Transcriber's Note:

Obvious typographical errors have been corrected. Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation in the original document have been preserved.

On [page 18], "sanpans" should possibly by "sampans".

THE WAY IN.

INTIMATE CHINA

The Chinese as I have
seen them. By Mrs.
Archibald Little, Author
of A Marriage in China

With 120 Illustrations

HUTCHINSON & CO.
Paternoster Row, London ... 1899

PRINTED BY
HAZELL, WATSON, AND VINEY, LD.,
LONDON AND AYLESBURY.

CONTENTS.

AFFAIRS OF STATE.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

DRY STATEMENTS.
(TO BE CARRIED WITH THE READER, IF POSSIBLE.)

7, Park Place, St. James's, S.W.

SHANGHAI FROM THE RIVER.

PRELUDE.
FIRST IMPRESSIONS.

Arriving in Shanghai.—My First Tea-season.—Inside a Chinese City.—Shanghai Gardens.—In the Romantic East at last!

I. Arriving in Shanghai.

It was in the merry month of May, 1887, that I first landed in China; but from the first there was nothing merry about China. It felt bitterly cold, after passing through the tropics; and in Shanghai one shivered in a warm wrap, as the wind blew direct from the North Pole straight at one's chest, till one day it suddenly turned quite hot, and all clothes felt too heavy. Every one almost knows what Shanghai is like. It has been admirably described over and over again, with its rows of fine European houses fronting the river, the beautiful public gardens and well-trodden grass-plats interposed between the two; with its electric lights and its carriages, and great European stores, at which you can buy everything you could possibly want only a very little dearer than in London. There used to be nothing romantic or Eastern about it. Now, darkened by the smoke of over thirty factories, it is flooded by an ever-increasing Chinese population, who jostle with Europeans in the thoroughfare, till it seems as if the struggle between the two races would be settled in the streets of Shanghai, and the European get driven to the wall. For the Chinaman always goes a steady pace, and in his many garments, one upon the top of the other, presents a solid, impenetrable front to the hurrying European; whilst the wheelbarrows on which his womankind are conveyed rush in and out amongst the carriages, colliding here and there with a coolie-drawn ricksha, and always threatening the toes of the foot-passenger. Too often there are no foot-pavements, and the whole motley crowd at its very varying paces is forced on to the muddy street. Ever and anon even now a closed sedan-chair, with some wealthy Chinaman from the adjacent Chinese city, threads its way in and out among the vehicles, noiseless and stealthy, a reminder of China's past glories. There are also now wholly Chinese streets in the foreign settlement, where all the shop-fronts are gorgeous with gilding and fine decorative Chinese characters, where all the shops have signs which hang perpendicularly across the street-way, instead of horizontally over the shop-front as with us, and where Chinese shopkeepers sit inside, bare to the waist, in summer presenting a most unpleasing picture of too much flesh, and in winter masses of fur and satin.

SHANGHAI CREEK, WITH DRAWBRIDGE.

Shanghai has got a capital racecourse, and theatre, and cricket-ground—grounds for every kind of sport, indeed. It has a first rate club, and an ill-kept museum. Its sights are the bubbling well and the tea-garden in the China town, believed by globe-trotters, but erroneously, to be the original of the willow-pattern plate. Beside this, there is what is called the Stone Garden, full of picturesque bits. A great deal that is interesting is to be seen in the China town by those who can detach their minds from the dirt; in one part all the houses have drawbridges leading to them. But even the Soochow Road in the foreign settlement has never yet been treated pictorially as it deserves. It is the Palais Royal of Chinese Shanghai. At the hour when carriage traffic may only pass one way because of the crowd, it would reward an Alma-Tadema to depict the Chinese dandies filling all its many balconies, pale and silken clad, craning their necks to see, and by the haughtiness of their gaze recalling the decadent Romans of the last days of the empire. Their silken garments, their arched mouths, the coldness of their icy stare, has not yet been duly depicted. Chun Ti Kung, by the late Mr. Claude Rees, is so far the only attempt to describe their life. Yet they, too, have souls possibly worth the awakening. With their long nails, their musk-scented garments, their ivory opium-pipes, and delicate arrangements of colours, they cannot be without sensibilities. Do they feel that the Gaul is at the gates, and that the China of their childhood is passing away?

It is this China of their childhood, with here an anecdote and there a descriptive touch, which I hope to make the English reader see dimly as in a glass in the following pages, which are not stored with facts and columns of statistics. People who want more detailed information about China, I would refer to Sir John Davis's always pleasant pages; or to my husband's Through the Yangtse Gorges, containing the result of years of observation; or to dear old Marco Polo's account of his travels in the thirteenth century, revivified by the painstaking labours of Colonel Yule, and thereby made into one of the best books on China extant. For my part, I shall endeavour to make the reader see China and the Chinese as I have seen them in their homes and at their dinner parties, and living long, oh! such long summer days among them, and yet wearier dark days of winter. And to make the reader the more feel himself amongst the scenes and sights I describe, I mean to adopt various styles, sometimes giving him the very words in which I at the time dashed off my impressions, all palpitating with the strangeness and incongruity of Chinese life, at others giving him the result of subsequent serious reflections.

But here let me record my first great disappointment, because it may be that of many another. Brown mud is the first thing one sees of China. Brown mud accompanies the traveller for miles along the Yangtse River, all along the Peiho, up to brown and muddy Tientsin, and on up to Peking itself. China generally is not at all like the willow-pattern plate. I do not know if I really had expected it to be blue and white; but it was a disappointment to find it so very brown and muddy.

II. My First Tea-season.

It was dull and leaden all the six hundred miles up the great river Yangtse; and at first it poured nearly all day and every day at Hankow, and we shivered over fires. Nevertheless, in spite of absolutely leaden skies and never a glimpse of sunshine, the coolies and the twenty-years-in-China-and-don't-speak-a-word-of-the-language men wore sun-hats, and pretended to get ill from the glare, when any one fresh from England would certainly say it was the damp. The floods were all the while advancing on what looked like a beleaguered city, when we went out on the plain outside, and gazed back at the city wall, with its dark water-line clearly marked all round close to the top.

The country round certainly did not tempt one to go out very often on to the rotten flag-stoned way by which one walked three or four miles in order to reach a one-mile distance as the crow flies, feeble-looking corn and marsh at either side, with an occasional tandem of buffaloes groaning not in unison with the discordant creaking of the cart they drew. Yet we plodded past the little homesteads, each planted on its own artificial hill, faced with stones on the side the floods come from. The very friendly people all used to come out of their cottages, and call out, "Do rest with us awhile," "Come in, do, and have some tea"; but till I spoke a little more Chinese, I did not care to repeat this often: though I rather enjoyed the first time going in and having tea, delicious tea, brought us at once—next a pipe, and then a bowl of water. Nothing could be friendlier than the people; and somehow or other I used to fancy from the first I held quite conversations with them. But what we either of us said to each other in words it is impossible to tell; there is so much one understands without knowing the words. So on and on we used to plod, resisting all kindly pressure to turn in, till gradually the reflection of the setting sun gave a red glow to the water in the ruts, and frogs hopped in numbers across the path, and bats whirled after mosquitoes. Then at last by an effort we summoned up will enough to turn, and plod just exactly the same way over the selfsame stones back to Hankow, the beleaguered city, with its avenues of over-arching willows, and beautiful Bund half a mile long—a mile walk up and down, therefore, as every one takes care to tell you the first day you arrive, as if afraid lest, stricken by a sort of midsummer madness, you should actually leave the English settlement, with its willows and its villas, and attempt to penetrate into the Chinese town.

TEA-GARDEN IN SHANGHAI CHINESE CITY.
Believed by globe-trotters to be the original of the willow-pattern plate.

The stories I heard about the Chinese town gave me quite a feeling of excitement the first time I went into it. People threatened me with horrible sights, and still more horrible smells. But I fancy those, who talk in this way, can know very little of the East End of London, and nothing of the South of France or Italian towns. Hankow certainly struck me as very fairly clean, considering how crowded its streets are, and the people at that time for the most part as wonderfully civil. I should not care to hear the shower of abuse, that would greet a foreigner in one of our English towns, who turned over and examined all the articles on a stall, then went away without buying anything, as English people do not hesitate to do there. The Kiangsi and Hunan Guild-houses are both well worth a visit, although the former has been in large measure burnt down, and thus stripped of those wonderful coloured tiles about which the few, who have seen them, are still enthusiastic. Most people have never seen them at all. As it is now, the temple to the god of literature at Hanyang has more charms for me, with its many curved roofs making such an harmonious, rich, dark medley. However, of course in Hankow no one in the month of May is thinking about architecture. "Thou art not science, but thou tea-chest art" is the riddle they were all engaged with, and they were very sad over it. For the tea was bad; and though the Chinamen had bound themselves under awful penalties to have no second crop, yet of course the second crop would be there soon. I looked sadly at the men from Hunan, sitting so truculently in their boats, with their pigtails twice coiled round their heads, counting over beforehand the gains they meant to take back home; for probably there would be none. We talked tea at breakfast and tiffin and dinner, and we took it at five and considered its quality. But that would not make the people at home give up Indian tea, with all its tannin and nerve-poisoning qualities. So in between-whiles we counted up how many suicides there were last tea-season. For Chinese have a fine sense of honesty, if not of honour; and merchants are apt to kill themselves, if they cannot meet their obligations. "There will be more suicides this year," said first one, then another.

Meanwhile, the pretty painted boxes streamed past the house at the rate of eighty a minute sometimes—always noiselessly carried by coolies in huge sun-hats, and too often through the dripping rain. And the great gamble went on, and the men who dropped in to call looked wearier and wearier. But that was all in 1887, which might almost be called the last year of the great China tea trade of which Hankow had since 1861 been the centre. There was quite a fleet of ocean steamers there even that year to take the tea away; in 1898, barely one for London. English people will not drink China tea. It is so delicate that, though in itself inexpensive, it comes dear from more leaf having to be used to produce the same strength of liquor. But it is soothing, whilst Indian tea puts a fresh strain upon our already overtaxed digestions.

PORTERS WAITING FOR WORK.

In old days the Hankow tea trade was a great business. Tea-tasters came out from England in crowds, arriving in May and going away in July. They would taste two hundred different teas, not swallowing the tea, but just savouring its flavour, and smelling it, and handling the leaf. Then the man who could not tell the same tea again when he went over the two hundred the second time was no tea-taster. They were pale men for the most part, of rather finely strung susceptibilities, or their palates would not have been so critical. And they did not care much for games of chance, they gambled so high in tea, a fortnight's business easily leading a man to win or lose £20,000.

Ah! the good old days of China tea and silk are gone. Are there better days yet to come in the new China that is to take the place of old China, which is passing away even as we talk about it?

III. Inside a Chinese City.

One of the most exciting moments of all my life in China was when I first found myself shut up within the walls and barred gates of Wuchang, the provincial capital of Hupeh, one of the rowdiest provinces of China. And of the three cities that meet together and almost join—Hankow and Wuchang being separated by the there three-quarter-mile wide Yangtse, and Hankow and Hanyang separated by the boat-covered Han—Wuchang has the reputation of being the most rowdy. It is there, of course, the Provincial Examinations are held; and when men assemble in their thousands away from their families and friends, they are in all countries apt to be unruly.

Probably, of all the hundreds of foreign tea-men who visited Hankow, barely one or two had been across the river to Wuchang. But a missionary, who was living alone there, and seemed to feel his loneliness, asked us to go over and spend the night with him; and with many doubts as to what kind of accommodation he could give us, and whether we should be inconveniencing him, we accepted. I have often been to Wuchang since then. But I remember still the thrill with which, when I went to bed that night, I stood at the window and listened to the strange, unfamiliar sounds from the street beyond the compound, or garden. There was the night-watchman crying the hours, and clacking his pieces of bamboo together to warn evil-doers to keep off. But he did it in a way I had not yet heard. Then there were such curious long drawn-out street cries, all unknown, and sounds of people calling to one another, and the buzz of a great city. And I suddenly realised, with a choking sense of emotion, that the gates were shut, and I was within there with a whole cityful of Chinese so hostile to foreigners, and especially to foreign women, that it had not been thought safe to let me walk through them to the missionary's house. Even the curtain of my sedan-chair had been drawn down, so that I might not be seen by any one.

Wuchang has always been specially interesting to me, because it was my first Chinese city. And it is so characteristic a one. Every Chinese city is supposed to be placed on hills representing a serpent and a tortoise, although the likeness has often to be helped out by a temple on the tortoise's head, or a pagoda to connect the serpent's coils. But at Wuchang the serpent and tortoise are very plainly visible. Then all Chinese cities are apt to be rude. But the people at Wuchang are so particularly rude. How often have not the gentlemen accompanying me, when in subsequent years I have dared to walk through its streets, had to separate themselves from me, and to walk backwards, exhorting the oncoming crowd of roughs to propriety of behaviour! Curiously enough, the roughest of Chinese roughs get red and uncomfortable, when you tell them you fear they have never learnt politeness, do not observe the rules of decorum, etc., etc. I learnt it as a patter simply from hearing it said in my own defence, and have often raised a blush since then by saying it myself. I doubt if the same results would be obtained by ever so eloquent a paraphrase of the fourth commandment down Whitechapel way. But Chinese, whether they follow them or not, seem all to have been taught to hold in respect the dicta of the ancients. To this day a quotation from Confucius will often settle a moot point in weighty affairs of State. Would that it were so among ourselves with a Christian text!

