OR those to whom the Yangtsze is but a name, the existence of the European's houseboat thereon requires explanation; for, like many another feature of life on the fringe of Eastern Asia, it is an exotic growth, slowly evolved as the white man has adapted himself to a new and medieval environment. To most people the word will no doubt call up visions either of those unwieldy floating parlours which line the comfortable banks of Thames in summer, or that more navigable but cheerless craft discovered by Mr. Bangs on the cold tide of Styx. But to us in China the houseboat is become as much and as intimate a factor of existence as Taotais, the chit-system, or any other of the parochial matters which differentiate our lives from those of Upper Tooting. And so, though I may be tedious, I shall explain matters for the benefit of the uninitiated.

Imprimis, however, a word to the enlightened reader, the old resident (bless his querulous ways!), who, rightly enough, asks to be informed of your book's raison d'etre. A record of Idleness, my dear Sir, trivial things set down in garrulous mood and chiefly for the delectation (if so it may be) of fellow-Idlers. Herein you shall find little geography and even less science, except it be such as all may take, by favour of the gods, from "pleasure trips into the lands of Thought and among the Hills of Vanity." A little chronicle, Madam, in memory of glad sunlit days, of cheery companions, and the joy of living. No great matter at best, and yet, to those who, smoking tolerant pipes, perceive through the haze something of relative values, our boat and its affairs may, from a philosophic standpoint, be as worthy of attention as any of the world-shaking matters that reverberate from the House by the River at Westminster.

The houseboat of the lower Yangtsze regions owes her existence to several causes, of which the first is the wanderlust inbred in the Anglo-Saxon, and, second, the absence of all roads, except waterways, in China. She is the embodiment in canvas and timber of European ideas adapted to Celestial ways and byways, ideas of accommodation, watercraft, and common humanity. This for the general; but beyond this, of necessity, lies the expression of individual identity common to all ships, so that, crossing the gangplank of the Water-Baby or the Mighty Atom, you shall say at a glance what manner of men their owners be.

In the beginning of things the houseboat of Shanghai, such craft as the gentlemanly opium smugglers used in the days when the Eight Princes held their tinsel Court at Nanking, were nothing more than the native wusieh k'uai, equipped with camp beds to keep down vermin, and curtains to keep out the winds of heaven. And in remote spots one may yet fare right well in these native boats; of which more anon. But your Chinese ship, big or little, is an unwieldy craft, built on the principle common to the life of this people that there is always room for one more, and indifferent as to how or where he shall bestow himself. It is eminently adapted for a race which travels as a matter of choice in the patriarchal manner, which cooks its food in the helmsman's bunk and eats it on the cabin floor; but British ideas of "ship-shape" as well as the exigencies of racial division aboard called for gradual amendment of the type. Therefore, our boat was brought to a form combining the qualities of house comfort and ship speed; Chinese rigging gave place to English sails; lee-boards were added, and finally brasswork, awnings, and a coat of paint made the thing complete. Its evolution, which may be traced in old photographs, has taken forty years, and the last word has not yet been spoken.

Philosophers are agreed that the common fate of all noble and great devices of man, unless restrained by abiding virtue or an energetic police, is to fall away from the first ideal state, and this by reason of the cankerworm of luxury. It is an old-world struggle this, of Stoic and Epicurean, to be found for the seeking at every turn of the grim human comedy. In the matter of houseboats one may see clearly its evidences and portents. Let us say nothing of such elephantine freaks as Simeon may build, whereon to give his Gargantuan feasts, al fresco, on summer nights; tavern-ships with planolas and plush fittings, happily unseen beyond harbour limits or, at their worst, disturbing the stillness of the nearer hills. Nor need I refer to those boudoir boats, lace-curtained and mirrored, whose owners must needs find a way to spend their money, and whose chief use lies in up-river picnics, entertainments wherein gramophones, parasols, much food and some gallantry combine to relieve the dullness of Whangpoo scenery. In another place, if I find myself in a proper and delicate humour, I shall refer to the question of the fair sex in its relation to houseboats; as for these vessels of the Sybarites, let us leave them at their moorings. For they are excrescences, of their nature ephemeral, unworthy of serious regard. Let us not speak of these, but only of houseboats pour le bon motif, and even here honesty compels the admission that there exists evidence of the insidious cankerworm aforesaid.

It is a curious fact that as the flesh-pots of the white man in China have waned in their fatness, as the conditions of his life have gradually come to conform more closely to the standards of the lands which sent him forth, as the profitable hazards of the game have grown less, so has the candle of his comfort's needs waxed ever greater. The fact scarcely calls for demonstration; its evidence meets us on the threshold of every villa residence, protrudes itself in all our dining-rooms, in our clubs. and on our backs; and the houseboat, compared with the craft of twenty years ago, affords proof of the advances we have made in comfortable materialism. The thing was at first of its nature simple, a fitting answer to the call of the wild; but now, when transcontinental railways are making us one of London's remoter suburbs, and the voice of Israel (via New York and Moscow) is in our ears, our boats are becoming finicky things, tricked out with marble baths and gold paint. 'Tis an easy descent, its impulse the same which leads many a good woman to turn her house into a restaurant, but its results are unpleasant. To give you an instance: I have lately been told of a boat built to contain four persons in luxury, a thing in itself so contrary to the philosophy of upcountry wanderings that one can only explain it as due to continental influence or the yellow peril at our gates. This monstrous invention has folding beds of full size, a bathroom with hot and cold water laid on, dining-room for six, and a patent card-table; moreover, she is provided with a petrol motor-engine which drives her through the water at six miles an hour, with hideous noise and stink. True, this is an extreme case. and Grandison, her owner, is the sort of man who goes to the theatre with his compradore; but the germ of an unholy competition is abroad, and there is need for us, the brotherhood of Idlers, to walk home carefully in the paths of simplicity. The cigarettes of Egypt are well enough in their place, but on the hillsides give me the honest briar.

It is not given to the works of man to combine all the virtues, and the reader will observe that our houseboat, being useful, is not a thing of absolute beauty. Those who desire an exact description of her build and equipment will not find it here, for, in the first place, your technical details are but dry stuff, and, in the second, this is a matter on which, as with feminine loveliness, we do not all agree. Let me therefore but roughly outline the Saucy Jane, so that those who have never crossed her gang-plank may know something of her interior economy and uses. The houseboat, like all Gaul, is divided into three parts - the white man's, the yellow man's, and the dogs'; and since the object of its being is that all these should dwell together, for days or weeks, in such good content as may be, the proportion of space which each enjoys is a matter on which much depends. I speak of the boat for two, whose, average length is forty-five feet, with an eight-feet beam amidships. In such a one a cabin twelve feet by eight should suffice for any decent pair of Christians and sportsmen; all good fellowship and much peace of mind can travel easily in a smaller space. For your free-moving man, who in his waking hours must have room to swing a cat, or indeed in any event, it is an excellent thing to have bunks which fold and fit nicely into the walls, for not only do you thus avoid during the day that dormitory aspect which has been known to offend sensitive minds, but these bunks being provided with locks, you can enjoy the pleasant certainty that no unsavoury native will sleep on them during your absence.

