Brown faces in old limehouse

From Nights in London, Burke's overly colourful and lurid account of travels around pre-war London:

Each whispering house seems an abode of dread things. Each window seems filled with frightful eyes. Each corner, half-lit by a timid gas-jet, seems to harbour unholy features. 

A black man, with Oriental features, brushes against you. 

You collide with a creeping yellow man. He says something—it might be Chinese or Japanese or Philippinese jargon. 

A huge Hindoo shuffles, cat-like, against the shops.

At the mouth of Pennyfields is a cluster of Chinks. You may see at once that they dislike you. 

You are in Limehouse. The peacefulness seems to be that attendant upon underhand designs, and the twilight is that of people who love it because their deeds are evil.