As with riding mules and carts, so with the boat, an agreement was necessary, and this the village schoolmaster drew up for us; but by this time our skipper had returned, and was furious at finding that such a grand opportunity of squeezing the foreigner had slipped through his fingers. He did his best to frighten our new friend into backing out of his bargain, but did not quite succeed, and eventually went off down stream in a towering rage. We still had one more difficulty to overcome, a somewhat serious one, and one we did not quite understand, but eventually it transpired that our new skipper was trying to buy an old boat, not wanting to take his own to Pao T'eo and perhaps get her frozen in there. The owner of the old boat saw his opportunity, and was not slow to take advantage of it, as he would not take less than Ts.30, about three times its value under ordinary circumstances.
At last everything was settled, and about 11 a.m. we started, soon passing the wool-boats, which were tied up as usual. We found our craft pretty leaky, but by laying down a flooring of boughs and straw, and keeping up constant baling, we kept her very comfortable, and after all our chief anxiety was to travel rapidly. Part of our agreement was that we were to stop at Shih-Tsui-Tsi to take in fresh supplies, but that for every unnecessary delay the boatmen were to be fined one tael.
| Shun chih. 1644–1662 | K'ang hsi: 1662–1723 |
| Yungchêng. 1723–1736 | K'(ch)'ien lung. 1736–1796 |
| K(ch)iak'(ch)'ing 1796–1821 | Tao kuang 1821–1851 |
| Hsienfêng 1851–1862 | T'ung chih . 1862–1878 |
ALL THE "CASH" ISSUED FROM THE FIRST OF THE EMPERORS OF THE TS'ING OR MANCHU DYNASTY.
The stream was very strong, and, as the weather was cold, we used to row with the long sweeps to keep ourselves warm during the day, and the boatmen, of whom there were four, including the owner, rowed at night to keep themselves awake. This boat was built exactly the same as the other, but as there was no cargo we had plenty of room, and stood on the partitions to row; another advantage of having no cargo was that we drew very little water, and scarcely ever touched the bottom. The country on either shore was very flat and uninteresting, while the river, sometimes about two miles in width, was a succession of mud banks and shallows.
At five o'clock on the 9th November we got to Shih-Tsui-Tsi, and presented the letter of credit we had received from Chen-Lao-Pan. The agent then kindly gave us a guide, who took us to various shops, where we bought provisions, mostly bread and vegetables, for the rest of the journey to Pao T'eo. We did not, however, succeed in getting any meat, as there was only one sheep available, and that was not worth buying.
Having made our purchases, we returned to the office, where we found our money ready for us; part of this was in silver and part in cash. The latter was of very inferior quality, but, as we were getting it out of civility, and not in the way of business, we could not well say anything. The Chinese cash seems to have been purposely invented to deceive and cheat the unwary; to begin with, every Emperor makes his own cash, but these are not issued from the mint until after his death, and many Emperors have thought fit to economize by issuing inferior coins, which, instead of being about the size of our penny, are rather smaller than a farthing and very roughly made; in fact a very fair estimate of the various Emperors' characters can be drawn from the cash they have issued.
The accompanying diagrams show the cash of all the Emperors of the reigning Ts'ing or Manchu dynasty, but only full-sized specimens have been chosen. These inferior cash may be accepted as current coin in one place, while in the next no one will look at them. Cash are always done up in strings, either of five hundred or a thousand, and look not unlike strings of sausages, each sausage being represented by a hundred cash; and here, again, they have devised a means of fraud, for in some places eighty-five cash count as a hundred, in others ninety, ninety-two, ninety-three, and so on, as the case may be, consequently whenever one arrives at a new town, one has to enquire all about its coinage.