Forward of the mast the ship is decked some three feet higher than the level of the cabin floor; in this place is the kennel, as ample as possible, while leaving room in the house for a chain locker and those mysterious depths where, under our protection, the lowdah carries his smuggled salt and other perquisites. Bluff bows of the Chinese type are best, affording grateful space above and below; as our journeyings are usually on pacific inland waters, we can cheerfully take the risk of an occasional bumping in a head sea. Much of the joy of houseboat days depends on good deck-room forward, which should give place at least for two cane chairs. There, smoking the sunset pipe, your body tingling with the health of a long day in the open, and your mind at peace with gods and men, you may watch the soft sinking of twilight to dusk, and dusk to night, deriving a very human sense of added ease from the contemplation of the coolies' labours; or, as the dawn comes up over the edge of your flat, sail-dotted world, you may here fill your lungs with the morning breeze, blowing sweet-scented from the rape fields, and thank God that you are alive. All of us, if we stop to think it out, would sooner share what Whitman calls "the cooling influences of external nature" with a congenial friend or book on the quarter-deck of our wandering boat than sit in the busiest money-mill on earth; the pity of it is that we go on, nevertheless, most of our days, groping in our subterranean ways, while, far overhead, larks are singing and the sun is shining on God's wonderful world; and so the swift years pass, until from our narrow path we emerge to find Charon waiting for us by the cold stream. Every day that we rescue from the gloomy routine of our counting-houses and gas-lit streets to spend under the open sky is a day of grace; this is a truth which even Chicago may recognise, as its spasmodic cult of the 'simple life' bears witness. All of which digression comes from the memory of hours fortunately spent beyond the frontiers of fancy on our houseboat's foredeck.

Aft of the cabin belongs to the yellow man; seeing the space he occupies, a stranger would be surprised at the number of our Aryan brothers and the manner in which they dispose themselves and their impedimenta. Ten Celestial souls, at least, journey (without sentiment) in our company - the boy, the cook, and the crew, -and each has his allotted place for work and sleep. In a well-ordered boat the space between cabin and kitchen is generous; partly because one is thus spared many of the unsavoury harbingers of dinner which arise from the frying-pan, and partly because the boy and cook have no other sleeping room than that which the "pantry" affords. I know that there exists a theory, widely held, that a native can sleep anywhere, and that to concern oneself for his comfort is foolishness; many good people quarter their Chinese servants worse than their dogs. No doubt that the Oriental survives bad treatment and that he accepts it, like other sublunary happenings, with stolid patience; at the same time, there is an old saying about the merciful man which comes to mind when one sees the "boy" sleeping en pelotte in a cupboard five feet by three, while the cook lies uneasily curled between his stove and the water-kong. Humanity apart, these people would better appreciate our excursions and sorties, and render us, therefore, a better, because a more willing, service if their necessities were a matter of more concern to us.

Of other matters on which depends our boat's wellbeing, that of light and ventilation in the cabin is immediate. To get both in plenty, without the thousand natural ills that come of draughts; to avoid gloom and glare by day; to prevent on wintry nights those swift alternations of stuffiness and cold, wherefrom spring rheums and vapours, -these are problems to which the complete answer still eludes us. Yet there are certain principles of universal acceptance. Our windows should be wide, and one of them on a level with the bunkhead, so that, without moving from the pillows, the silent message of the kindly stars may reach us as we turn to sleep; that, waking, we may see the wonder of rosy-fingered dawn come, soft heralded by twittering of birds. As to fresh air, tastes vary; I have seldom known two men, and never a woman, to hold a reasonable and temperate view of the subject, and I have journeyed pleasantly enough with a German who would have none of it. The question is greatly simplified, however, by firmly abolishing that abominable source of woe, the American coal-stove. 'Tis an invention good enough, no doubt, in its own place, where men make it the rally-point of society, expectorating towards it as to the centre of gravity, but in the houseboat it is a fearsome thing, disturbing the even tenour of life. Unlike the Church of Laodicea, your small stove is always red hot or stone cold; windows and doors in its vicinity must be for ever opened and shut, clothes doffed and donned, to meet its varying humours. Replace it by a movable kerosene stove of the non-odorous kind. and you may sit snugly through the coldest evening with the temperature you desire, and as much fresh air as the stronger vessel may want.

I speak not here of the servants' quarters, nor of that unsavoury place wherein the crew sleep, eat, and spend lives which to us seem curiously purposeless and unpleasant; to these tribes on our frontier I shall refer in another place.

For the cabin's equipment, every man in his humour. Certain things there must be, such as good lamps, so fixed that one may read cosily abed; bunks that invite to sleep; a bookshelf and some odd nooks and corners for stowage of boots, bottles. and other unsightly things. In boats, as in houses, there is a happy half-way resting-place between Rome and Capua, of which the sign is comfort with simplicity. With a few good pictures we soon become intimate, and fitness may be observed even in the colour of drugget. I have a friend who carries the Spartan mood to extreme limits, whither I follow him with difficulty; his cabin has the severity of a casual ward, and, like Mrs. Battle, he plays the whole game with rigour. At his frugal dietary I cavil not (though a glass of port on a winter's night is grateful), but I draw the line at his bunks. For he will not hear of spring mattresses, quotes the Immortal Bard on the blessed state of him who snores upon the flint, and thinks a bed of shavings with alpine bosses and declivities "good enough for any tired man." I mention this case merely to show how the best of customs, if overdone, may corrupt our little world, and to observe that spring mattresses in a houseboat are desirable, if only because you can take them out and wash them; and where one travels with Asiatics, cheek by jowl, this is a matter not unworthy of consideration.

Our good ship is thus set forth in all her parts to your realist a thing of timber and tarpaulin, full of jabbering Orientals, but to the eye of faith an Argosy wherein we may sail gladly into worlds unexplored and return not empty handed. For each one of us, though the poetic fires may be damped and the young man's fancy turned to lumps of lead, life has yet voices that call ever to the Enchanted Isles, hands that guide us to the gate called Beautiful. It is when the day's work is done and our quantum of meals eaten that life begins; then we have time to realise the wonder of our being here at all, and to distinguish something of the vast harmonies which underlie the ear-splitting discords around us. In the glory of the sunset, in the piping of Pan beneath the trees, in the beauty of a woman's face, each of us hears at times these undying voices universal, but for many a man the whole joyous world of imagination may be conjured up by homelier things, by a trout-rod, a bag of golf-sticks, ay, even by the wind shrieking in suburban chimneys. For myself, I never see a houseboat lying at her moorings but straightway I sail away in fancy to the happy hunting-grounds.