IV. Shanghai Public Gardens.

To those who have just arrived off a long sea voyage, as to those who from time to time come down from some roadless, gasless, shopless, but smell-ful up-country sojourn, there is one bit of Shanghai that is exceptionally refreshing and delightsome; and that is the garden by the river. At night, when the lamps are lit and mirrored in the water in rows and garlands of light, when the sea-breeze blows in freshly, and friends gather in the gardens, I have even heard it asserted by its greatest detractors, "Shanghai is as good as any other place by night."

THE BUBBLING WELL.

But it is in the mornings in winter, or in the before-dinner hours in summer, when the band plays, that you must go there, properly to know what the Shanghai Gardens are like. First and foremost, they are full of flowers—flowers with colours and scents. I do not know how many other people may be thus constituted, but there are occasions when I would as soon meet Keats' "Belle Dame Sans Merci" "alone and palely loitering" as wander through such unmitigated greenery as the Botanic Gardens at Singapore offer to the passing traveller, at least in the month of April. Kew Gardens are all too often depressing after the same fashion; though there one can always fall back upon the greenhouses to see

"How great Nature truly joys in red and green,

What sweet thoughts she thinks

In violets and pinks

And a thousand blushing hues made solely to be seen."

SOOCHOW CREEK, SHANGHAI.

Hongkong Gardens are very fair to see, resembling those of Babylon in being hanging gardens, gardens of terraces. But the way in which the Shanghai Gardens are fitted in between the Bund and the Soochow Creek, with the much-traversed Garden Bridge giving something definite to look at, and the river girdling it all—the river with its ever-moving panorama of swift ocean steamers and perky little steam-launches, and yachts and junks of deeply dyed sails, and brilliant coloured sanpans, all within a stone's-throw,—this situation makes the Shanghai Gardens a place not easily to be matched for passing away the after-sunshine hours. But flowers are the Shanghai Gardens' forte. They should be seen when they are all abloom with roses; or when lordly tulips dazzle the eye with their scarlet and gold, till it is fain to seek relief among those blue and white fairies dancing in the sunshine—sweet-scented hyacinths; or when the chrysanthemums are in season. All these flowers are seen against a background of glossy-leaved magnolias, with their pale sweet-scented blossoms, and oleander-trees, and pomegranates and acacias, all in their different seasons glorious with rose and scarlet or feathery pink and white blossoms.

At one season there is a borderful, but full to overflowing, as those borders almost always are, of the Japanese Lilium auratum, a large, almost arrogant, white lily, with a broad band of gold down each petal. A little while before, people went to the far garden across the road to see the fly-devouring flower, and inhale its fetid breath as of dead men's—not bones, certainly—and all uncleanness. Next the water-lilies claimed their attention, and the poetic rosy lotus flowers, one of which grew so fast, and with such precision of rectitude, that its bud forced its way right through the overshadowing fleshy leaf, and there expanded into a beautiful blossom at its leisure.

The rarely visited fernery at the end of this garden well deserves more frequent visits. There you will find that quaint Asplenium bulbiferum, that drops off little plants, that happen to be growing about its leaves like little accidents, and eventually develop into big plants, that again do likewise. There are also fine specimens of the Australian Platycerium, which you do not wonder to find called grande, so solid and woolly-feeling are its great lumps of leaf. That brown irregular mark underneath one of the abruptly broken-off leaves is not decay, but spores of seed. This, with the name of Alicorne, something like an inverted porcupine, reaching out all round hands, some with three fingers, some with six, sometimes with the fingers tipped underneath with seed, sometimes not, is said to have arrived looking for all the world like a withered cabbage. Then it sprouted and burgeoned; and now it is a thing of joy for ever, not to be in the least dwarfed or put into the shade by Australian tree-ferns of really treelike proportions growing close alongside.

But the fernery has nothing of the charm for me possessed by the large conservatory. There, after so many years, I met once again the friends of my childhood.

"The spirit culls

Unfaded amaranth, when wild it strays

Through the old garden ground of boyish days."

And there, when first I saw it, were all the many varieties of fancy geraniums, so seldom seen in England now, together with heliotropes, and begonias, and rosellias, and cinerarias, all growing in loveliest confusion, though not as I remember them, weighing each other down with their prodigal luxuriance in a garden border, in far-away Madeira, but intermixed with Chinese rockwork and ferns, and generally massed so as to show themselves off to the greatest advantage. In August that house is full of velvety gloxinias of richest hues, and again mixed with waxen begonias. Outside the conservatory are two of those very quaint Singapore cup-sponges, serving as flower-pots of Nature's making. And near by, apparently the pride of the gardener, to judge by its lavish supply of netting, is an apple-tree, with many apples peeping from underneath the netting, as yet quite green! But for all their greenness, one has been carried off by the birds already. Hence the netting.

But it is in the garden beside the river where the pleasantest sitting and sauntering is done. No one puts on best clothes to go there in the morning; only people who like to go are to be met there—none from a sense of duty. There the nurses love to congregate whilst their children play together, and add much life and animation to the scene. The nurses introduce a Chinese element; for otherwise Chinese, were it even Li Hung-chang himself, are excluded from the gardens, as now from Australia, solely because they are Chinese. This never can seem quite right. The Japanese nurses add an additional element of picturesqueness, with their dark-coloured, clinging kimonos, and curious gait, as do also Parsee merchants with their high, hard hats.

Yet sometimes I have regretted we do not have more of the flowers of China in Shanghai. What lovely bursts of blossom one sees at times in the interior of China! One February I wrote from Chungking:

"Camellias of infinite variety are to be seen already. It is surprising to notice how many different kinds there are. Perhaps the loveliest is more like a blush-rose than a camellia—delicate coral pink, shading off into white round the edges of the somewhat crumpled petals. Since the Chinese seem now to devote no care to them, nor at all to know how many varieties there are, it is puzzling to think how they arose."

GUILD GARDEN AT KIANGPEI.
By Mrs. Archibald Little.

Whilst on March 21st of another year, I wrote at the time:

"The thermometer is now in the sixties. Our plum-trees done flowering; orchids coming on victoriously; tree-tulips and magnolias like big bouquets; and camellias only slowly waning. Probably nowhere could camellias be seen in greater luxuriance than here, where there are endless varieties; and a blossom of a peony-camellia, loose-petalled and very double, on being measured the other day, revealed a circumference of fifteen and a quarter inches. Great branches of judas-tree and pink peach blossom adorn our rooms, together with a bright-yellow flower that grows in great profusion, and that used to be called New Zealand flax. From all this you can fancy how hothouselike our atmosphere feels just now."

Later in the summer the peonies are the great pride of the Chinese; whilst the scarlet dragon-boat flower is, perhaps, the most remarkable of all the Chinese flowers from being all scarlet together. But it is useless to try to enumerate; for the highest authority in Kew Gardens told me once that in no part of the world was there a more abundant and varied flora than in the Ichang Gorges, which are also the land of the butterfly. It is, however, a mistake, I believe, to think China is called the flowery land from the number of its flowers, the Chinese word translated "flowery" meaning also "varicoloured."

V. In the Romantic East at Last!

Mr. Tee San's garden is one of the most fascinating spots in China, with the bright autumn sunshine glinting through the pretty bits of trellis-work on to its fantastic rocks, and zigzag bridges, and pretty pavilions, and lighting up the truly exquisite specimens of chrysanthemums sometimes on show there. There is the spiky little chrysanthemum, the tiger's moustache, and huge maroon blossoms fading off into delicate cream in the centre, and many other uncommon varieties, each in its appropriate pot, spacious, four-square, and creamy, apparently just made to be painted, and each placed at exactly the right elevation by means of its light wooden stand, sometimes raising the pot an inch or two, sometimes about eight feet, and always so slanted, that the flowers are tilted down towards the spectator, thus showing themselves off in their entirety. But it is not so much worth while to go to this garden in order to see the chrysanthemum, as to admire the infinite variety of Chinese decoration crowded into what is really a very confined space, but which is made to appear a garden large enough to lose oneself in. Rows of bamboo stems of soft blue-green china relieve the monotony of the walls, with their open air-spaces in between, as do also various graceful interlacings of tiles. There are doors of all sorts and sizes, like a horseshoe, like a pentagon, like a leaf cut somewhat irregularly down the middle by the leaf stem, and with outer edge fluted like a leaf. There are, of course, artificial mounds made out of rockwork, and grottoes, and quaint lumps of stone, looking as if they had been masses of molten metal suddenly hardened in their grotesqueness; also, as a matter of course, inside the pavilions there are various specimens of that landscape stone—dear to the heart of the Chinaman, and said to come from Yunnan—framed and hanging on the walls. There used to be also a magnificent peacock; a mandarin duck, with its quaint, bright, decisive colouring; golden pheasants; a scarlet-faced monkey, and a pale-faced; a little company of white geese, and another of white rabbits. But to enumerate the treasures of the garden gives no idea of the artistic skill with which it has been laid out; so that every one who sits down in it even in the most commonplace manner, and even those most unpicturesque of human beings, Chinese men and women, immediately becomes an integral part of a picture.

PAVILION IN COUNTRY GENTLEMAN'S GARDEN.
By Mrs. Archibald Little.

There sit two Chinamen, with dark-purple silk outer jackets and long, glowing blue undergowns. They sit on each side of a little square black table, with their long pipes; behind them the sun slants across the latticed paper window, a branch of Virginia creeper, already yellow, pushing in through it. It needs not the addition of the cream-coloured pot with its chrysanthemums planted well to the front of it, as they all are, and on the usual slant. Without that bit of autumn colouring behind them, there is already an autumn picture,—men past their prime soothing the evening of their day in life with the pipe, all nature attuned with its vivid fast-fleeting sunshine and its orange-yellow leaves. In another pavilion sits one of those gorgeous creatures who always recall the braveries of Sir Walter Scott's descriptions, but who are hardly now to be seen out of China: his big loose jacket, of brocaded golden satin, stiff and shimmering: his long gown, only less brilliant, of violet satin. A gnarled and knotted root served there as stand for a flower-pot, artificial streamlets meandering round the pavilion. In the pavement was a stork in white, all formed of little broken bits of tile. The lights and shades were so entrancing, it was difficult to think of ever doing anything in these picturesque retreats, which immediately suggest the Chinaman's ideal—elegant leisure—and furnish most pleasant places to sit and meditate, as one might say, but in reality probably idly to watch the sunlight glorify this tint and soften that.

Without the sunshine it is a different affair. The patterns in the walls, in the fine pebble pavement, are still as complex, the triangles in the latter still as cunningly arranged, the doorways as surprising. There are still the same China drums of soft blue-green and green-blue for garden-seats, and great egg-green vessels for rain-water, as they say "very clear." But it all looks like a theatrical stage by daylight. Even the row of changeable roses by the water, which is really not so clear as it might be, looks uncomfortably pink beneath a grey rain-sky. Only the hoarfrost-resisting flower, as the Chinese call the chrysanthemum, is undimmed, the Chinamen's coats as gay. Whilst Chinese ladies totter as gracefully—or ungracefully—as before, with highly painted cheeks, gay garments, long elaborate earrings, beringed and bebraceleted with soft pure gold unalloyed.

STREET SCENE.

When we were last there, a dainty-looking Chinese dinner was laid out in one of the pavilions; and before the guests sat down, girls arrived to make merry with music. For studying Chinese manners and customs, there could hardly be a more convenient place. Every one seemed very smart and very friendlily disposed towards the foreigner. Those who care for local colour can find it in this garden quite as well as in the China town; and, after all, when one can find local colour without local odours, it is a thing to make note of in China. It is true to get there one must not only drive down the Fukien Road, with its quaint dyers' drying-sheds high up against the sky, their blue draperies streaming from them picturesquely, then across that very fascinating bridge choked underneath with highly polished boats, piled with all manner of merchandise, but also, alas! through a local Covent Garden, full of colour enough, like its prototype in London, but, like that, not smell-less. Once arrived, however, a bewildering sense comes over one of having left prosaic Shanghai very far away, and of having at last arrived at a bit of the romantic East!

WHEELBARROW.

CHAPTER I.
ON THE UPPER YANGTSE.

Boat-travel.—Vegetation.—Trackers.—Terrace of the Sun.—Gold Diamond Mountain.—Meng Liang's Ladder.—Great Szechuan Road.—Steamer Voyage.—Chinese Hades.—Caves.

Of all ways of travel, surely boat-travel is the most luxurious. For one thing, it is accounted roughing it; and that means that there is no bother about toilets: the easiest boots and gloves, the warmest and most comfortable of clothes, are the appropriate wear. But that seems to be the whole of the roughing of it. For naturally each boat-traveller takes care to start with a favourite chair and a comfortable bed; and it is his cook's business to provide the most recherché of little repasts whenever wanted. What else is he there for? Nor do soufflés and pheasants taste any the worse because the supply of fresh air is unlimited, and the cabin as cosy as nothing but a perfectly well-built house, or a boat floating in water warmer than the surrounding air, can be. The first time we went up to Chungking, we had a sleeping-cabin and sitting-cabin, each 9 ft. 4 in. by 7 ft. 7 in., the former well warmed by a most conveniently arranged kitchen adjoining, with a plentiful supply of warm water for our travelling-bath. Thus our only drawback was that the wind was always favourable; and whereas our captain had been bound over to pay us six shillings a day for every day over the agreed-upon twenty-two between Ichang and Chungking, we were equally bound to pay him six shillings a day extra for every day under.

