but her crew in a twinkling slipped the tracking line, and she drifted safely down mid-stream.
The Chinese get the credit of being exceedingly temperate, and in the majority of cases this is true ; but at the same time, among the lower orders, especially the boating population, tem- perance is only observed because sheer necessity compels re- straint; and many of the boatmen on the rivers along which I have travelled will drink sam-shu to excess during the cold weather, whenever they can win a few extra cash. These men are about as poor and miserable a class as one can meet in the most poverty-stricken districts of the land. In the southern provinces their sole food is steamed rice, flavoured with salt, or rendered more savoury with a fragment of salt fish; and when times are good, they even indulge in the luxury of a little bit of pork fat. It is surprising how they stand the cold, more especially in the northern regions, and how a drop of spirits will send the warm blood tingling through their veins and cause them to display a muscular power and a strength of endurance not easily accounted for, when one considers the simple nature of their food. Millions of these hardy sons of toil live from hand to mouth, and are only kept from starving, from piracy, and from rebellion by the cheapness of their staple food, and by the constant demand for their labour. But there are pirates to be found in this very river; our crew themselves told us of it, and added, that for anything they knew to the contrary, there might be a swarm of them in the boats among which we moored at night.
At Ying-Tek city 1 fell in with a spectacle which fully affirmed this assertion, and at the same time produced in me a sensation of horror that it will be impossible ever to forget. Ying-Tek stands on the right bank of the stream; beneath