Sailing, the word reminds me that of recent years there has grown up amongst houseboat Idlers a tendency to discard the sail in favour of steam towing. Everywhere, since the days of the Shimonoseki Treaty, native and Japanese companies compete on the main waterways to tow your boat, one of a serpentine train, carrying you a hundred miles while you sleep. For Nimrod the advantage is plain, and to carp at the inevitable advance of our material devices were churlish; one may sigh for the time when no puffing engines disturbed these peaceful waters, besmearing their lilies and eglantine with soot, but after all, you may sigh with as good cause over every navigable river in England. Of this, then, we need say nothing; at the temperate use of launches let us not cavil; but that it should ever lead any man to abolish the sail, wherein lies the essence of houseboat joys, is a melancholy result. Yet I know men who have removed the mast boldly, henceforth towing their poor dismembered hulks dismally from one shooting-ground to another. Motor-launches, too, have appeared within our borders, machines which act as tenders, snorting up and down the shallower creeks and relieving the houseboat of all purpose in existence except that of a floating inn. True it is that all the base uses of the lowdah and his crew are directed, naturally enough, towards inducing the foreign devil to rely entirely on steam, and that to overcome these passive resisters requires determination of a high order. True, also, that the largest bags may possibly be made by those who use these latest inventions; nevertheless, an old fashioned person may be allowed to hope that the thing will not be overdone, and that the houseboat may continue to move with life upon the face of our inland waters; for the killing of game, after all, is only one of the objects of our up-country days, and there are higher joys than to make a bag which shall be recorded in the papers.

Of all our good store of houseboat memories, none, I think, linger more fragrantly than the moments perdus of sport, those half-hours spent listening to the ripple of waves breaking from under our bows, and the whisper of the wind in the rigging. After a morning on the marshes, to sail among the lagoons or out into the lake, with the sunlight dancing ahead and Black Care a hundred miles behind; down the long reaches dreamily to watch the banks go by, to the creaking of buffalo wheels and the thousand familiar (yet unknown) sights and sounds of Chinese life afloat and ashore; or, seeking a quiet anchorage, to steal down a silent creek at dusk, a white shadow among the grey and brown, where no sound mars the spell of coming night-hours like these we would not willingly forgo for any invention of rapid transit.

There is, methinks, something in the Anglo-Saxon, landlubber and ledger clerk though he be, some fluid in his system diluted from that of his Norsemen and Dane forebears, which unconsciously quickens to the throb of any craft that sails upon the face of the waters; as the canvas bellies to the wind, and the foam goes rippling astern, he feels a glorious tickling of his spinal cord, a message, echoing faintly down the long corridors of Time from those stout mariners of old, that the joys and fears of their long forgotten lives are still a very part of his being.

KNOW a man who has conceived and executed the brilliant idea of putting his houseboat crew into uniform-a rainbow thing of scarlet and blue, with heraldic devices in green across breast and back. His reasons for this are, first, to distinguish his retainers from the aborigines; secondly, to impress the cities of the plain with the importance of the strangers in their midst; and, thirdly, to conceal from himself that exceeding squalor which marks the houseboat coolie for its own. Arraying these poor waifs in garments suggestive of a pantomime chorus, he is able to contemplate them, he says, without continual heartsearchings on the subject of Destiny and its rugged inequalities. Vastly creditable, I think, both this spiritual distress and the manner of its alleviation.

For the crew of a European's houseboat consists generally of the pariahs of our floating population. That it should be so is unnecessary; the fact, like many others of the kind, is due to our distaste for studying the native and his ways - or, to put the matter plainly, to our ignorant laziness. Good and notable exceptions there are - boats that use and keep workmen; on long trips, even your easy-going man may inspect his wastrels before starting, but of the ordinary week-end trip it is safe to say that half the average crew should be in hospital and the other half in gaol. And this is partly because the lowdah has come to expect that you will travel by steam, and partly because long impunity in fooling and fleecing the foreign devil has made him greatly daring. Which brings us to consideration of the lowdah.

In the ancient vernacular his name means "old and great " - no doubt, like another word with us, it was originally "a term of endearment among sailors," an archaic equivalent of old cock,' and its actual meaning is helmsman or shipmaster. On a houseboat he is the only permanent official; in theory, a faithful watcher who keeps the Saucy Jane spick and span; guards her inner parts from river thieves, rats and vermin, and her hull from dry rot and the poles of passing junks; sees to her safe mooring, and engages the crew when wanted. In practice he is one of a close corporation of rogues and scoundrels, who for five days in the week riots and gambles (probably in the cabin of the Saucy Jane) with his fellow ruffians on what he has 'squeezed' from your last trip. The native mafoo is something of a villain, but compared to the houseboat lowdah he is a guileless person of good morals.

And when you come to think of it, the thing is natural enough, for here, as in all the Seven Seas, the leisured classes are prone to evil, and the innate virtue of a Chinaman is not proof against luxurious idleness; and the lowdah is idle, exempt even from the master's eye, for 300 days of the year. In such case he must perforce fall from grace; but the mystery of the thing is that, having fallen and being the reprobate he is, he should retain his pride of place and continue to swell it on the after-deck of any decent boat. No doubt the secret-like that of all native villainy-lies in organisation; these fellows keep the ring against outsiders, and to get a new lowdah, under these conditions, is simply to draw another card from a very filthy pack. Dismiss your man to-morrow: what happens? Brown will take him, because Brown's has left him suddenly - and you get Brown's. There is one truculent ruffian of my acquaintance who has been lowdah on nearly every boat on the river; he never keeps a place more than a month after the shooting season begins, and is generally thrown overboard up country; but he finds, like Tristram Shandy, that in the propagation of geese Nature is all-bountiful, and I see no reason why he should not continue successfully in his profession unto the end. A remedy for this state of affairs may possibly lie in engaging young and artless lowdahs from another district under police protection; but the experiment requires more energy and leisure than most of us can afford.

Seven coolies go to make the ordinary boat's crew which the lowdah professes to engage. You pay each man forty cents a day (say 8d.). Off this wage the lowdah 'squeezes' three or four cents as the price of his favour; next he makes profitable terms for running the ship's mess, and levies a claim on "cumshaws." Eventually he engages a couple of able-bodied men in case of accidents, ships his wife's cousin (suffering from incipient beri-beri) and his own nephew (aetat. I3), the remainder of the crew being usually opium smoking ricksha men whose vehicles have been impounded by the police. Is it any wonder that, if you insist on travelling twenty miles under "yuloh" (the long stern sweep), the elements, mysteriously working, and the stars in the courses combine to forbid it; that time, tide, head winds, the size of your boat., and the state of the creeks prevent any such under-taking?

Knowledge, as sages have frequently observed, is power. In no country upon earth is this axiom made manifest as in China, where the "knowing" man lives in fatness, preying upon those whom Imperial Edicts describe as the "stupid ones." The lowdah's place in creation and his survival therein aptly illustrate this simple truth. He knows, therefore he thrives. He knows the European's limitations and the necessities of his fellow-natives, and from both he derives profit sufficient to make him a personage in the teahouse. There is, moreover, as with friend Reineke, a certain artistic merit in the rogue's methods which compels our sneaking admiration; he has brought his villainies to such a pitch of studied perfection, based his systems on such foundations of laborious knowledge, that at times you are inclined to let him enjoy the fruits of his ingenuity. It is the same feeling that prompts you, when the peregrine swoops deftly on your wounded quail, to let him get away with his quarry.