BOW OF TRAVELLING-BOAT.
By Mrs. Archibald Little.

My first trip up the Gorges was, however, very different. To give its impressions in their freshness, I will quote from a letter written at the time:

"June 20th, 1887.

"It depends, I suppose, a good deal upon how much people like or dislike the journey, whether it is worth while to come half round the world, and then steam a thousand nautical miles into the interior of China, in order to visit the Gorges of the Yangtse; but we have just returned from a five-days' trip, and what I have seen far surpasses my anticipations. Indeed, in all my travels, I know no country more altogether delightful. Although it is June, one of the worst seasons for going there, we have been able to walk about all day long, and without getting tired too. The air felt fresh, and, oh! so fragrant with delicious flowers. The feature of the region, of course, is the precipices. I should guess the precipices at nothing under two thousand feet, and perhaps not more than that sheer down, as far as I have seen: sometimes dolomitic white limestone, which always reminds me of dead men's bones, sometimes weathered a rich yellow-brown. The grandeur and massiveness of the bastions, and towers of rock, and overhanging pinnacles, and projecting isolated blocks, or pillars, standing bolt upright in fine relief against the sky, are not picturesque like the scenery round Méran, not exciting like some of the Alpine scenery in Switzerland, but awe-inspiring and sublime.

ENTRANCE TO YANGTSE GORGES.
By Mrs. Archibald Little.

"Then the vegetation is enchanting. Nearly every flower, great big glorious butterfly, and brilliantly coloured bird is unknown to me; and till people have walked through a country where this is the case, they cannot imagine what a zest it adds to an expedition. But just to tell of those I recognise will show how charming it is. Fancy bamboos in feathery tufts, and palms, everywhere, not tall, but very graceful; chestnut-trees in full flower; plums laden with the rosiest fruit—but very bitter we found them; walnut-trees with huge leaves and nuts; orange-trees; most beautiful, perhaps, of all, the tallow-tree, rather like the lilac in leaf, but each leaf set on a very long stalk, so that the slightest breath sets it quivering, a light bright green in colour, each shoot tipped at the end with almost scarlet young leaves, and the whole tree, a tall well-grown tree too, covered with yellowish tassel-like flowers. Most lovely is the general effect. And in the autumn, they tell me, it is even finer, taking the same brilliant tints as the maple in Canada. I never know if I like this tree or the soap-tree best. The latter is like an oak in general effect, but more graceful, and grows quite big. But I am keeping the best to the last. Fancy blue larkspurs, and yellow jasmine, and glorious coloured oleanders, and begonias, virgin lilies, and yet taller white lilies, and gardenias, and sunflowers, all growing wild, and most luxuriantly. I was quite excited when I first saw waxen-leaved begonias cuddling into the crevices of a rock by the wayside; and exclaimed aloud when a turn of the path revealed a whole bank of dwarf sunflowers, golden in the sun. These, too, are only the flowers I can name. There are numbers more, and so fragrant! And among them all enormous swallow-tailed butterflies, and a very pretty breed of white goats, with dear little kids, disport themselves. Grand though the Gorges are, one does not feel saddened or depressed by them, as I was afraid of being. It is like seeing a whole troop of graceful loving grandchildren climbing up some grand old man's knee.

"But the Yangtse certainly does appear a very wicked river, bristling with rocks and whirlpools, just as its shores bristle with precipices. We had a very light boat, and an absurdly large crew—eight men besides the head man. And with all their exertions, they could only get us up against the rushing, whirling current at the rate of a mile an hour. But the river ran so fast, and the men worked so hard, and the shores were so varied, ever opening out some new, narrow defile, down which a torrent had cut its way—always cut quite deep—that one had no sense at all of going slowly, but just the contrary. The men had long bamboos with hooks at the end, and with these they would hook on to the rocks, and claw us up against the current; for we always kept quite close to the side, so as, as far as possible, to keep out of the rush of the river, and profit by occasional eddies. Then at other times they would bound on to the shore, scampering and giving tongue like a pack of beagles let loose, and tow the boat along, occasionally bending almost double in their efforts.

"I thought at first I would walk along the path with the trackers. Oh the foolish English idea! At times the trackers bounded along over loose boulders, or over ledges of rock, where the limestone strata made a fairly smooth surface; but at others they, with their bare feet and hands well used, had all they could do to find a footing. During these mauvais pas, or when they were ferried across in a boat, or waded through the river, those left on board would claw the rocks, or work the yulohs, very long and rather unmanageable oars. The oddest thing was the intense delight the men seemed to take in their work. But, of course, tracking our light boat was a very different thing from dragging a heavily laden junk. Hundreds of men are said to be lost in these rapids every year. And it really seems too dangerous work to put men to year in year out. Think of the tow-line breaking! During the little time we have been away, we saw one junk wrecked, and two drifting down-stream unmanageable, their tow-lines having broken, and nearly all their men being ashore. And the farthest point we got to was only fifteen miles from Ichang; so we got back down-stream in two hours. We did not go farther, because our captain said it was just then too dangerous to take our house-boat past the three terrible whirlpools of Nantor; and, of course, half the pleasure of the trip was in landing every now and then, and walking up the wild, narrow glens to different points of view. One day we walked from ten to seven to the Terrace of the Sun, where there is a small Taoist temple on a little ledge of rock just big enough to hold it, at the top of a mountain quite two thousand feet high, and with a sheer precipice on one side. Another day we walked from half-past six till half-past five to the Gold Diamond Mountain, where there is a Buddhist temple on a slightly larger plateau, with a spring on the top of the mountain, and a wonderful panoramic view. It is over a thousand feet higher than the other, and to get to it you walk along a quite narrow path with precipices on both sides. Do you realise that in China there are no railings and no roads, nothing but narrow paths like English field-paths? I never really believed it till I came here. And the agriculturists are always encroaching upon even the narrow paths there are, planting Indian corn and a few beans or something, on the chance that the passer-by will not tread upon them.

"The people are greatly interested in seeing a European woman. The women flock round, and beg me to take off my gloves and my hat, that they may see how my hair is done, and the colour of my hands. Then some old woman is sure to squeeze my feet, to see if there is really a foot filling up all those big boots: for, of course, all the women here have small feet—that is, they have them bandaged up; and astonishingly well they get along upon their hoof-like feet. They are very friendly, and bring out chairs and benches before their cottage doors, and beg us to sit down, and offer us tea, or, if they have not got that ready, hot water. But the children cry with terror if I touch them or go too near; and one little boy in a school we went into simply trembled with fear all the time I stood near him to hear him read. Sometimes also the dogs run away without barking, they are so afraid: a great comfort this is, for the barking of the dogs, and the loathsome-looking pigs at each cottage, and the smells, are the great objection to going through the often lovely-looking—from a distance—villages. Hoang San Tung, on its terrace nearly a hundred feet above the river, with all its curved roofs, looked really like a flight of doves settled down there, the wings not quite folded yet; and several of the others are very picturesque from a distance. But the smells of Ping Shan Pa obliged us to change our anchorage, there being no reason why we should endure them. There were fireflies there; but not such glorious ones as at Shih Pai, where they cast long trails of light upon the river, and were the most luminous I have ever seen. I do hope there will be soon a steamer running to transport people safely and easily to this delightful region. No boats were able to come down while we were up the river; and of some machinery for the Viceroy of Szechuan, that came up here on the previous voyage of the steamer in which we travelled, we have heard already that two boatloads are lost, and it is just as likely as not that the loss of these may make the rest useless.

"Seeing these ranges of mountains, across which it would, indeed, be difficult to make roads, and across which there certainly are none, I better realise how completely the rich and productive province of Szechuan—the size of France—is cut off from the rest of the world. Yet it will be sad if steamers introduce an unappreciative crowd to the grand solitudes of the ravines and precipices, the rocks and rapids of the Yangtse. Now one can pick one's hands full of flowers, without thinking one is spoiling any one else's enjoyment. Now one is away from letters and papers, from all the 'warstle and the wear o't,' and can enjoy the health-giving breezes and the grandeur of the scenery quite undisturbed. It does not require to have lived perspiring and almost clotheless through the tea-season at Hankow to enjoy such a trip; but now I begin to realise more than I did at the time what Hankow is, with its willow-shaded Bund, and its painted tea-chests flying along on the shoulders of coolies, and agitated buyers and sellers, and no 'mountain and water' beauty, as the Chinese call the beauty of landscape, only its mirages and its sunsets."

TRACKERS.
By Mrs. Archibald Little.

It is always pleasant to sail before a wind, and boat-travel taken thus is the delight of travel in essence divested of all its ennuis, of tiresome fellow-travellers, dust, steam, rush! Yet there is rushing enough in the Yangtse Rapids; but rushing of such another sort! We ran upon a rock our first day, and were not able to find a leak that night by the flickering light of a Chinese candle. But next day a bag of damaged rice showed clearly where it was, and a little tangle of cotton-yarn with some tallow made it all right. After that our mast cracked so alarmingly that we shortened sail; but that also was soon made right, the sole of an old shoe being nailed over the crack. Old shoes seem to have lasting power. And we sailed on again before the favourable wind that had carried us from Ichang, all through the Yangtse Gorges, in less than a week. Was some of our good fortune owing to the three joss-sticks burning at the stern? They also were stuck in an old shoe, or rather straw sandal this time. Perhaps old shoes have a meaning, like so many other things in China, not understood by people not imbued from their cradles with the profound truths of Fung shui.

Our voyage was like a dream of childhood realised, a dream inspired by many readings of Sinbad's marvellous travels. At Ichang they were making merry over a disappointed globe-trotter, who had been to see the Gorges, and come back complaining they were not perpendicular! Whether he insisted on their descending perpendicularly to their winter water-line, or their summer water-line, not seldom sixty feet apart, report said not. But if he had come on to the Bellows Gorge, surely even he must have been satisfied. The great Szechuan Road, the one new road I have seen in China, is simply hewn out of the face of the apparently perpendicular rock, so that the cliff arches over it. There on the southern side are the square holes in the rock, memorial of Chinese daring, which the celebrated General Meng Liang caused to be made, so that in the night he could take his soldiers, on pieces of wood stuck into these square holes, a rude but strong ladder, up the face of the cliff, naturally supposed to be inaccessible, and surprise the enemy, thereby conquering the kingdom of Shu. There also are the caves, where men gather saltpetre at dizzy heights, climbing up to them by paths that make one hot to look at. Farther on are the iron pillars on one side, and opposite the holes in the rock, between which chains were fastened so as to prevent those of the kingdom to the west of the Gorges from coming down in their vessels to attack the men of Hupeh, then the kingdom of Wei. And here, as we left the gorge, we saw the temple to the memory of Liu Pei, who was there encamped, and slain when Meng Liang made his marvellous night attack. This borderland teems with memories, and the Chinese do not quickly forget. In Kweichow there is still a tablet to the wife of Liu Pei, over the well at the back of what is now the Prefect's official residence, where she drowned herself when her husband was slain, nearly two thousand years ago.

But the day we were there was New Year's Eve, and even our man-servant said it was impossible for me to go into the city to see it that day; and on the next day's festival it would be cruel to trouble our good soldiers to escort us. For we were travelling with that great luxury, a gunboat, that is also a lifeboat; and the soldiers, as in all this admirably organised lifeboat service, were excellent fellows, whether for handling an oar or for keeping back the crowd. They seemed positively to delight in carrying the camera, or in posing for a foreground, evidently admiring their own clothes very much, and being very wishful to know if we could read the characters upon their jackets. But for this gunboat, which sailed faster than our passenger-boat, and could put us ashore anywhere, we should have been deprived of nearly all our interesting walks; for our boat sailed on and on even into the night. Sailing through the never-ending Witches' Gorge, ever following White Wings before, a beautifully appointed junk, that had kept just ahead of us all day, and seeing our first sunset since we started, soft saffron in the west, had a very magical effect. It seemed impossible ever to go back again to one's friends. Why not sail on for ever, since one had for once discovered the Ideal Life?

POLING A BOAT UP A RAPID.
By Mrs. Archibald Little.

"We knew the merry world was round,

And we might sail for evermore."

But there were other moments, and moments oft repeated, when all was excitement and action. Wild shouts and waving of arms encouraged the steaming trackers. The water boiled round the bows. The drum sounded. A man sprang on to an almost impossible rock—it is climbed at least twenty times nearly every day—and disengaged the tow-line, on which our lives were depending. The camera was at full cock! And then a sailor reached in front of it, and that moment was lost! But the boat hung fire, and we tried again. At one rapid there were women tracking—women with their hoof-like feet and loathly trousers, giving delicate little pulls, that surely could not advance the boat much. Then our soldiers were poling and hooking, with crimson faces and straining arms! Now we are through that race, and flying along in the eddy preparatory to the tug-of-war at the next rapid! The trackers are running ahead like a pack of beagles. A side-ravine becomes visible, with a grand gateway, irresistibly recalling Coleridge's "like cliffs that have been rent asunder." Then we gaze at caves, squared, and with fresh-looking ladders hanging from them, and understand they are places of refuge for the husbandmen in the houses opposite to retire into should danger threaten, and that it is not so very long since they were used. Certainly, they would appear able to stand every siege but that of hunger.

