with well-carved bulkheads between. The fore-cabin was taken up by a boy to wait on us, and by our newly-appointed Chinese secretary — Chang. This secretary was a small compact man, full of Chinese lore and self-satisfied complacency. The " central state" room was our own, while Captain Wang and his wife found shelter in the after-cabin. Besides this there was an ample hold, which contained our baggage, our provisions and our crew.
We left Hankow about mid-day, but as there was no wind, we had to pole our way through thousands of native boats, and anchor for the night at Ta-tuen-shan, only ten miles above the town. A hard frost set in during the evening, and it seemed quite impossible to keep the intense cold out of our quarters. To make matters worse, the skipper and his spouse smoked stale tobacco half through the night, and the fumes came through the bulkhead and filled my sleeping-bunk. Next day we set to work with paper and paste to cure both evils by patching up every crevice and by fixing up a stove which had been lent us by friends for the voyage. These preparations were a source of disquietude to Mrs. Wang, who turned out to be a tartar more desperate even than the lady of the Min.
The boatmen were a miserably poor lot. They neither changed their clothes nor washed their bodies during the entire trip: and "Why should they.?*" said Chang the secretary ; they could only change their garments with one another. They have but a single suit apiece, and that, too, some of them only loan for the winter months. Their clothes were padded with cotton and formed their habiliments by day and their bedding by night. Poor souls ! how they crept together, and huddled into the hold ! and what an odour arose from their retreat in the morning, for they had smoked themselves to sleep with tobacco, or those of them who could afford it, with opium. It was always a