In the gentle art of presenting bills the lowdah is a past master; give him his head, and the upkeep of your boat will equal that of a suburban villa. There are, of course, the usual and recognised squeezes of his profession; the annual overhauls - on which he lives riotously for months - the incidentals of each trip, coal, oil, candles, soap, and the unnumbered mops and poles whose mysterious life is but a little day. Every lowdah knows to a nicety, by experience and by that delicately-gauged repute in which each European stands in native opinion, the breaking-point of your endurance; also he knows that you will pay something, however monstrous the claim, for peace' sake and to be rid of importunity. And so the wind is tempered to the shorn lamb. and many a bleating victim of my acquaintance not only submits to the shearing, but becomes curiously attached to the shearer. This, too, is not unnatural, for your typical "savez" lowdah, the man who knows and does his business up country, often displays, rogue though he be, a very wholesome and engaging interest in your sport; take him away from his accustomed purlieus and the sons of Belial his friends, and you find him decent enough, serviceable and keen in the matter of your bag. These pleasing traits in his character are, however, reserved exclusively for his so-called master; the world sees them not. Let a stranger borrow the boat, and with it he borrows a very pestilent rogue.

An intelligent observer of Chinese life - unduly neglected by the present generation - pointed out years ago this side of the lowdah's character in an entertaining passage which I may fitly quote:-

It is to the outsider, the casual tripper, that our friend reveals the choicest beauties of his nature. Which of us has not sat down over the cabin-stove and cursed the unwritten law which forbids the chastisement of another man's menial? The lowdah, still sleepy from yesterday's debauch, revels in this impunity, which preserves him from the argumentum ad hominem; right well he knows too, that, storm as you may, it is unusual to look the borrowed horse in the mouth, and that on Monday you will pay without demur, for the lender's sake. You start gaily enough, wondering only how the wretched crew of decrepid men and small boys is going to yuloh the boat to your happy hunting-grounds; but a friendly launch takes you as far as Sungkong, and with this aid it should be easy for them to get you to Kazay before the morning. Therefore, having seen them start work at ten o'clock, you turn in after describing with much detail the spot where you wish to shoot. "My savee," says the lowdah, and you go to bed. At 3 a.m. you awake to find the boat snugly anchored under a mud-bank. Then the fun begins - at least, it is fun for the lowdah. When you have roused him from his lair (it takes time, and you are half-frozen), he says, "Head wind, head tide, no can yuloh." There is no wind, and no tide to speak of, but that is a mere detail. When you ask where you are, he says, "Velly near Kazay," by which statement the memory of Ananias is put to shame. Then, with the threats and promises, you persuade him to go on, and for half an hour - until you are asleep again - two small boys propel the boat at the rate of one 'li' an hour. Eventually, the next morning you find yourself moored in the salubrious vicinity of Fungking a spot endeared to the lowdah by the presence of a lady friend, but otherwise only remarkable for a total absence of game; there, while you tramp the highly cultivated mud-fields, he spends a happy day in congenial society. At dusk he returns, explaining that certain supplies of coal and oil were required for the return trip, and these defects he has provided, the bill being presented in proof of good faith. Then you start homewards; and should your latent wrath be inclined to manifest itself in un-pleasantness, you will, if you are wise, refrain therefrom, for our friend is quite capable of running the boat violently into a convenient bridge while you are at dinner; he knows you will have to make good the damage, and there are pickings in such accidents for himself.

Next morning, at the hour when you should be in a ricksha on the Bund, you find yourself facing the first of the flood at the top of the seven-mile reach. At this stage you tell the lowdah what you think of him in the plainest and worst language. He receives it in silence, his mouth being full of rice at the time; but when you have done, he confides to the comfortably-resting crew what he thinks of you, and his remarks are the cause of considerable native merriment. There appears to be nothing for it but to walk home, until by a lucky chance a launch looms in sight. The lowdah knew all about that launch before you started - he has a cousin on board and three out of the five dollars which you pay for the tow are his reward for a carefully-devised stratagem.

Much water has flowed under our bridges since then many hopeful men have returned, sadder and wiser, from fierce struggling on inland waters with the lowdah tribe, but the latter remains unchanged, fixed in its destinies and smiling at the pitiful struggling of its victims. In this smiling immobility, as in his lust for coin, there is something in the lowdah suggestive of that grim helmsman who waits for us by the banks of Styx. When all's said and done, one rather likes the fellow for his very stolidity, and 'tis undeniable that most of his misdeeds are due to our own foolishness. If only he were a trifle more human in his relations with those pitiful scarecrows, the crew, we might well forgive him his other enormities.

And here, until we meet them again anon, we may take leave of these our humble fellow-travellers; but before we go, Sir and Madam, let us cast a glance at the place where these atoms of superfluous humanity live aboard our boat. Imagine this after-deck on a day when the rain comes driving sideways before a northerly wind, picture the condition of this black hole wherein seven men bestow themselves, tant bien que mal, to sleep. Perhaps on a cold night, as we sit comfortably over our second glass of port, recollection of these things may incline us to tolerance for some of the shortcomings of our Mongolian brother; and if so, not a soul will be any the worse for it.

GOOD housewife of my acquaintance - one of those worthy people who make themselves very uncomfortable in the pursuit of comfort - tells me that she could never bring herself to visit the cook's den on a houseboat. Herein, I think, she is wise; nor would I recommend to those who hold extreme views on sanitation and hygiene too close a scrutiny of the boys' quarters. At the best of times, and giving him all facilities, there is a wide gulf between the Chinaman's standard of cleanliness and ours. He endorses that scientific definition of dirt which calls it matter in the wrong place, and his philosophy teaches him that, sooner or later, the wanderer will find its way home without the help of man. Each one of us, he knows, must cat his peck o' dirt in a lifetime, and if length of days or inscrutable destiny increase the peck to a bushel, what of it I If kings must needs go a progress through the guts of a beggar, if imperial Caesar's dust should stop a bung-hole, the cook knows, without word of the immortal Dane, that this also is but one of Nature's fantastic ways, and that the beggar is none the worse for the vagaries of these poor atoms. Let us admit, strictly between ourselves, that many of us have a sneaking fehow-feeling for the Oriental attitude in this matter. Doctors, of course, cannot indulge it, nor sanitary inspectors, nor good women brought up in the household wisdom of Penelope, but to the plain man these strident voices of Public Health authorities in our kitchens and boudoirs are something too emphatic. They would have us go in fear all our days, bringing the imminent shadow of Death before us in guise of grisly microbe at every street corner, at the tiffin table, ay, even on Clorinda's ruby lips. We hear them, shuddering, and then, harking back to our unguarded but joyous youth; - remembering our salad bachelor days when filters were not, and the cook was a law unto himself, we take heart of grace and go our unregenerate ways in cheerfulness. Nevertheless, and as a compromise between conflicting theories, it is not a bad thing to descend suddenly at intervals upon the boy and cook in their lairs, ejecting things unseemly and of purely native origin; hygiene apart, it is not fitting that our omelette should be cooked with, but after, the lowdah's seaslugs.

Our immediate followers up country on ordinary occasions are three-boy, cook, and dog-coolie, and on long trips, where steady work is before us, it is wise to include in the ship's company two sturdy beaters, men of tried prowess in covert.

