenting with Kyphi the ancient Egyptian stuff used in the temples. It was all dark and hot; phew! like a furnace. Ferrara's rooms always were odd, but since the long vacation I hadn't been in. Good lord, they're disgusting!" "How?
At the end of the Bazaar, and separated from it by a small stream running into the main river, which is crossed by a wooden bridge, is the Chinese joss-house, an imposing edifice erected by the principal Chinese merchants here at a cost of over 10,000 dols. Stone buildings cease here, and the Malay town extends for half a mile up both banks of the river.
Very few of the pictures in the great art galleries are after the style of face which you see in the Orient. Hence there are Dutch Madonnas, and Italian and French and English types. There were no worshippers in the Joss-House at the hour when I visited it. Worship is not a prominent feature of Chinese religious life.
As we turn from the Joss-House and walk away from this bit of heathendom in the heart of an active, stirring, prosperous, great American city with its Christian civilisation and its Christian Churches and its Christian homes, we cannot but ask ourselves what would have been the history of the Pacific States, of California with its nearly eight hundred miles of coast, if the Chinese had settled here centuries ago?
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