CHAPTER VIII.

——"All the deep
Is restless change." * * *

PREPARATIONS FOR THE NORTH.​—​AMOY.​—​WUSUNG, AND WHAT BEFELL US THERE.

Whatever pretensions to beauty our ship may have possessed on leaving England—and that she possessed some it is but fair to add—have been greatly marred by the late voyage, and especially by the washing down we encountered on the trip from Manilla. The effect has been to reduce our once fairy and glistening hull to a jaundiced mass of rust and stains. Therefore are we to go into "weeds." Black certainly gives an iron-clad a more man-of-war look, and a more war-like effect, to say nothing of the superior ease with which it can be kept clean.

January 22nd.—The Chinese new-year's day.—I should consider even such a poor account of the Chinese as this professes to be very incomplete, did it not contain something as to the manner the people observe the festival of the new year. And just a word before I start. It must not be supposed that I gained the information, if it be worthy to be classed as such, on a first visit to Hong Kong. This part of my "journal," including the previous chapter, has received the corrections and additions of nearly four years' experience.

The Chinese new year—a movable feast—depending, like all their chronological measurements, on the motions of the moon, may occur as early as it does this year, or it may fall as late as the middle of February. It is to the celestials what Christmas day is to us, and is observed by every true Chinaman most religiously: not, be it understood, religiously in our and the common acceptation of the term—for China has no religion—it possesses a gigantic superstition; but between a superstition and a religion, I need scarcely add, a vast difference exists. To the practical mind of John Chinaman, religious observances are made to subordinate themselves to worldly interests.

During the time we have been on the station the Shanghai district was once suffering from extreme drought. The rain-god was appealed to—still no rain came. Well, what was to be done? This. The god was admonished, that if rain came not within a certain period something terrible would happen to him. Still no rain. The exasperated priests and people then took measures to execute their threat. Putting a rope around the idol, the people, with their united efforts, pulled him to the ground to suffer further outrages at the hands of an ungrateful mob. Thus much for their religion. But to continue.