The boy and the cook have between them, for their respective duties, impedimenta and the disposal of their own persons a cubic area something less than that of a Saratoga trunk. Cast your eye, my Lady, on this kitchen equipment, observe its limitations, the nice adjustment of necessity to space, and you will wonder with me how one small stove can carry all its brew. Dine with us, Madam, and as each course, reussi and fittingly served, emerges from these mysterious regions, pause not to ask how the plates were washed, nor where the baked meats lay before they came to table. If to-day's fillet and to-morrow's trussed fowl came aboard neatly packed in the cook's wardrobe, why, ignorance is bliss and the saucepan covereth a multitude of sins. And so for Ganymede, whose labours, between the kitchen devil and the deep sea of clamorous white men, are compassed about so narrowly with crockery and pendent glass that he looks for all the world like some contortionist juggler at his tricks-pray you, indulgence. Which of us has not wondered beneath the armour of their stolidity what these followers of ours think of our excursions and sorties? To the severely practical mind for which we usually give them credit, the whole business must be a monstrous enigma, one of those mysteries inseparable from foreign devildom, which Confucius bids them neither consider nor discuss. For they must recognise the astounding fact that the cost in sycee of the game we bring home, after long toilful days, is ten times more than we could buy it for in the market; even with the best of luck there can be no profit in shooting with cartridges that cost eight cents apiece, and they know us for men who can afford the luxury of leisure. All the ways of this "White Peril" are indeed inscrutable; those who recklessly waste money, enduring hard labour up country, are of the same mad world which pursues divers balls with bats and clubs; rides violently, without errand, across the face of the earth, and postures to the sound of horns with other men's wives. Such beings are classed in the native mind with prodigies, monsters, and the immortal gods, and accepted accordingly, without, question or complaint.

Despite their res angusta afloat, I believe our followers are rather partial to upcountry life in their own way; Ah Kong the dog-coolie welcomes it, I know, in spite of his aversion to long walks, his wife being a notorious vixen and his home a place of wrath. The boy who answers cheerfully to the name of Gehazi. and Wang-hi the cook, enjoy their peaceful days on board, especially when our programme includes cold tiffin in a basket. 'Enjoys' is perhaps too strong; their attitude is one of philosophic calm, due to the fact that for a while they can cat, sleep, and gamble undisturbed. In none of them have I ever perceived any signs of interest in the country itself or its inhabitants; whether we go to the lakes or to the hills appears to be a matter of absolute indifference, and the only spots for which they ever display preference are those where they can buy salt or other commodities, which, smuggled to Shanghai, will show a profit. Gehazi will sit in his pantry reading an absurd chronicle of the Han Dynasty, while the boat takes him, all unconscious. through unknown places where men live by strange crafts; to him they are such stuff as dreams are made of, and he can provide better dreams of his own. This, at least, is the impression the native's nonchalant stolidity conveys, but who shall say what are the thoughts that lurk behind these wall-faces?

Now and again they will surprise you, these Chinese, with glimpses of unsuspected thoughts and motives in their mental depths unfathomed by us who live amongst them. Strange breaths of spring stir at times the dusty recesses of their emotionless souls; voices call to them from the past through opium haze and cult of cash, and for a moment their commonplace lives are touched with a ray of the light which, ages ago, sent Chinese artists and poets to teach Corea and Japan. In some squalid courtyard I'll find ragged fellows listening in long silence to a caged thrush's song; sometimes, on the sorriest beggar-boat on the creek, or in the tea-house of a dingy by-street, you shall see a sprig of flowering plum-blossom; on the walls of country rest-houses I have found not only verses from the classics, but the original work of passers-by - student or pilgrim - singing of autumn winds in the bamboo grove and the flight of wild geese between the hills. I am by no means sure that Gehazi himself does not invoke the lyric muse with compositions of this kind in spring, for I have seen verses at the end of the book in which he keeps a record of what he is pleased to say I owe him.

Ah Kong, master of the hounds, and his fellow-beaters arrayed for the chase, suffer "Shame-face" in the eyes of the crew; and not without reason, for they are indeed figures of fun. Their own kit being useless in covert, I provide them with boots (originally made for Indian policemen), wide trousers of sail-cloth cut in the fashion of clowns', and old hats. Ah Kong, being an enthusiast, sports a grey Monte Carlo and a pair of ancient kid gloves; good fellows these, of Spartan philosophy and wondrous patience, who will beat their way through scrub and sword-grass for days, and take a friendly interest in your bag. One ragged suit of clothes to their backs, no certainty as to next week's rice, yet they face the world and its back-bending affairs cheerily with hearts undismayed. I like to hear them when, after their long tramp, they have hung the game, seen to the dogs, and foregathered round the lowdah's rice-pot with the crew; the day, with all its chances and events, will keep them talking for hours. In their tales the beater often cuts a more heroic figure than his master, if only because it is denied to him to relieve himself by cursing audibly the adverse Fates. They sum us up, these heathen, all our little weaknesses and some of our virtues, in racy opinions, as just, and quite as kind, as those recorded by our friends of the club smokingroom.

I have written of the up-country menage as I know it, but there are, I believe, people who go into remote parts of these provinces with hirelings - boy and cook engaged for the trip. In most cases, no doubt, this is the outcome of the married state, and criticism halts at the recognition of necessity; but the results are, nevertheless, not to be cornmended even to a benedict. I, who am no epicure, have suffered many and grievous things at the hands of the shortjob cook; and your 'hotel-boy' on board is a sorry rogue at best. Often you do not know your friend's habits or necessities in these matters; you start for a week's outing, learning the truth too late, and these varlets take from you much peace of mind and bodily content. To the leisurely enjoyment of houseboat life you must bring a soul unharassed by the sordid things of domesticity. And this brings to mind an adventure of my friend M'Nab, a parlous case of the hireling not without its humorous retrospect. He had taken a varlet for a week, one of the 'oiled and curled Assyrian bull' type, reeking of gambling dens and petty larceny. On the second day out, in the wild country beyond Haiyee, the fellow showed signs of eccentricity -laid tiffin on the bunks and made curious gurgling noises in his throat. Next day, grasping one of the crew, he jumped overboard, was rescued, dried, and locked up in the pantry, where he lay, cursing horribly and scratching on the partition. Towards morning he contrived an escape, and thereafter gave M'Nab and his friend, an un-suspecting British sailor, one of the most exciting hours in life. The trip was abandoned, and they took him home chained in the dog-kennel. It was subsequently stated that he adopted insanity to avoidance of settling certain urgent debts - a ruse not infrequent in his class. The explanation is not as important as the fact that M,Nab, by agreement with his wife, now takes his No. 2 boy up country and that travelling on his hospitable boat is much pleasanter in consequence.

In the matter of cuisine, your houseboat should strike a cheery midway note, avoiding Scylla of the superfluous and Charybdis the unlovely. Grandon, who takes his chef with him, and feasts hugely, after unwonted exercise, on truffied entrees and port, is more attractive in food and philosophy than the man who professes to rough it on a badly-cooked chop and a bit of cheese but both are unseemly. A stock-pot, ever simmering, is one of the secrets of houseboat economy; into it should go all the odds and ends of the bag - except perhaps civet cats and foxes - and from it should come a savoury mess such as Esau loved. For dinner, after all, is no inconsiderable moment in the healthy human animal's day, a thing not to be despised even of philosophers. It was one of the cheeriest of these who said, "A good meal and a bottle of wine is an answer to most standard works upon the question of life. When a man's heart warms to his viands, he forgets a great deal of sophistry and soars into a cosy zone of contemplation. Death may be knocking at the door, like the Commander's statue; we have something else in hand, thank God, and let him knock."