We passed rocks fluted like organ-pipes, with the stones that had done the fluting still held captive in them; rocks fretted almost into lacework by the action of the water; rocks weathered red, and rocks weathered grey; and one day we saw a black mass, which we were told was harder than steel, yet it was gnarled and gnawn in rings. After passing that black mass, the strata sloped from east to west, just as on the other side of the Gorges they sloped from west to east; thus, coming up-stream, the rocks no longer seemed so menacing as before.

"But here are the far-famed singing girls of Kweichow, with reedlike voices, and a man, very pale, with a face like Dante, for accompanist on a pretty little viol; and the sound of merry-making increases. Our soldiers have been cooking their pig's head nearly all day. A mandarin's boat moored next to us has a regular witches' cauldron, full of the cock that every one has been carrying about these last few days, comb, legs, and all, a pig's head, and several more uncanny-looking bits of meat. Evidently our trackers also are enjoying a good feed outside. We have twenty lusty rogues, besides our boat's crew. And we are all moored in a tangled mass; so that there does not seem to be room for even one boat more to spend its New Year at Kweichow Fu. There are joss-sticks burning at our cabin door. Joss-sticks were burnt solemnly over our pig's head in the gorge in the morning of that day, a cannon solemnly fired three times, and the cook prostrated himself as he offered the burnt-offering. Now crackers are going off all round; and every man who has a chance has asked me if I do not think Szechuan the most beautiful country in the world. Even the captain tried to hurry me in the morning into photographing the entrance into the first Szechuan gorge. 'Szechuan is beautiful,' he said. So say all the men with white handkerchiefs bound round their brows, thus showing their Western origin."

But it was all beautiful, all wild, all grand, after we entered the Land of Promise through the gate of the Ichang Gorge. For those who do not love Nature in her wilder moods this was not the time of year to travel through the Gorges. They should wait till spring has garlanded them with flowers like a Mayfair ballroom, and perfumed the breezes with their fragrance. There is a certain sameness about the grandeur of the scenery when seen always under a leaden sky with a north-easter driving us on. But for those who admire precipice piled upon precipice, and rocks rent asunder, every season is the season for the Gorges, where the Niukan is perhaps the loveliest; but the Ping Shu Gorge and that of the Fearsome Pool are certainly the most solemn and impressive; while the Witches' Gorge offers the most variety, and the Ichang Gorge, though perhaps only because it is best known, ever seems the friendliest, and is certainly the most fantastic.

IN THE NIUKAN GORGE.
By Mrs. Archibald Little.

All China New Year's Day we wandered through the ruins of Liu Pei's city. Bits of the wall remain, and the gateway under the old drum tower; but it is a little hard to believe these date from A.D. 200, although all the people declare they do, and our man-servant begged that they might be photographed. We picnicked under a beautiful clump of trees, looking down upon the grand rock mass, whose being covered by the river is the signal for the Kweichow authorities to forbid the passage of junks down-river as too dangerous. The days of this grand rock mass standing in mid Yangtse must be numbered, supported as it is on three pillars; thus there are two arches to be seen beneath it, when the water is low enough. We wandered through a lovely temple on the hill, commanding the most picturesque view we had yet seen down the last Fearsome Gorge. Unlike most Chinese temples, this, the first Szechuan temple I had seen, was really exquisitely kept, clean, and well swept, with clean, bright windows of many-coloured paper panes. The priests were polite, the images freshly painted. We came down through a village, again all clean and fresh as paint. Every one was in good clothes, of course, as it was New Year's Day; but it was surprising to find that even the smartest women were ready to be photographed, and not at all too frightened to look into the camera themselves.

WHITE EMPEROR'S TEMPLE, LOOKING DOWN THE GORGE OF THE FEARSOME POOL, OR BELLOWS GORGE.
By Mrs. Archibald Little.

We longed to walk along the great Szechuan Road, completed as far as the Hupeh frontier, sixty miles, at a reputed cost of £52,000, and really a road, though, as is usual in Szechuan, it is often long flights of steps, and several of its crossings over streams looked doubtful. The Chinese do not make roads sufficiently often to be good road-makers. Hupeh was to have continued this road through its gorges to Ichang; and the great Lo, the Marquis of Carabas of these parts, had just been up to inspect and chalk O where the road was to go. If it were ever finished and could last, it would rival the Corniche Road for magnificence of scenery.

But years have past since we first travelled on the Upper Yangtse, and no steps have yet been taken to carry the road down-river; the funds intended for this purpose are said all to have been absorbed in paying compensation for damage done to foreigners' property in the riots of one summer. Some day, perhaps, a railway will be cut out along the river-channel. In the meantime, my husband has proved the long-doubted practicability of steaming through the rapids, by himself taking a little steamer up without any foreign assistance to help him, only Ningpo engineers, who knew neither the Szechuan speech nor ways, and a Szechuan pilot, who had never been on a steamer before. That voyage will for ever rank among the most exciting experiences of my life; for all the population along the river turned out to see the steamer, so that the cities presented the appearance of having all their outlines heavily underscored with a blue pencil; whilst sometimes as many as five Chinese lifeboats and gunboats, with large pennants and burgees flying, and occasionally firing their cannon, all wanted her to tow them at once, since their mission was to protect her. And as the little steamboat could at the outside go nine knots an hour, it was, indeed, a business to get her up the rapids. In one case—the worst—she steamed all she could, and three hundred men, harnessed to tracking-lines, pulled all they could, till one great bamboo line snapped. But she got up safely after seven minutes, in which one felt as if one's hair turned white; for if she had once got her head round, she must have been lost, and every man aboard her. A more powerful steamer would make nothing of many of the rapids, and even that worst one at some seasons of the year is barely noticeable.

NEW AND GLORIOUS RAPID.
By Mr. Cecil Hanbury.

The chief points of interest, after passing through the Gorges, are Changfei's beautiful temple, a great place to spend a happy day at; the singularly beautifully situated city of Wanhsien; Changchow, with its graceful bamboo groves; and Fengtu, the Chinese Hades.

TREE MOVED 100 YARDS BY LANDSLIP THAT FORMED NEW RAPID.
By Mr. Cecil Hanbury.

To a Chinaman this last is the most interesting place along the river: for the Emperor of the dead is supposed to live on the little hill there, as the Emperor of the living does at Peking; and whenever a Chinaman dies, all the world over, a letter ought to be written to Fengtu announcing his death, and not dropped casually into the post, but solemnly burnt by a Taoist priest. It is the one place Chinese boatmen regard with awe, and they object to moving about at night near Fengtu. Pilgrims come in great numbers to see the well that is reputed bottomless; and every one burns a little paper and throws it in. So that when I saw it the well appeared quite full up to the top. There was an iron cover over it I longed to photograph; and as it was quite dark by the well, I asked whether the soldiers accompanying me might carry it outside into the daylight and to my surprise no objection was made to their doing so; and when I set up the camera, a priest said he would stand beside it with an incense-stick, as that would look better. There is a great sword at Fengtu; but we did not learn the legend about this. The whole hillside was covered with temples, all crowded with pilgrims; and my husband said if I would go photographing in Chinese places of pilgrimage, I really must not expect him to accompany me. But I was new to China then, and enthusiastic; so four soldiers linked their arms round me, and in that manner I photographed.

IRON COVER OF BOTTOMLESS WELL.
By Mrs. Archibald Little.

On another voyage we stopped at Fengtu for the night as we were proceeding up-river. It was when the chapels and houses throughout Szechuan were being burnt down, and missionaries flying for their lives, though no one was killed, happily. All the people on the foreshore rushed down to look at our boat, brandishing bamboos; and our servants said they had to shout very loud and very energetically that we were not missionaries in order to save our lives. The principal official sent down additional soldiers to guard us through the night. But it was impossible to be frightened. For that, I think, was really the very hottest night I have lived through; even lying on the roof of the boat it was impossible to do anything but gasp.

AT FENGTU.
By Mrs. Archibald Little.

Beyond Fengtu are the colossal statues of the philanthropic beancurd-seller and his wife, hewn out of the living rock, and sitting in caves made in the rock out of which they are hewn. Beyond them, again, comes a very pleasant country of farmsteads, and great shade-trees, and caves in the rock-face, once inhabited, it is believed, by the aborigines, who were there before the Chinese came. But if so, how well and neatly they are shaped! And why did people who could square doorways so neatly live in such uncomfortable, dark places as caves? People all say to one another that these caves would be very interesting subjects for study; but so far no one has studied them.

Thus, by many windings, and past great bridges, and up more rapids, at last we arrive at terrible, long reaches of rocks; and then at Chungking, the commercial capital of Szechuan, China's westernmost, and one of its largest and richest provinces. But Chungking deserves a chapter to itself, especially as it is the only Chinese city within whose walls I have lived for years. Some people call thus living "doing a term of fortress." A Chinese city is certainly very like a prison.

CHAPTER II.
A LAND JOURNEY.

Large Farmsteads.—Wedding Party.—Atoning for an Insult.—Rowdy Lichuan.—Old-fashioned Inn.—Dog's Triumphal Progress.—Free Fight.—Wicked Music.—Poppy-fields.—Bamboo Stream.

It is very unusual to make the journey from Ichang to Chungking by land; but one year in the spring-time the thought of the dog-roses and the honeysuckle tempted us, as also the prospect of getting to our destination a few days earlier; so we crossed the river at Ichang, and set off over the mountains, at first all white and glittering with new-fallen snow. How delicious oranges tasted, when we took alternate bites of them and crisp mountain snow!

Here and there were large farmsteads, where a whole clan lived together, thus avoiding the loneliness of English country life, as also the insecurity. How it works, and whether there is some natural law by which no family increases beyond a certain number, or how it is decided when the moment comes that some members have to go out into the world to seek their fortunes, and who it should be, I do not know. But it is obvious that the Chinese plan leads to a great deal of pleasant sociability; and as it is always the eldest man of the family whose authority is (nominally) absolute, this must lead to a certain continuity of régime, very different from what it would be, if, as with us, a young eldest son every now and then became the head. It also leads to the erection of very large and very beautiful homesteads, with generally a beautiful temple near at hand.

It was a pretty sight one day to watch a wedding party behind us winding up and down the mountainsides, seven men carrying flags, seven or eight ponies with red cloth saddles, a red State umbrella carried by itself, two sedan-chairs, and music, which last sounded quite pleasantly in the fresh country air. They were going to fetch the bride, we were told; but our last sight of them was sad. For, encountering an opium caravan, one of the wedding party was saucy, and a free fight ensued, branches being torn off the trees, whilst all the cavaliers, now mounted, stood huddled together on a hill, declaring they knew nothing about it instead of dashing in to the rescue. Meanwhile, one at least of the wedding party was carried off prostrate and bleeding, and the opium caravan, with its heavy carrying-poles, was having it all its own way.

Once we thought we were going to spend the night, as we always tried to do, at a lonely inn; but there was a village just beyond it, and the villagers came over, and were rather troublesome in their curiosity. What was particularly annoying was that our room was only partly boarded over at the top with loose, dirty boards; and when we closed the door, all who could rushed up ladders into the rafters to look down, or on to the loose boards above us, staring down at us, and covering us and our dinner with dust. This had to be stopped; so we opened the door again. And I got so tired of the people, I went outside to walk up and down the road in the moonlight, though certainly we had had quite enough walking; for our little pony had lost two shoes, and with so many miles yet to go had to be spared a good deal. Even in the moonlight, however, a growing crowd followed me, staring and giggling, till impatiently I remonstrated. On which a man stepped forward as spokesman. "We are nothing but mountain people," he said, "and anything like you we have never seen before! So we do just want to look." On this it was impossible not to show oneself off answering beforehand all the questions I knew they would otherwise ask, on which they laughed merrily, quite delighted. But we really wanted to go to bed some time or other; and so far I had not been able to wash at all except just my face and hands, which after a long day across mountains is hardly satisfactory. So now we tried the expedient of being exceedingly polite, and wishing them all good-night. After this had been repeated two or three times, the door being shut after each good-night, the people dispersed, some each time taking the hint and going away. But, alas! it seemed some were going to sleep up above us; and as there was nothing to prevent their staring down at us as much as they liked over the ends of the loose planks, I had to wait till my husband had undressed comfortably by candle-light, and put the candle out, and then, as so often before, go to bed in the dark. Certainly, a man has great advantages in travelling.

