to subsist on. How they got through the hot days and cold nights, and how many of them survived their hardships only to be subjected to them in the succeeding year, it is impossible to say. We could tell from the bodies drifting seaward that Death was busy among them, relieving the sick and satisfying the hungry in his own sad final way.
The Chinese, like peoples both ancient and modern, have a superstitious dread of disturbing the resting-places of their dead. For many miles around Tientsin the country is one vast burial- ground, and it was pitiful to notice the efforts the living were making to lash the coffins of their dead to trees or to posts which they had driven into the mud. But numbers of the huge clumsy coffins were to be seen floating adrift, with no living relation to care for their occupants. The water was so deep that in many places the tortuous river's channel had been abandoned, and native craft were sailing overland, so to speak, direct from the city.
Our steamer, the " Sin-nan-sing, " had great difficulty in turning the sharp bends of the river; her bow would stick in the mud of one bank, and her screw in the other ; but at length Tientsin was reached, and there we found the water five or six feet deep at the back of the foreign settlement, and the Peking road submerged.
The foreigners were looking forward to the prospect of soon being shut in by a sea of ice. Here, on the bank of the river, was a British hotel, called *'The Astor House," its modest pro- portions almost concealed by the huge signboard in front. This establishment was constructed of mud, and on one side of it a window had fallen out, while on the other the wall had fallen in. I had a look at this unpromising exterior and some conver- sation with its proprietor. The latter was an Englishman, and