Therefore, friends, let us have viands that our hearts can warm to.

HOOTING without a dog is like a song without words - there is joy in it, no doubt, but the fulness of satisfaction is lacking. I know a mighty hunter, one after the manner of BahrAm (o'er whose head wild asses stamp in vain), who stoutly proclaims the belief that in this part of the world dogs are no help, but a hindrance. A retriever for water work he might endure, though even here a hardy coolie, mothernaked in the wind, would be more to his liking; but pointers, setters, and spaniels he holds in contempt. Certainly he makes good bags, his plan being to stride, with a beater on either side, through cotton and beans at ten league ferocity of speed, so that running birds are terrified to a rise; but it is not given to every man to be twenty two and a sprinter. Pour moi, satisfied with a leisurely ten to fifteen miles a day, half the day's sport lies in watching the swift signals of good dog Tray, doing for me the work which Bahr'am does for himself; and if, through his overzeal or our own lack of field-craft, we lose a shot here and there, what of it? I, for one, would sooner watch the spaniel nose a false scent than go rushing blindly across country without him.

This from the standpoint of sport, but there lurks in most of us a certain human quality which loves dogs for their own sake and apart from the size of the bag. These "wagging humourists" of ours, as Meredith finely calls them, are often the only company we desire -friends ever ready with silent sympathy to respect our changing moods. If they have a defect-I speak not of foibles - it lies in their brief mortality; so short their little day that the thought of it comes ever to mind, laden with memories of past bereavements, to warn us of the penalty of affection. Payn knew this feeling when he wrote:

The warning is a vain one; Melampus, Duke, and Poilto in turn have gone beyond to that dogs' paradise in which Southey believed, and their memory brings at times a feeling that is very near heartache; nevertheless, the newcomer makes his dogged way into our affections and will not be denied; the bonds tighten as we fall into each other's grooves, and he learns to read us like a book, giving us " ten years of loving loyalty" in return for what he gets out of life in our society.

The human idea of blessed immortality is variable, dependent on age, the set of the wind, conscience, and other matters, but there is a feature in the Red Indian ideal of heaven which commands my sympathy: in his celestial mansions, as in the theatres of Saigon, the dog is ever welcome. One of our minor poets feels this, though he expresses it deprecatingly, with an eye on the village pulpit:

Horsfield's verse is open to criticism, but the sentiment does him credit. and I confess to liking him for the choice of a good steady old dog (it was a setter) in Paradise, where there can be no question of making a bag before sunset. A pretty vision, is it not the heather, the old shikarri and his dog, pottering gently through the Elysian fields, world without end!

What cheery souls they are, these silent comrades of ours! At night, when all is snug aboard the Saucy fane, when dinner is digesting under the soft influences of book and pipe, ' Bob' and ' Jess ' lie there, best of company, dreaming of deer in the covert or wild fowl in the reeds; tails that will wag on the slightest pretence, eyes that have never looked unkindly on you in their lives; and in the morning, what a greeting it is they give you as you emerge on deck to take stock of wind and weather; no ' katzenjammer ' here, no misgiving or question as to the purpose and value of life! A tonic, my dear Sir, in every movement of their nimble bodies; the boat that has no such passengers is like a house without children - a poor place at best.

For field work in this part of the world your homebred pedigree dog is not usually a success; the best allround animal is a retrieving pointer born in China; equally good in many cases is a cross of pointer with setter or spaniel; and of imported dogs the German wear best. The first thing to be borne in mind by any man who wishes to be merciful to his beast is that no rough-haired dog can be used until the grass-seed has lost its sting, that is to say, until the first sharp frosts of December; to take a thorough-bred spaniel or setter through grass country earlier in the season is sheer cruelty, often killing the beast, and always inflicting grievous injury. No lover of dogs that has once seen the results of grass-seed in the ear, or even in the feet, of his beast will ever again risk the infliction of such misery - therefore 'earthlier happy' is the owner of the dog smooth-coated. I use a spaniel myself, for old times' sake, and because I love the breed; but he does not take the field, except in paddy, until December, and then with many precautions. And for these tender mercies he reviles me, poor ignorant mortal, from the depths of an impatient heart, which demands its day's pleasure regardless of consequences. Herein is revealed the humanity of the beast.

The best dog I ever knew for all-round work, field and covert, point and retrieve, was a cross between poodle and pointer, a great lanky beast with the head of a deerhound, the speed of a lurcher, and the savez of all his motley forefathers combined. On his wiry coat grass-seeds fell harmless - the thickest covert had no terrors for his soul; he would work for a week, untiring; all the thousand natural ills to which dogs' flesh is heir left him scathless; and he took a more intelligent interest in his business than any dog of my acquaintance. Wherein, for those who ponder these things, lies a moral and the possibility of several conclusions. Of these I will mention only one, to wit, that your half-breed appears to be exempt by some mysterious dispensation from those subtle and swift-slaying diseases - such as worms in the heart - which often reduce the life of the ordinary imported dog in China to a matter of two or three seasons. The ideal sporting animal for this country has not yet been discovered; pending the arrival of a scientific observer and breeder we continue to experiment with exotics. Californian and German pointers pass, brief-lived shadows, through our troublous days. Therefore to future sportsmen I commend the poodle-pointer breed in all seriousness and sincerity. And, for the man of small purse, impatient of tardy experiments, let it be said that results, by no means to be despised, may be obtained with trained native dogs - wonks pure and simple; which if any man doubt, let him hire a native of Chinkiang with one or two of his beasts - 'tis a matter of seventy-five cents a day for the lot - and report progress. These miserable-looking curs, half-starved and bedraggled, often work covert and retrieve with more credit to themselves than many a lordly taipan's pointer imported from the Shires.

It has seemed to me at times that with the close of the shooting season, when the last spring snipe has been slain, and when, in the first warm days of May, the pointer is eclipsed by the punkah, some of the keenest of sportsmen are apt to forget the dog-days and their necessities. To keep any animal healthy, and to give him length of days, he should have real exercise - not the chained weariness of a coolie's stroll, but running and swimming - all through the summer months. The simplest plan is to train him to follow the carriage or ricksha, with an occasional romp in the fields, and a bathe in the river daily; thus handled, your dog will take the field in autumn with shining coat and a stout heart.

In the Wuhu country, and in certain parts of Chekiang, there is scope and congenial work for the home-bred pointer, but in the districts around Shanghai he is apt to be disheartened, partly by reason of the scarcity of game, and partly because of the nature of the country. When a thoroughbred pointer takes to covert work, faute de mieux, the speciality of his education is lost; I know nothing more. demoralising to these dogs than bamboo-partridge shooting, at which the steadiest beast that ever lifted paw will gradually develop spaniel tactics. In this respect the German-bred dog is superior to our own; he seems to be less influenced by environment, more phlegmatic, apparently remembering even in our reed-beds and bamboo-copses the turnips and stubble of his Vaterland. A heavily-built dog and usually slow, but a pointer in spite of all temptations.