Another day one of our coolies had a fight with one of his substitutes about pay. Every man we pay always sweats the work out to some one else. The substitute boxed his ears. He called his substitute's mother dreadful names. They were both from the same town, which made it worse. In a second all our men had thrown down their loads, and were flying down the hill to join in the fight. As we had just passed through a little village, I thought, of course, my husband, who was behind, had been attacked; whilst he came hurrying up to learn what had been done to me. Meanwhile, our cook, the real fighting man of our party, had rushed in to have his innings, just as ignorant as either of us as to what had really occurred. Whatever it was, we felt sorry for the poor substitute, overpowered by the members of our party; so we at last succeeded in stopping the tail-pulling and cudgelling, but not before the poor man's face was all bleeding. Some ten miles farther on we came to a wayside house, with two venerable-looking Chinamen sitting in the seat of justice, and the whole party had to go in. It was decided our coolies were in the wrong. And I was delighted to hear that such an insult as they had offered to the man's mother could not be atoned for by money. They had publicly to k`otow (bow till they touched the ground with their foreheads), and to apologise.

At Lichuan occurred our first mobbing, the more unfortunate as most of our coolies came from there. Our cook had, as we thought, very imprudently engaged rooms for us in an inn outside the walls, and evidently not the best inn. To make it worse, it had an entrance back and front, and the room assigned to us had three large windows. So often we had no windows at all, it seemed particularly unfortunate we should have three there; for in poured a howling crowd, and the windows were at once a sea of faces. We thought it best to bolt the door of the room, setting our soldier-coolie on guard over it. And the only thing to do with the windows seemed to be to close the shutters and wait inside in the darkness, hoping the crowd would go away when there was nothing more to see. But there were eyes and fingers at every crack—and the room was all cracks—and the people coughed to attract our attention, and called to us to come out; while to judge by the sounds—but one can never do this in China—there seemed to be fierce fighting between some of them and our coolies. Presently my husband went out, and tried to reason with them, telling them if it was only himself they should be free to come into his room, and see him all the time; but they knew themselves it was not proper to look into women's apartments. They seemed too low and rude a crowd for reasoning; so then he went to the landlord. And there were one or two furious onslaughts, and then as many or more men as were driven out from before came in from behind. And the landlord said he was powerless. Once they broke the shutters open, and my husband really frightened them, rushing out and asking who was trying to steal our things, and saying he would have the thieves arrested and taken to the yamen. This was an excellent idea, and quieted them for a little while. But then it all began again.

And meanwhile our combative cook, getting ready our dinner in the midst of all the hurly-burly, was evidently with difficulty putting a restraint on himself. We had to light a candle to dine by, and this let Bedlam loose again. It was our first really hot day, and we were very tired; but it was evident there was to be no rest for us that evening. Then, just as in a very disconsolate state we were going to bed, between twenty and thirty very smartly dressed women actually came to call upon us, introduced, as it were, by a Christian from Wanhsien, who was on a visit to her relations. She came in, shaking hands very affectionately at once, and sitting down to talk, as if she were our dearest friend; whilst she pronounced the people very bad people, and said she was going away again directly. But whether she was a real Christian or not we did not know, although we have since heard all about her, and that she is a very enthusiastic convert. There were not enough seats to offer the other women one each. It was very late, and the noise pretty great; so, after we had admired their large, hanging, silver earrings, and they had taken stock of us, as it were, they went away again, and then—out with the lights and to bed! But there were fingers feeling, feeling at the cracks, and rude coughs, and noises for hours after that.

Next day we took care to be off before daybreak, and it was from the open country beyond we saw the sun rise over Lichuan; but the general appearance of the town was as if it had long ago set. All the hazy temples looked dilapidated, and the inhabitants had a decidedly opium-eating air. And worst of all, there were no horseshoes to be had. But the little pony still trotted bravely on with shoes on its two fore feet. It is rice that specially flourishes round Lichuan, and the reflections in the paddy-fields were very lovely all that day. There was a thunderstorm in the evening; but nothing like so magnificent as what we had a night or two before, when we took refuge in a schoolhouse, where the master delighted my husband by his very educated Chinese.

But then came the question of putting up for the night again. Every one seemed agitated, and kept hurrying on in front, as if not wanting to be questioned; and meanwhile we never stopped! Yet every one was complaining of not feeling well; and there were the barrier mountains in front, and nothing now visible between us and them but one of those large isolated farmhouses, of which we had seen so many. There was a network of rice-fields in front of it, the whole river here being spread out over the fields; and there, with a screen of gnarled willows before it, the old farmhouse stood, raised on a little platform, looking down on the waste of waters. Could it be possible that we were going to ask hospitality of a private house? It seemed so, for there was the Boy coming back from the house to greet us. "Come in quickly, Mississy. No man must see you. And you no must say anything. My have say all a mistakey, you no belong woman, you one man." "But why is that? Why did you say I was a man?" "This belong old-fashion Chinese inn—no can have one woman. The last inn say no got any room, because no will have one woman. So my go on very fast, and say you one man. The people no savee. Only come in quickly now." Would a stricter moralist have thought it necessary to repudiate the falsehood, and explain? It was late, and we were tired, and I went quickly to the inner room. Then the Boy began to explain further. According to him, it is in China the height of impropriety for a man and a woman in travelling to share the same room. When a Chinese mandarin travels, his wife goes into the women's quarter with the other women. Unfortunately, in these inns there was no women's quarter; so at Lichuan, where it seems the difficulty had begun, the Boy had said if the landlord would give me another room I would occupy it, but there had been none for me. The last inn had refused us outright; and this being a regular old-fashioned inn and farmhouse, the Boy had felt quite sure it would do likewise if it knew. All this was a new idea to us. And as we saw all the women of the household taking peeps at us from the window over the buffalo-stable opposite, we fancied their suspicions had been aroused, and that after all they knew I was a woman. All across the mountains there had been a great wondering as to what I was, and I had often heard the country people beseeching the coolies to tell them. When I sat in my chair in my long fur coat, and my husband rode the pony, they had no doubt at all but that I was a man, and a mandarin, and he my outrider; and they used to ask about me in this spirit, and in one village all stood with bated breath whilst I was carried by. But with the fur coat, which is greatly worn by mandarins, my dignity departed, and, on foot or on horseback, I was altogether an anomaly. The hair seemed to be the hair of a woman; but, then, the feet were surely the feet of a man!

Next day, however, our falsehood was revealed; for it poured pretty well all day: the rain had streamed in on my husband's bed during the night, and wet most of his things; one of the coolies was very ill with cold, the cook pretty sick, my husband ditto; and we settled to stop the day. And it being so chilly, we were but too thankful to leave our very draughty, damp rooms, and to go and sit in one of the family's rooms in the farmhouse part, where a fire of chaff and shavings on the floor made a great smoke and a little warmth, and where all the huge family interviewed us by turns, as we turned over picture-books. The men of the family had a most lively game of cards going on, and all our coolies likewise settled to cards. But some of the family were reading the Yi King, which, as the head of the house said, was the foundation of all wisdom, and is one of the most difficult of all Chinese classics. This rather delighted me, just as it did in the boat coming down to find our coolies and some junk-owners going down with us all amusing themselves with puzzles I had always known as Chinese, but never before seen in China, in especial the complicated cross puzzle made roughly out of bits of bamboo.

FREE SCHOOL.
By Mrs. Archibald Little.

One day we passed a beautiful free school, built by some wealthy man for the advantage of his poorer neighbours in this remote region.

It was after this began the little dog's triumphant progress. People had enjoyed seeing him everywhere. But now, on the borderland between the two provinces of Hupeh and Szechuan, they really revelled in him. Mothers brought out their babies, who cooed with delight; boys danced backwards down the street before him, clapping their hands. Not the most advanced opium-smoker but his pallid face relaxed into a smile at catching sight of our little Jack; and everywhere we moved to a chorus of "Lion-dog! Lion-dog!" and general happy smiles. I could not but recall how in one town, too dirty even to dine in, the crowd had surveyed us, and at last one boy had said, "Well! their animals are good-looking," then felt all that his speech implied, and looked confounded. But we had again and again heard people admiring the pony's condition, and saying, "At least foreigners know how to take care of animals." So my husband was well satisfied, and I was too, being again asked to sell little Jack, whom the people thought we must be taking to market, or why did we take him along the road with us? A Taoist priest had even come down from his temple to ask that the dog might be presented to it. So we felt that at least our animals were appreciated, whatever we might be.

This was all very well when they did not pelt us. But they did sometimes. And in one town out of the crowd came a really well-dressed man, and seized hold of my foremost chair-coolie—I was always carried through the towns—crying out, "You said it was a friend of yours!" The coolies offered no resistance. Before that I had been vainly urging them to carry me faster; they had appeared to be waiting for something. But my husband now sprang forward, and seized the well-dressed man, when, to his surprise, the latter showed fight. And then all the people on the bank above us began to pelt, throwing rather better than usual too. My husband was hit in several places. Our fighting cook was hit too, but, I believe, flatters himself he gave quite as good as he got. Even the decidedly non-fighting Boy's pugnacious instincts were roused. "Only I thought it would be so dleadful for you, Mississy," he said afterwards. So he did not fight. As for me, I honestly own I never once looked behind, having a great regard for my eyes when any earth-throwing begins. And the coolies now hurried me away with a will, as my husband had dragged off their assailant by his pigtail, and deposited him in a paddy-field. Several of the onlookers, being unpleasantly hurt, now told our party the whole thing had been got up by the well-dressed man and one or two more, well known in the place, and regular bullies, who had distributed cash among the crowd to get us pelted simply out of hatred to foreigners.

At the next town we were again a little pelted. But when we got back to the main road, travelling along once more beside the telegraph-wires, the people were what we call in China very civil; in any other country it would be outrageously insolent and ill-mannered. And before we got there we had to sleep one night in one of the most stinking, dirty towns we ever passed through. We arrived late, so were happily not well seen; and the people there, having a guilty conscience, thought that we were officials sent to stop them from gambling or some other bad practice. So we should have had a quiet resting-time but for all night long the most dreadful sort of music going on near at hand. It was the kind of music that Wagner might have liked for a motif. But the Boy said it was horribly wicked, and not even a thing to mention before a lady. As far as I could make out, it was incantations over a sick person, not made by any priest, he said, but by the people themselves, and with witches and dancing. But he spoke of it with such horror, it seemed wrong to question him. It had a weird, wicked sound; but it did not keep us awake. Only, whenever I woke, I heard it still going on; and it seemed quite in character with the general look of the place and the sweet sickly opium smell as we entered the small town. We went away early next morning through a regular thick fog; and directly we escaped from the filth of the town, we were in the prosperous-looking, healthy poppy-fields again.

POPPIES AND TERRACED RICE-FIELDS.
By Mrs. Archibald Little.

For five days we travelled through a perfect flower-show of poppies, not the wild field-poppy of England, but like those we have in our gardens, standing up tall and stately about five feet high. Most were white, a delicate, fair, frail blossom; others were white, with fringed petals edged with pink; others altogether pink, or mauve, or scarlet, or scarlet-and-black, or, perhaps best of all, crimson, which, when looked up at on a bank standing out against the brilliantly blue sky, made our eyes quite ache with colour-pleasure. But how sad to hear in a letter from a friend in the Kweichow Province: "Ten years ago the price of rice per basin was 7 cash. Now, owing to the poppy taking the place of what ought to produce food for the people, the price is 20 cash for the same quantity of rice. And the people are wretchedly poor and ill-clad, whilst their poor bodies are wasting away from the constant use of the drug." One whole day we wandered along a pleasant path beside a limpid stream, beautiful, tall, bending bamboos making a refreshing breeze over our heads, with their cool green feathery foliage. If all the world could be traversed by paths like that, who would ever travel but on foot? But in the end we arrived at beautiful Chungking in a boat, as is usual with this river-encircled city.

CHAPTER III.
LIFE IN A CHINESE CITY.

Arrangement of a Chinese House.—Crowd in Streets.—My First Walk in Chungking City.—Presents.—Cats, Rats, and Eggs.—Paying a Call.—Ladies Affectionate.—Shocked at European Indecency.—Cost of Freight.—Distance by Post.—Children's Pleasures.—Precautions during Drought.—Guild Gardens.—Pretty Environs.—Opium Flowers, and Smokers.—Babble of Schools.—Chinese Girlchild.

Chungking has been so fully described in my husband's volume Through the Yangtse Gorges, I will not here enter upon a description of it further than to say it is situated, like Quebec, at the junction of two rivers. It a little recalls Edinburgh; it is about the size of Lyons; has walls all round it; and its gates are shut at sunset, all but two, which remain open an hour or two longer, except when the country is in commotion. It is built upon a rock; and as the summer progresses all the rock warms up, till the heat is very great indeed. The streets are mostly covered over, both as a protection against the sun, and the rain, which is very frequent. There is thus no possibility of fresh air getting into its streets, short of a gale occurring; and there is only very rarely any wind, as is shown by the large shade-trees on the tops of the hills, and the awnings to keep the sun off the houses, which are supported on bamboos, and which in this windless region are taken up even over the roofs of the houses.

CHUNGKING, COMMERCIAL CAPITAL OF WESTERN CHINA.

