the group of picturesque well-built brick houses of which the settlement was composed. When we had left this place and had sat down on a hill-side to talk over old times and former scenes of travel, Ahong confessed to me, among other matters, that he had no particular religious views at all. He had at one time been a Christian in Singapore, but had got bullied out of his change of faith by his friends. In a general way he thought it a good thing to have plenty of pork while aUve ; then to be laid in a comfortable coffin and buried in a dry place, and hereafter to have one's spirit fed and clothed continuously by surviving sons.
Next day we reached Shui-kow and found it built on the slopes of the hills, on the left bank of the river. This town was unlike any which I had seen on the plains. There was something new in its piles of buildings towering story above story, and in its picturesque situation; and here, too, I found that a water system had been elaborated out of a complex series of bamboo pipes and gutters, which passed from house to house, and brought constant supplies of water from a spring more than a mile away, in the hills. At Shui-kow I hired a '* rapid-boat " to take us on to Yen-ping-fu. Our captain was Cheng-Show, or rather his wife, a lady who had a great deal to say both for him and herself too. Thus, when we ascended the first rapid, there was Mrs. Cheng to be seen well to the fore; at one moment nursing her baby, at another the child had been tossed into a basket, and the mother was fending her boat with a long pole from destruction on the rocks. Then to her brat again, or to cooking, cleaning, or husband- baiting; to each and every pursuit she was found equal, as fancy prompted or necessity compelled. Ours was a small boat, like all the others, carrying a high bridge and a rudder in the shape of a long oar, which