For all-round work in these parts there is no dog better than a spaniel, but he must be of the bustling, eager breed, a dog that can run pheasants out of paddy by sheer speed and noisiness, chase hare and deer in covert, and follow bamboo partridge through thick undergrowth. Most of the breed imported from England are of too heavy a build for this work -useful as retrievers, but lacking the quality which follows game through sword-grass and heavy scrub. For the man who will rear and train a good strain of fast-working spaniels in China there is prospect of reward. These dogs contract dysentery easily and suffer seriously from grass-seed, but as a rule they live longer than pointers or setters.

But, after all, every decent dog and decent man, both intent on healthy sport, will eventually establish an entente cordiale and attain their common end, either scientifically or Fby God's good grace; given good-will, they accommodate themselves, like married folks, to circumstances and each other's weaknesses, forgiving the same for a good cause. Therefore it is, that when we call our dogs aboard and set sail for sunlit lagoons or oak-scrub hills, as it may please our fancy, each one of us is well persuaded that his kennel contains the best possible example of canine sagacity and worth, which is just as it should be-testimoily alike to the ingratiating nature of dogs and the honest simplicity of man. With what different feelings, how fearfully, we regard the kennel when the mother of invention has filled it with the dog we have borrowed from a friend, or (worse still) hired from a stranger.

Most of us, necessity compelling, have taken the field with a borrowed dog, and some, because of the hopefulness of humanity, will do it again; but few will recommend the practice. Two recent cases come to my mind, each of their kind instructive. One is that of Colonel Gatewold, a gallant officer of the Indian contingent, who in 1900 spent a year in our midst, waiting for the fun that never came. Despairing of sorties and martial feats when once the talkers had resumed business at Peking, he took a month up Yangtsze, borrowing two dogs, one of which was Weston's pointer, a yellow Californian of sinister appearance called Nero. Nero was a retriever by reputation, but he had one peculiarity which Weston forgot to mention; he always ate his first two birds, and he bit any one that attempted to prevent him from doing so. The result was unfortunate; Gatewold, endeavouring to rescue a quail on the point of disappearing down Nero's throat, was bitten in the leg and lamed for a week. Nero was kept chained on deck for the rest of the trip; yet I have seen him since, under happier auspices and in the company of Weston, doing most excellent and docile work.

The other case is worse, but it does not reflect on the dog, and I mention it simply as showing the depravity of man and the evils of borrowing. My friend Boulden, whose kennel had been emptied by hydrophobia, advertised to hire a dog for the Christmas holidays. M'Cormick, whose reputation for being the meanest man in China few cared to dispute, replied, and eventually Rover, a handsome Gordon setter, was hired for a reasonable sum. M'Cormick, however, being (as he said) a prudent man, had a subsidiary agreement drawn and signed, stipulating that, in the event of Rover's loss or death, the sum of one hundred taels would be payable. The sequel might have been foreseen by any one who knew M'Cormick, which Boulden didn't. Rover, true to his name, disappeared into the depths of the Kashing plain on the first morning out, and was never seen again, at least not by Boulden; and M,Cormick's bank account swelled with his passing. It was M,Cormick who made Sandy Wilson a present of a pointer pup, and then sent him a bill for $30, the alleged cost of milk supplied to its mother before the days of weaning. I do not wonder at these things, because the air of China sometimes affects men from the neighbourhood of Glasgow in this way, but I wonder at any self-respecting dog condescending to belong to him; and yet, who knows, perhaps Rover was trying to find M'Cormick and his numerous unsuspected good qualities when he left poor Boulden dogless on the edge of the Kashing plain?

It was my fate, once upon a time, to own an Australian dog named Hector. I have never been to Australia, but my feelings are respectful for a country which declines to import Asiatic labour, and is able to get good money for exporting such articles as that dog. He was the best of a lot of five guaranteed setters, imported at 10 pounds apiece; the only conclusion which a charitable person could form about those animals was that they had been exclusively trained to the pursuit of kangaroos. Hector had a mournful way of mooning about the country, indifferent to any birds in his vicinity, which said, as plainly as a dog can speak, that he was looking for the familiar things of his youth; and as the chances of flushing a kangaroo grew daily less, his interest in our proceedings waned visibly, and finally expired. A masterful head withal and a noble brow, but a furtive, cat-like way of walking round covert that suggested four-footed leaping prey and a taste for blood. He was eventually disposed of by public auction, without reserve; I mention his case as a warning against dogs of unknown origin in general, and Australians in particular. Now and then, as in the case of people who get married by advertising in the matrimonial agency papers, it may turn out all right; but as a rule it is wiser to get your dogs from a man you know, and whom you are likely to meet again.

"Here where earth is dense with dead men's bones."-SWINBURNE.

OT quite a sportsman's paradise, the hunting-grounds of Kiangsu, yet happy for the brethren of the house boat guild, for every man that loves to see the blue sky overhead and to breathe the unsullied air of lake and hill. Happy too for us, in memories of bygone days, is many a well-frequented spot ; hardly a landmark but brings to mind some heart-warming echo of the past, kind faces that have passed beyond our ken, friendly voices that reach us no more. Wonderfully, from the secret treasure house of memory, is restored to us, in sudden recognition of some familiar scene, the essential fragrance of long-lost days.

Often, standing at the corner of a sunlit bamboo grove aiting for the beaters, the mind, in a flash, bridges the chasm of Time and one finds oneself back in the past ; many half-forgotten happenings, trivial incidents of our half buried lives, are brought back so vividly, that for the moment we cheat ourselves with a swift born, furtive hope that the Scythe-bearer has spared us, that the gulf which lies between us and our youth is but a mirage and the shadow of a dream.

Twenty years ago game was plentiful from Shanghai, westward and north and south, in all the great region dotted with the ruined cities that mark the track of the Taiping's devastation. In and around those old cities it is still true to-day that The quail, the partridge, and the pheasant keep Their court, where Chinese in their thousands sleep, While the predestined devil from the West Stamps o'er their heads through many a grass-grown heap.

But their number is rapidly decreasing as the resistless tide of Chinese humanity flows back, first to cultivate and then to overcrowd the places made desolate forty-five years ago. We who in the eighties have shot deer on the wide desert plains, where every inch of ground is now under thrifty cultivation, have seen that which in any other land would be a miracle-city after city repopulated, thousands of miles of land reclaimed within the space of half a generation. Intelligent observers of that long-drawn and hideous carnival of slaughter say that three million Chinese were killed in the region which Gordon conquered, cane in hand, between Nanking and Hangchow ; but the ranks have closed up, and to-day the struggle for life is almost as fierce here as in any other part of China ; fierce enough to spoil our chances of making the old-time bags, for the native sportsman and trapper is abroad, earning a livelihood by the supply of game, in and out of season, to the nearest markets.