Now all the missions have built European houses; but a little while ago all foreigners lived in Chinese houses within the walls of the city. To describe one: You enter off a dirty alley by a large gateway, the only opening in the lofty fire-proof walls that surround the whole property; for fire is the great danger of a Chinese city, and a whole quarter of Chungking has been burnt down since we have lived there. You pass into a sort of courtyard; from that you proceed by a long passage to another gateway, thence into a courtyard ornamentally laid out with pots and flowers. The house door opens from this; and entering by it, you find yourself in the lofty entrance hall, used by Europeans as a dining-room. Passing through an ornamental screen with open doorways, over which hang portières, you find yourself in a sitting-room, of which one wall and two half-walls consist of paper windows, with occasional panes of glass. On either side of these two principal rooms are long narrow ones, only thirteen feet wide, which for convenience their English occupants had divided into two, the end wall being in both cases again paper windows with occasional glass. Paper ceilings had been put in to prevent the dust falling through from the tiled roof above; but the sun would shine through this as well as the tiles quite brilliantly at times. None of the partition doors had handles or latches, and the outer walls, as well as the inside partitions, were all alike of thin planks of wood, not overlapping, and which would shrink in dry weather so as to leave quite large openings between them. It will thus be realised that, whatever was the temperature outside the house, the same was the temperature inside, with the additional disadvantage of draughts on rainy, wintry days; and in winter it generally rains in Chungking. Europeans always took care to secure wooden floors for themselves; but these floors were not uncommonly rotting away under their feet. And picturesque though the houses are, with their lofty roofs, their solid wooden pillars, black rafters, and white plaster, their highly decorated exteriors, little pictures in black and white under the eaves, richly carved and heavily gilded ends to the beams, etc., it became increasingly evident each year that Europeans could not hope for health in them. Chinese in winter wear heavily wadded and fur-lined clothes, in which it is impossible to take exercise, and inside of which they loll about in a semi-comatose condition, much as if in bed.

DINNER PARTY IN THE GARDEN OF A MEMBER OF THE HANLIN COLLEGE,—WHITE CLOTH SPREAD IN COMPLIMENT TO EUROPEANS.
By Mrs. Archibald Little.

The streets, although wide for a Chinese city, are very narrow in comparison with English streets, being only eight feet at the widest, and extraordinarily crowded. Passing through them is a continual pushing through a crowd of foot-passengers; of sedan-chairs, carried by coolies, with sometimes one or two men running before to clear the way, and if it be necessary beat back the crowd; of mules, donkeys, or ponies, with loads; and of numbers of carrying-coolies, a bamboo across their shoulders, and from either end a basket hanging by strings. Everything that can be done in the streets is done in them: pedlars go by with great quantities of goods for sale; men are mending broken china with little rivets after a fashion in which the Chinese are great experts; here is a barber shaving a man's head, there are two women menders, on little stools very neatly dressed, pursuing their avocation; here is a man working at an embroidery-frame, there a cobbler mending shoes; here some pigs, there some chickens; here a baby in a hen-coop, there a pussy-cat tied to a shop-counter; and in the evenings street preachers, in the afternoons vast crowds pouring out from theatres. At night, in going out to dinner we used always to pass at least three street preachers. These men wear official caps, and are as a rule, I believe, reading or expounding the Sacred Edicts. There is always a little crowd listening, though often a very small one. In the better streets every attention is paid to decency; in the lesser streets none is apparent. At the street corners there are often large tanks full of water, as a precaution against fire. These are invariably grown over with weed. A vast army of coolies is every day going down the steep flights of steps to the river to bring water, which drips from the buckets as it is carried along. Another army is carrying out the sewage of the city to be used as manure. A very soft coal is used for fuel; and baskets of coal are constantly being carried in, two dangling from a pole across a coolie's shoulders. The coal-dust, and the smoke, and the drippings, and the bustling crowd, all make the streets rather an unpleasant place to walk in. Yet, although every one told me it was impossible for an English lady to walk in them, I felt it was impossible for me to live in Chungking unless I did; for in summer no one could walk out till sunset, and then the gates are closed; so after showing myself about as much as I could in a sedan-chair with the curtains up—unlike the other ladies, who all kept theirs down in those days—I determined to attempt a walk, with my sedan-chair, of course, following behind to show I had some claim to respectability.

MORNING TOILETTE.

In a few minutes two or three hundred men and boys were following me. As long as they kept behind and did not press upon me, it did not so much matter; but the boys have a knack of clattering past, and then turning round to stare into one's face in the most insulting and annoying manner. And I felt I could not go back home with all this rabble following, as of course they would all try to press into our house after me, and then there would probably be a row. So I turned into the official residence of the principal magistrate of the city, hoping that the guardians of his gate might stop both me and my following, as I supposed it would be their duty to do, and then I might somehow detach myself. Into the first courtyard every one has a right to go; but as we proceeded farther, soldiers came up and remonstrated with me. "Well, do your duty—shut us out," I said. "Do shut the people out, and then I won't go any farther." But they did not do their duty; and so, not seeing what else to do, I set up the camera and photographed the crowd and the soldiers, not doing their duty and turning them out. After that I got into my chair; and the people, curiously enough, satisfied that that was what I had come out for, dispersed, and I arrived at home unattended. But many a walk since then have I taken through these same streets; and the people have got so accustomed to the sight of me, that they now do not turn round to look.

One of the most fatiguing things about Chinese life is the presents. Whatever you do, you ought to take or send a present. Every lady who goes out to dinner takes a present to the hostess; and at a certain period of the dinner all sorts of things are done up in a heterogeneous mass for each guest to take home to her children, if she has any; whilst the hostess pays all her friends' chair-coolies, and the guest tips the hostess's servants, especially the cook, who has a great title of honour in China. If ladies care to call, they generally bring presents too, rolled up in a handsome, coloured handkerchief. The most curious present I have received at a dinner party was a white cat, that could hardly see out of its eyes. The general present seems to be sponge-cakes or fruit.

OUTSIDE GOVERNOR'S RESIDENCE IN CHUNGKING.
By Mrs. Archibald Little.

Cats are very much prized in a Chinese city, because of the fierce depredations of the rats; and in Chungking cats are always kept prisoners, and only occasionally let loose at night. It is sad to see the poor things tied up; and we have never been able to make up our minds to keep our cats thus chained. The consequence is they are always stolen, and have a miserable life of it, tied up, and probably far less well fed than they would have been with us. Fowls and pigs are both kept in Chinese cities, and the eggs get a most unpleasing flavour from the vile nature of the places where the poor hens have to lay them.

When I pay a call on a lady, my chair has to be carried over the thresholds of the various courtyards, and set down quite close to the guest-room, where the lady of the house receives, so that I may at once step out of the chair into the house. A woman-servant, almost certainly a slave, comes to offer her shoulder as a help to my tottering footsteps, and I am conducted into the guest-room, round the walls of which there are little tables, large carved wooden chairs with straight backs being placed one on either side of each table against the wall. The ladies bow after the Chinese lady's fashion, placing the right hand on the top of the left against the chest, and moving the right hand slowly up and down; the servants are ordered to bring tea; and then conversation commences. It is never very interesting. The floors are as often as not made of hard mud; the walls whitewashed, with long-shaped pictures, or kakemonos, hanging upon them, often with epigrammatic sentences in the decorative Chinese character. At one end of the room is the altarlike table, above which is the ancestral tablet, and on it stand generally candlesticks made of pewter, flower-vases, an incense-burner, and a small vase for incense-sticks. Embroideries are not hung over this table and on the backs of the chairs, unless it is the Chinese New Year time or a dinner party. When the tea is brought, little sugared cakes accompany it; and men say the etiquette is to go away directly you have sipped the tea. But I have never known ladies observe this etiquette. Indeed, the chief fault in Chinese visits is that they are interminable. As no one exerts herself to talk more than she feels inclined, there is, indeed, no reason why they should ever come to an end.

COUNTRY HOUSE NEAR KIUKIANG.

Chinese ladies appear very affectionate, and are very caressing. Whether they really do like me or not, they almost always succeed in making me think they do; and I think other European ladies would say the same. But as to whether the holding one's hand and occasionally stroking it means anything, I really do not know. They never have shown me anything, unless they wanted to sell it, except their children. At an artist's house pictures are brought out; but they are all carefully rolled up and put away again. And at other houses embroideries worked by various brides of the family have been shown me; but this was in order to see if I would buy them. It must be recollected that to the Chinese a foreign woman's tight-fitting dress showing her figure is very indecent. It also seems to them very shocking for a lady to go about unattended by a woman; and for a woman to stand up firmly on her feet and walk on them like a man seems far more indelicate than it does in England to wear so-called rationals. Thus there are great difficulties to be got over at first. They are, indeed, greatly concerned about our indecency; for they have heard no European woman wears trousers, and their first great anxiety is to examine under our petticoats, and see whether this is really true. Trousers are the one essential garment to a woman in China. Sometimes they ask, "Do you really eat with your waist girt in like that? How do you manage then?" But this they have only once had the opportunity of asking of me; for knowing it to be considered objectionable, I avoid wearing anything that shows the figure, in China, as far as I can. After all, tea-jackets admit of many pretty varieties. A European man's dress is, of course, a still greater scandal; and to Chinese, the only explanation of it is that the poor fellow had not enough cloth to cover himself properly. After spending any length of time amongst Orientals, I think every one must feel that our European dress is lacking in grace and elegance.

It takes longer to get a letter the fifteen hundred miles from Shanghai to Chungking than it does to get a letter the thirteen thousand from England to Shanghai. Freight of goods is a great deal higher; indeed, a ton of goods costs £6 from Shanghai to Chungking, and £36 to get it to Talifu in Yunnan. Once I wrote to England on Christmas Eve for stockings, saying I was in such need of them I should like to have them sent out by post; and yet I never received those stockings till the following spring year. In an ordinary way, with good luck, you ought to get an answer to a letter from England in four months; therefore, if you keep up a very animated correspondence with an English friend, always answering every letter directly you receive it, you write three letters a year. And curiously enough, whatever you may do at Chungking, the sense of its being so very far away deters other people from writing to you. Charles Lamb has written a beautiful Elia essay upon this. He explains it by the suggestion that the writer, thinking of the great distance the letter has to travel, fancies it growing tired. Anyhow, the result tends to heighten the sense of isolation, which is perhaps nowhere so much felt as among Chinese. Whether it is their expressionlessness, their want of sympathy, or the whole character of their civilisation being so different from ours, very few Europeans can spend more than a year amongst Chinese without suffering from it. Some go mad with it, and all are accused of growing odd. There is no doubt that most of us become somewhat self-centred and unduly impressed with the importance of our own affairs; but the depression that often overtakes people, women especially, is sadder to witness. In sending out missionaries, this is a point that ought to be specially considered: Have they enough strength of character to continue the work of an apostle without any outside spiritual or inspiriting influences whatsoever? It is not long since a man I had thought so ardent said to me: "I am going away; and I never mean to return. I cannot go on giving out, and having no spiritual help myself." Yet, just because they are trying to live for others, missionaries stand this trial best. I have known other men who from the moment they arrived in a Chinese town found no pleasure but in counting the days. "One more spent here!—one less to spend!" and this without even the least idea of when they would go away.

To Chinese children I always think life in a Chinese city must be very pleasant. There are the great festivals: the Chinese New Year, with all its countless crackers; the Dragon Boat Festival, when each district of the city mans a boat shaped like a dragon, and all paddle like mad, naked to the waist, and with a strange shout that must be very dear to children. Then there are the visits to the graves, when all the family goes out into the country together; and the long processions, when the officials are carried through the city in open chairs and long fur gowns, hundreds of umbrellas of gay colours going before them, and their retainers also riding in pairs and in fur coats of inferior quality. All the beggar-children of the city have a high day then. With fancy dress of various sorts over their rags, they walk or ride or are carried round the city, sometimes as living pictures, sometimes representing conquered aborigines, sometimes even Englishmen in short square coats and tight trousers. In the spring-time a procession goes out to meet the spring, and sacrifice an ox in the river-bed in its honour; and, strangely enough, the day in February on which this is done is always the most genial springlike day, though after it is over winter sets in with renewed severity. At other times it is the image of the fire-god that is carried round, to show him the buildings he is honoured to protect. Then, again, one evening there will be about four miles of little lanterns sent floating down the great river in honour of the dead. Or there will be the baking of the glutinous rice-cakes, accompanied by many curious ceremonials. And in it all the child takes his part; and his elders are very kind to him, and never bother him with cleaning up or putting on clothes to go out. He strips to the waist or beyond it in summer; then, as the winter comes on, puts on ever another and another garment, till he becomes as broad as he is long. At night-time, perhaps, he takes off some clothes; but they are all the same shape, all quite loose and easy. Then he never need be afraid of breaking anything or spoiling anything; for most things are put away, and Chinese things are not like European: the shining black polished table, for instance, can have a hot kettle stood upon it, and be none the worse. No one ever tells the Chinese child to hold himself up, or not to talk so loud, or to keep still; so he shouts and wriggles to his heart's content. And European children grow like him in this respect; and when readmitted to European houses, their feet are for ever rubbing about, and their hands fidgeting with something, which spoils, as European things will spoil.

Although there is so much rain in the west of China, and when it does not rain the air is generally damp to saturation-point, yet sometimes there is a long continuance of summer heat. One year, although according to the Chinese calendar the ending of the great heat had come—and, indeed, also the beginning of autumn, when, if it does not rain, according to the saying, no rain will fall for forty days—yet no rain fell, no thunder cooled the air. The ground was growing harder and harder, and the hills acquiring the yellow baked look so familiar down-river, but so unusual in Chungking.

The south gate was not closed. The idea is, that heat comes in from the south; therefore, when it is too hot, the south gate is always closed. There was, however, too much traffic through it. But no meat, fowls, nor eggs were allowed to go in thereat, and the various cooks and coolies sent in on foraging excursions from the hills returned disconsolate. If any one sold anything, it was with the air of a thief, one man reported. Europeans were beginning to consider what they would have to eat, if this prohibition were strictly enforced. Already for two days the killing of pigs had been forbidden. Outside most houses in the city stood a tub of water ready to be dashed over the too dry woodwork. Already report had been busy destroying the thriving and populous city of Luchou higher up the river by fire; but on a telegram being sent to inquire, the report was found to have arisen in people's own heated imaginations. The danger of fire is ever with us in China, with our wooden houses all dry as tinder and our closely packed opium-smoking population. As to the amount of dirt then concentrated in Chungking, it was shocking to think of; for the place had not been washed out for six weeks.

There is an old saying that drought never wrought England harm. One has the same feeling in Szechuan; and when day by day the beautiful red-golden glow spreads along the range beyond range of mountain-tops, and the sun arises upon a cloudy sky, we cannot help thinking these clouds must gradually get lower, and rain come to cool the air and refresh the country. At night, as we see the lightning flash on the clouds south and west of us, and feel the cool breath of distant rain, we again think it must be on its way. Only during the long hot day there seems no prospect of it; the clouds reveal themselves as summer clouds; the sun shines; and we think how hot it must be in that southern region from which the hot wind comes to us, and wonder whether it is in Tongking, or where, there has been a tremendous rainfall. Has there been somewhere some great convulsion of nature? or is it again all a case of sun-spots? When it is so very hot, what can one think of but the weather?

I never saw the thermometer mark higher than 120° Fahr. in our sitting-room; but then, when it got to that, I always went down into the cellar, and did not come out again till evening. The Chinese have cool, dark places dug out of the rock into which they retire to schwa, i.e. enjoy themselves. All the guild gardens round Chungking are provided with such places. The worst of them is, there is no air in them. But, then, every one has a fan. Even the man heavily laden like a beast of burden has his fan stuck into his waist-belt; the soldier has his fan. It is not a luxury, but a necessary of life, in a Chinese city in summer.

A CHINESE COUNTRY CLUB, OR GUILD GARDEN.
By Mrs. Archibald Little.

In the spring-time what can be prettier than the environs of a Chinese city? The rape-fields are all fragrant with their bright-yellow flowers; whilst the still sweeter scent of the bean blossom makes it a real pleasure to walk along the narrow paths by the river-side. Every one is walking about with a bunch of roseate peach blossom, and the tangles of trees in the gardens are all flowering and all scented. Then a little later the poppy-fields become gorgeous almost up to the city gates, only shortly afterwards to give out a poisonous exhalation most irritating to the mucous membrane. After that everything trembles and glitters with the scorching sunshine, all the leaves droop, gigantic sun-flowers are running to seed, and the large pink-and-white lily flowers of the lotus float upon the waterside. Every woman has a white gardenia flower stuck on the left side of her glossy black hair. And all outside the city is inspiriting, when the sun shines and the blue rivers laugh back at the blue sky. But inside the city it is still all dark and dank, and all is pervaded by a sickly sweet odour, the emanation from the opium-pipe; while the lean ribs and yellow faces of the opium-smokers controvert without the need of words all the scientific assertions about the non-volatilisation of the opium poison. With opium-dens all over the place, with exquisite opium-pipes and all the coquetries of opium-trays and other accessories in the houses of the rich, how is it that we all give warning to a servant when we hear that he has taken to opium? How is it that the treasure on a journey is never confided to a coolie who smokes? How is it that every man shrinks with horror from the idea of an opium-smoking wife? And this in a land in which all important business dealings are concluded over the opium-couch, where, indeed, alone, with heads close together, is privacy to be obtained, and in which all important military posts are confided to opium-smokers, not to speak of most of the important civil offices!

A HOT DAY.
By Mrs. Archibald Little.

There is, it is true, an immense difference between the man who smokes and him who has the yin, or craving, that must at all costs be satisfied; just as there is at home between the moderate drinker and the dipsomaniac. But in China people refuse to employ the moderate smoker to sweep out their rooms for them. Yet they will confide an army to him! These, however, are secrets of State, not to be got to the bottom of simply by life in a Chinese city.

There is one other matter, however, I must touch upon—the all-pervading babble, row I had almost called it, of the boys in the schools, here, there, and everywhere, so that it is almost impossible to get out of earshot of them, all at the top of their boy voices shouting out the classics, as they painstakingly day after day and year after year commit them to memory. With the sickly sweet smell of the opium, and to the sound of the vast ear-drum-splitting army of China's schoolboys, all must for ever associate life in a Chinese city. And through it all, and up and down its flights of stairs, painfully hobbles the Chinese girl-child, the most ungraceful figure of all girl-children,—poor little mutilated one, with her long stick and dreadful dark lines under her sad young eyes! Whatever the men may be, certainly the little girls of China are brought up as Spartans even never were, and those who survive show it by their powers of endurance.

CHAPTER IV.
HINDRANCES AND ANNOYANCES.

Sulphur Bath.—Rowdy Behaviour.—Fight in Boat.—Imprisonment for letting to Foreigners.—Book-keeper in Foreign Employ beaten.—Customs Regulations.—Kimberley Legacy.—Happy Consul.—Unjust Likin Charges.—Foreigners massacred.—Official Responsibility.

As an illustration of the position of Europeans up-country, I will relate very briefly the trivial events of two days. First I must say that nearly every woman in the place was ill—some very seriously so; and as I thought I was not well either, on hearing that my husband and another gentleman, who had gone for a cure to the sulphur baths about thirteen miles from Chungking, found the people quiet, I decided I would join my husband when his friend left him. The villagers, not the priests, objected to my sleeping in the airy temple, where the gentlemen had been allowed to put up their beds, amongst all the gilded images; so my bed and I and a servant moved down to the inn, where some twelve or fifteen persons assisted at the remaking of the bed in an already sufficiently stuffy room—although, happily, most of the dirty paper was gone from its one window—and being accustomed to the ways up-country, I slept just as well in that filthy inn room as I could have anywhere.

Next day, with a chair and a variety of coolies and boys, we took three photographs, and spent the morning under the shade of a magnificent banyan-tree in a lonely valley, stuck over with palms as a pincushion is with pins. The baths were so very hot, my husband thought he would refresh himself by a swim in the limpid stream that runs with many a beautiful cascade down the extremely picturesque limestone valley of the Wentang. Meanwhile, though it was extremely hot, so that it was an effort to move, especially after the hot sulphur baths, yet, being like Frederick "a slave to duty," I took a chair and five coolies to go a hundred yards across the bridge and photograph that and the hot springs from the opposite side.

Unfortunately, as is so often the case, about twenty little laughing boys ran whooping along with me, joined as they went by some older people. This is so usual, I was only bored by it as I got out, and, studying the scene first from one point and then from another, was telling the coolies to bring the camera to a grassy plot from which the best view of the arches of the bridge and the deep pool and the hills behind could be obtained, when some agriculturists rushed forward, one lusty fellow violently threatening me with a stone, and at once snatching my alpenstock out of my hand. I trust I did not move an eyelid, certainly I did not budge a step, as I said: "Is this your land? If so, you are master here; and if you do not wish me to photograph, I certainly will not. But I am doing no harm." The head coolie did his best to explain what other photographs I had taken, and that photographing did not spoil crops. But the agriculturist first listened, and then resumed his violence. Probably he was excited by the prospect of all my following capering across an infinitesimal bit of cultivation that he had squeezed out of the rocks below. He told them not to do so. The coolie told them not to. They did not. But he continued to be violent. The best plan seemed to be to get into the chair and secure the camera; and as all the crowd began to get uproarious, I thought I would be carried quickly away instead of back through them. A very steep hill must, I thought, choke my following off. But it did not. And I had either to return with them to the town, in which case there was sure to be a row, or go to a distance of about two hours up one side of the stream by a very pretty path, and back again the other side by one of the most lonely of wild mountain roads. I had done it all before, having enjoyed all these scenes two years ago, when there was no thought of violence. However, my following kept with me, and grew. So I tried my old plan, the only one I have ever found effectual with a Chinese crowd, and, getting out of the chair, standing quite still, looked solemnly and sadly at first one, then another, till he wished the ground would cover him and retired. I fancy glasses heighten the effect. Anyway, they all sat down, each one hiding behind the other as far as he could.

MARKET STREET OUTSIDE CITY.

We went on, and thus came near a very large Chinese house and garden, with a queer tale of a dead magician, where we had been hospitably entertained two years before. The people knew he had been a magician, because he used to disappear every day at a certain hour; and some one peeped through a crack one day, and saw him actually in a cold-water bath like a fish. I thought it would be a pleasure to visit the garden once more; but again a man shouting and gesticulating, this time armed with one of those heavy hoes they use in digging, which he brandished across my face! It seemed his master, who had entertained us, was dead, and this rustic would have no photography. It was a long way back by the other side of the river, so that it was quite dark when we got back to the little town. This perhaps was just as well.

Next day by daybreak we set off for Chungking. After five pretty but surely very long miles, we came to a market town; and, alas! it was market day. The coolies were desired to carry me to the best inn, and take me in quickly. Of course, it was necessary for them to get some refreshment, or we should not have stopped. I walked to the farthest end of the huge room set out with tables; but the agitated innkeeper asked me to come into a bedroom beyond, there were so many people. He banged to the doors, and then there began a hurly-burly, everybody wanting to get a sight of me. He begged me to go into a bedroom beyond down a steep ladder, and again bolted the doors. This room was even nastier than the first,—four beds with straw, no chair, and a frowsy table. It was so good of him to tell me it was clean, for I should never have imagined it otherwise. A young gentleman occupying an adjacent bedroom began to look furious at the noise and the barring of the doors. With a haughty air he unbarred them. I did not wonder he did not like it. I did not either. Who wants to be barricaded in a chairless, windowless bedroom on a hot day?

It was a great relief when my husband quickly followed me, passing in through the files of people gazing at closed doors. But no one could serve us with tea, and the people got all round the room trying to peep in through the cracks, as also to pull down one partition. Meantime, there was what Germans call "scandal." At last our coolies had fed, the chairs were ready, and, handsomely escorted, we passed out through people in rows, to find the street outside and all the houses one living mass of human heads all staring. It was easy enough to get into the chair, but the coolies had to fight the crowd back to get the poles on their shoulders; and so, amongst a chorus of the usual soft Szechuan imprecations, we departed. I have composed a song with it for the chorus; it sounds pretty, but I am told it is untranslatable. One moves everywhere to the music of it.

THE OLDEST OFFICIAL IN THE PROVINCE OF SZECHUAN.
Lent by Mr. Willett.

Probably our coolies' temper was not improved by the hustling. For, a mile and a half farther on, when we had to take a boat, and after the usual amount of wearisome bargaining had secured one, they greeted a boatman, who kept us waiting some time till he appeared with the long pole iron-spiked used for poling the boat off rocks, with the usual Szechuan oath, and a tag, that seemed to me harmless enough. But the boatman, a tall, fine-looking man, said he could not stand that, and immediately rolled one of our coolies in the mud. In a minute all our gang together were on him. Vainly did my husband call them off. At last, however, somehow they got into the boat again and pushed off; and the great thing seemed to be to get away, for there was the infuriated giant with his pole and his friends wildly springing from rock to rock to get at us. But whether because we were caught in a whirlpool, or whether the owner of the boat steered it back, or what, there we were presently drifting round to the now assembled village, all shrieking, and many armed with carrying-poles. The only thing to do seemed to be to sit quite still; but I felt the more frightened, because it was impossible even to speak to my husband for the uproar. And, indeed, for a time mine was the silence of despair; for a tap from one of those carrying-poles, and all would be over for me, whilst the river was running so strongly, to get into that would be certain drowning. The fight, however, was, after all, not so bad; for a village elder appeared, and again and again collared the infuriated giant and forced him off the boat. Meanwhile, every one shouted, and the expressions of the crowd were something horrible to see, especially those of some women, whose faces seemed to have passed away and left nothing behind but concentrated rage. One of these viragoes actually came on to our boat, and was proceeding herself to capture the one of our coolies who may be said to have begun it all by his inconsiderate language. This first gave me courage. If she, a thin, weak-looking woman, could venture into the midst of these angry men, she must know they were not really so violent as they appeared, I argued. But she also was forced away by the elder. Then two spitfires of boys became prominent, shrieking menaces and brandishing their arms.

At last there was a sufficient lull for my husband and the village elder to exchange names, smiles, and courtesies, which they did with as much ceremony and as pleasant expressions as if they had just met in a London drawing-room. After a second row, the elder asked us to get into another boat. This we did. It was much smaller; but a man with cucumbers, who had been bent on getting a passage for nothing in our boat, and had been ejected, managed now to establish himself in it along with us. He was the only one who seemed to have gained anything out of the whole transaction. We had grown too weak to eject him again. We had been delayed a whole hour in a burning sun; and thanks to this, and the delay in the market town, reached Chungking about noon, both suffering from slight sunstroke.

Each time the mail came in one winter we expected to hear that some Shanghai Volunteers had gone on a little expedition, and somehow managed to knock up against the prison in which the poor people were shut up whose sole crime was having sold an estate near Kiukiang to an Englishman. In the old days the young men of Kiukiang once had a picnic, to which they invited blue-jackets from a man-of-war in port; and that picnic gained for the place undisputed possession of the bungalow where so many Europeans have since then regained health. There was no fighting, no threat of fighting, no ultimatum; they just went and did what had to be done themselves, their friends the blue-jackets helping them. But by the last accounts Kiukiang was occupied with private theatricals, whilst the men who sold their land to Englishmen—nothing more, only had dealings with Englishmen—were still in prison. Whilst that is so, whilst the man who allowed Christian services to be held in his house near Wenchow is persecuted, whilst our beautiful hills are all studded round with upright slabs of stone forbidding Europeans to build upon any of the sites sold to them, how can we expect as Englishmen to be respected in China? One American and one Englishman had even begun building upon these hills. There were the projected sites of the houses, with the hewn stones lying round and the foundations laid. Round about the upright slabs have been stood up, with the legends upon them forbidding any further building within these charmed enclosures.

No people like better to insult other people than the Chinese, in spite of all the lovely adjectives Mr. Ralph showers upon them in the pages of Harper,—"polite, patient, extremely shrewd, well dressed, graceful, polished, generous, amiable"; while Dr. Morrison, the "Australian in China," talks of "their uniform kindness and hospitality and most charming courtesy," and says again, "Their friendliness is charming, their courtesy and kindliness are a constant delight to the traveller." In illustration of all this there were these men in prison at Kiukiang and Wenchow. Do people at home realise what was the crime of which they had been accused? Short of the Home Government, it often seems as if the different European communities in China could make themselves more respected, and protect those who dealt fairly by them, with their own right hands. No Government could urge them to do so. But, as even Sir John Walsham used to say, "There are so many things Englishmen might do even in Peking—if they only would not come and ask me if they might."

In 1897 a Chinese in foreign employ was had up about an alleged debt of 500 taels. By a bribe his accuser had the matter brought before a magistrate who was well known as anti-foreign, and who no sooner heard he was in foreign employ than he ordered him to be beaten without going into the case. This was contrary even to Chinese law. The unfortunate bookkeeper was unable to do his work again for months; he was disfigured past all recognition, and, indeed, too horrible to look upon. His offence was "foreign employ." Can we wonder that the Chinese are not very fond of us? The marvel to me is that they dare associate with us at all.

GIVING EVIDENCE IN A COURT OF JUSTICE.
Lent by Mr. Willett.

Other nations seem to protect their nationals and those dependent upon them far more vigorously than the British Government does. When Chungking was first made a Treaty Port, the then British Consul, a most able and energetic man, was not even advised from Peking that the port was open. Consequently, he was absent from all public functions instituted at the formal opening, took no part in the drawing up of the regulations under which British trade was to be established there, had no voice in the rules issued by the Chinese Customs. Subsequent incumbents of the Consulate have not unnaturally employed any liberty of action given them less in promoting British interests than in keeping things quiet for the Chinese, and so have refrained from endorsing the requests made from time to time to have the obstructive Customs rules modified or the position of the port in any way improved. The rules, issued in Chinese, were so impracticable that successive Commissioners of Customs suspended their action from the day they were published; but this suspension, it afterwards appeared, was a privilege revocable at the arbitrary will of the Commissioner for the time being, and an American Commissioner revoked them to the detriment of the only bona-fide European shipping firm as yet established there, thus doing what lay in his power to take away business from European firms and throw it into the hands of the Chinese firms, which continued as before to enjoy a suspension of the Customs rules.

Business at Chungking is all carried on by so-called chartered junks. They are not really chartered; but before they can clear the Customs, they must fly a foreign house-flag and number. The permission to fly this must be obtained by a foreigner through his Consul. The British Consul, up till then the only one there, resided at the opposite end of the city to the business quarter, where the Customs Office is situated. This entailed some hours delay. And when it is considered that one junk carries as a rule from fifty to a hundred packages only, it "passeth the wit of man" to conceive why this red-tapeism was allowed to continue. The China Merchants' Steamship Co., the largest shippers in Chungking, were allowed to obtain their "passes" from the Custom-house direct—a great convenience, as the Custom-house is in one part of this city, the Customs' Bank in another, and the examining-pontoon across the river at the head of a rapid. The junks mostly lie in a reach below; and it is no exaggeration to say that it takes a day for a man to get round to the three places. Yet the Customs rules do not allow the duty to be paid until the cargo has passed examination at the pontoon; nor is the cargo-boat allowed to leave it until a duty-paid certificate is brought back and exhibited at the pontoon. This necessitates the cargo being left in an open boat all night at the head of a rapid, and much loss has resulted from the delay that occurs there in any case. Consequently, this rule had never been enforced, and the cargo-boat had been allowed to leave and proceed to load the chartered junk in safety immediately after examination. But an application to his Consul by the Britisher was met by a "despatch" in the stereotyped language, "I cannot interfere with the Customs regulations."

The telegraph office, formerly situated in the business quarter of the city, was then moved into the distant country enclosure which forms a part of all Chinese cities, because the manager owned a piece of land there, and thus rented it to advantage. Naturally here the foreign merchant could not expect a remonstrance to be of any avail, as the telegraph is a purely native concern.

It would take too much space to enumerate the further difficulties to which a foreigner is at present exposed. To enforce a claim for debt he must apply to his Consul. A Chinaman unwilling to pay is never at a loss to invent an excuse,—the papers are not in order, just as in cases of sale the land was not really his. If the Consul is content to become merely the translator of these Chinese excuses, which by transmission he appears, indeed, even to accept, and to a certain extent to endorse, we, as the farmer said, "seem to get no forrader." How far the actions of Consuls in these matters, and with regard to obstructions about buying land and renting houses, come from individual action or from instructions from Peking, of course it is not for a mere woman to decide. We used in China at one time to put down everything that went wrong to Lord Kimberley. Now even sometimes we fancy it is a Kimberley legacy. But very likely we are quite wrong.

It will be obvious from the above how much depends upon the disposition of the Consuls. Naturally they vary greatly. The theory used to be that they were too apt to look upon themselves as protectors of the Chinese against the encroachments of their nationals. Having suffered severely under the most flagrant specimen of this class, I am happy to add that I think it is dying out. Most of the Consuls in China now seem only too able for the importance of their posts. At the same time, one never knows when a crisis may arise; and then the men, who as a rule have been foremost in all the social life each of his own port, are admirably seconded by willing communities, that rejoice to follow the lead of those who are certainly generally in all things the opposite to the delightful caricature sketch well known to have been written by a leading member of the China Consular body:

"THE HAPPY CONSUL.

Who is the happy Consul? Who is he

That each aspiring sub. should wish to be?

He who, behind inhospitable door,

Plays, like Trafalgar founts, from ten to four;

Takes Rip Van Winkle as a type to follow,

And makes his Consulate a Sleepy Hollow,

Content to snooze his lazy hours away,

Sure of a pension and his monthly pay

So he can keep on good terms with his Chief,

Lets meaner interests come to utter grief;

Treats with smooth oil august Legation nerves,

With vinegar the public whom he serves.

Each case through native spectacles he sees,

Less Consul than Protector of Chinese;

Trembles at glances from Viceregal eyes,

And cowers before contemptuous Taotais;

But should mere nationals his aid implore,

Is quite the haughty personage once more.

Lives on the bounty of the public's purse,

Yet greets that public with a smothered curse;

With scowls that speak of anything but pleasure,

Daunts ill-advised invaders of his leisure;

From outward signs of courtesy exempt,

Treats their just protests with a fine contempt;

Does little, strives to make that little less,

And leads a life of cultured uselessness.

Such is the happy Consul. Such is he

That each aspiring sub. should wish to be."

Even, however, where the Consul is all he should be—and probably no body of men ever was more respected and trusted than the British Consular Body in China—yet British subjects' interests must suffer, if the British Minister will not support them. Nor can the British Minister do much, if the permanent officials at the Foreign Office wish him to do little.

When two men were murdered at Wusüeh, the village ought, at least, to have been razed to the ground. When the Kucheng massacre occurred, the Viceroy and the Chinese officials, who laughed about it all as they talked with the British officials sent to settle about compensation with them, ought one and all to have been degraded at the very least. No one likes bloodshed. The Chinese only get on as they do without an army or a police force by means of very exemplary punishments; they understand slight punishment as a confession of weakness, or an acknowledgment that the offender was not so much to blame after all. Nor does any one who lives in China believe in Chinese peasantry ever daring to murder foreigners except at the instigation of men in high place. People in England often fancy missionaries are very much disliked in China. As a rule, they seem greatly liked and respected each in his own neighbourhood, although in the abstract officials and old-fashioned literati may object to them.

Whatever may be said about all these matters, an English subject cannot but be pained on finding how little British Consuls are able to effect in redressing serious grievances, such as inability to buy or rent land in the surrounding country, whereby we were for many years forcibly compelled to live in a Chinese house in a filthy street inside the walls of an overcrowded Chinese city. Let a Frenchman or a Russian be the aggrieved party, and instantly his Consul is on the war-path, and the Chinese have to give way at once. Englishmen have gone on paying likin illegally, until a Frenchman, backed by his Consul, successfully protested. British steamers are illegally arrested and detained by the Chinese Imperial Maritime Customs, and no redress is obtainable; when a French steamer is only boycotted by Chinese shippers, an indemnity is immediately claimed, and at once paid.

It is little things like these, for ever being repeated, that lead to Englishmen in the west of China often saying they must take out naturalisation papers as Frenchmen or Italians in order to get on. Possibly the bitterness thereby engendered will do the British Government no harm; but it paralyses commercial enterprise. And Manchester will suffer from it, when it is too late to alter anything, unless a more consistent and dignified policy be pursued in the Far East. People have not been proud of England out in China lately. It may be stupid of us all; but as a rule it takes a good deal to make Englishmen ashamed of their country. And that point has been unfortunately reached some time ago.

CHAPTER V.
CURRENT COIN IN CHINA.

Taels.—Dollars.—Exchange.—Silver Shoes.—Foreign Mints.

She was not long out from England, and a comprador order was as yet an unnatural phenomenon to her. She supposed it was something like a cheque upon a bank, or a circular note, with which Continental travel had made her intimately acquainted. "What is the value of a dollar in English money?" she had asked before starting on her tour from Shanghai. "Oh yes, I understand it depends upon the exchange. I used always to keep myself in gloves on what one gained in Italy. Now it is horrid; one gains nothing. I don't quite know why it is. But how much about is the dollar worth, when exchange is—is—nothing particular?" Then she had such long speeches made to her, and heard so much conflicting information, she felt deafened, but ultimately arrived at the conclusion that there were about—yes! about six dollars in an English pound, and there ought not to be so many. Now, somewhat to her consternation, she discovered that her comprador orders had taels printed upon them; so she made out her order in taels, secretly wondering what they were. She had never seen them.

"Do you think I got the right exchange?" she asked of her Boy; then, trying to suit herself to his needs, and speak English "as it is spoke," "He pay my right money?"

"My no savey what thing one taelee catchee Hankow side," said the Boy, with flippancy but decision. He came from farther inside the province.

She felt abashed, and supposed she must just take her money, hoping it was right. Next time she would be wiser. Arrived at Ichang, she scratched out taels, and was about to write in dollars.

"Dollars! Dollars aren't known at Ichang," said the Captain.

"What had I better do?" she asked of the oldest resident. Again she was overwhelmed with words. But she gathered she ought to ask for taels.

"Taels don't exist," said the Captain. "I never saw a tael, did you? He'll bring you your money in lumps of silver, if you don't take care."

"Yes," said the old resident, "you had better not get lumps of silver."

"They vary in value, according to the quality of the silver," persisted the Captain. "You won't know what to do with them. You can't break them up. You will have to weigh them. And what can you pay for in lumps of silver? Nobody will take them for anything you want to buy."

They actually both talked to her as if she wished for solid, uncoined lumps of silver. She felt confounded! But, determined to preserve her calm, she said, "I had better write, and say I want so many strings of cash, then, had I? Ten thousand cash? Twenty thousand cash? I can't carry them, you know; and I don't know where I can keep them. But I must have at least so much money in hand, if it is only to pay for my washing."

"Pay for your washing!" they both burst out, as if that were a most superfluous proceeding.

"I wouldn't write for cash, I think," began a third adviser. "I would write down how many taels you require, and say you'd take it in cash."

"Then I shall never know if I get the right amount."

"A—h!" they all said, waving their hands, as if no one ever did know if he got the right amount in China.

"It varies. It varies from day to day," said the oldest resident.

Needless to relate, she never saw those cash, never heard how many she had received, nor where they were stowed away. The Boy said he had them, it was all right. He said also that at Ichang it was very shocking how few cash they gave for the tael.