A few of the ruined cities remain much as the Taipings left them Cholin, for instance, and Chapoo ; the old grass-grown battlemented walls enclosing scenes of desolation such as only the callous East could tolerate. Here you will flush teal from ponds that were once the marbled glories of a rich man's garden, and pheasants from long grass that covers the ruins of his home ; scarcely a habitable building from end to end of the city. True, the activity of Shanghai contractors, and their keen demand for broken bricks, has of late years done something to clear these places of their melancholy fragments, and many a Bubbling Well villa is founded on the remains of what was once a Chinese bourgeois home in Kashing or Kazay; but the mark of the Taiping lies still on the land, and will not readily be effaced. Curious superstitions and prejudices of haunted places influence the new generations; though most of the old cities have gradually been repopulated, a few are so informed with memories of terror, that none will venture to live in them,-in others, the new-comers have approached timidly, first building up busy suburbs beyond the silent walls and gradually advancing, thus supported, into the grim places of the unhonoured dead. Instances have occurred where the wandering spirits of those whose very names are forgotten have been propitiated en bloc, and sacrifice made to an ancestral tablet, specially devised by the new settlers to appease the unknown ghosts bereft of the uses of filial piety. In nearly all the walled towns where the Imperialists and Taipings committed their alternate atrocities, there are spots which every sportsman has noticed, bleak and unoccupied in the midst of cultivation or crowded streets ; these usually mark a place whither have been brought skulls and bones collected from all parts of the city. At Kashing, for instance, a thriving town has sprung up, where ten years ago the footfall of man was seldom heard on the ancient flagged streets ; yet you will find an open grass-grown space just inside the wall whereon no man builds, and where you may shoot pheasants at sunset-for it is their favourite roosting-place. I shot birds there quite recently from the wall, that fell into the courtyards of astonished citizens, and had to be retrieved through the street door. There are old English guns on that wall, lying just as Gordon's men left them for the use of the Imperialist forces.

Snipe shooting apart, however, the happy hunting-grounds of Kiangsu to-day are not what they were twenty years ago, nor can they ever be so again ; each year sends us farther afield to harder work. But the land is wide ; its undeniable beauties, even under close cultivation, appeal to the man of streets and wharves, and it is no small interest in life to watch the stealthy advance and change of the seasons on hillside, river bank, and sea wall marsh.

To each man his favourite haunts and to every season its hunting-grounds. The number of places to which houseboats make their way from October to May is legion ; every sportsman has his warm corners and his own ideas, about which argument were vain. Some love the wild goose chase, and the pursuit of water fowl, from Woosung along the bleak wastes of the sea wall country ; one man I knew whose peculiar delight it is to pursue bustard with a rifle on the grey mud-flats beyond Battery Creek. For some the silent places of Haiyee and Chapoo offer continual joys, where partridge and woodcock lurk in the undergrowth; others follow for choice the wandering winter snipe, whose habitation varies with the distribution of surplus water from the Yangtsze. For some the mulberry and paddy lands of the Grand Canal, the quiet by-creeks off the great arteries that connect Shanghai with Chekiang and the interior of Kiangsu ; for others the hills beyond Soochow, the lagoons

" The mulberry lands of the Grand Canal."

and the great lake region, or the vast burial-lands around such ancient cities as Chang-ja and Wukong. There is room and to spare for every man in his humour.

At the outset the reader was warned that herein he would find no precise guide to the hunting-grounds ; this because, in the first place, it is idle to dogmatise on matters of taste, and, in the second, because what is worth having is worth working for ; nevertheless, for the benefit of the uninitiated, a few suggestions as to the seasonable jaunts, given without guarantee and in the spirit

of true benevolence, may be here set down. They reveal no secrets and deal only with beaten tracks, but even in these I have seen men as sheep wandering without a shepherd.

Of the autumn snipe, that goodly bird which, after replenishing the earth with its species in Siberian solitudes, comes south again on the wings of the first north winds, and reaches the Yangtsze about the end of August, it is unnecessary to say more than that he who seeks shall find ; for the bird is ubiquitous, dropping from the long line of his migrating hosts wherever marsh or watery furrow offer prospect of food. His favourite haunts as in the spring are decided by rainfall and the force of the gales behind him, so that in the vicinity of Shanghai he gives us both lean and fat years ; but in certain places, to wit Cholin, Sakong, and especially Hangchow, you will always find him, and good bags may be made by fever-proof sportsmen, provided with sun-hats, mosquito nets, and an icebox.

During October, and much of November, in fact until the gathering of the rice crops is well forward, the pleasure of pheasant shooting is derived chiefly from the charms of the fertile landscape, for the paddy affords unlimited cover from which the birds can hardly be flushed. The best spot, within my experience, for the first autumn pheasant shooting is at and beyond Changchow and the Pen-yu Creek, where harvesting begins early ; unless the season is unusually backward, good sport can always be had here in the beginning of November, and there is no better trip for a race-week holiday. For this work a bustling spaniel is the best dog, a beast that will scurry through the patches of standing rice wherein the birds find shelter. Mixed shooting in covert-country is weariness and vexation to dogs and beaters alike until late in November, when the natives have begun to cut the long grass and undergrowth for winter fuel; and until the first fierceness of the grass seed has been nipped by frost. Awaiting these reliefs, however, there is fairly open country and passable shooting to be had in the Meichee Creek and on the high ground to the east of Hsi-tai Lake.

When, with December, comes the beginning of six weeks of cold bright days of brilliant sunshine and frosty nights, that make life worth living anywhere out of doors, wild fowl and woodcock descend on our inland waters, and the dwindling cover makes life precarious for pheasant and partridge in all their abiding-places. For week-end trips Taitsan, Cholin, and Bingwu are amongst the best, the two former offering, in addition to sport, pictur esque examples of once prosperous cities in decay. Farther afield on one hand lie Haiyee, Chapoo, and the sea-girt lands to the mouth of the Chientang river, the long stretch of the Tamen Creek, and many good spots in the region of

E Huchou and Meichee ; on the other lie the shores of the great Lake-barren of game in many places-and beyond it, towards the Yangtsze, a goodly land overflowing with fur and feather. Pour moi, once the heavy cover is cut and there is frost o' mornings, the best of all the nearer hunting-grounds lies in the Haiyee country, for there the partridge is prolific, the bamboo-copses are favourite resting-places of woodcock ; mallard, teal, and an occasional mandarin duck lurk in the frequent ponds, and the pheasant, though rarer than of old, is not extinct. And, withal, it is a good land, pleasant underfoot and pleasant to the eye.

When all is said and done, the man who wants really good sport-sport without fear of long tramps for an empty bag-must fare far afield. We of the houseboat fraternity will exist and persist so long as there is water in the creeks and while our " bird of Time is on the wing " ; but it is as much for the love of the craft, its liberties, and the sweet air of heaven, than because of any remarkable excellence in the sport on our immediate borders. We have, like every dog, our days, when it pleases us to think that prospects are improving ; but if we steadily face facts at the end of each season we must acknowledge that things are not what they were, and-to put it plainly-that much of the nearer country is " shot out." There have been times when, after trudging for hours without flushing a feather, I have felt something like compunction in killing a pheasant wondering whether it was not perhaps the last of its species in all that lonely land-not a pleasant feeling for any decent dog or man. And so, for the sake of both, when by meritorious service I have earned a fortnight's furlough, I, like to make for the wilds of Chekiang, with one or two congenial souls, to spots where the foreigner is almost unknown, where the heathen is still unsophisticated, and where a man may shoot to his heart's content without fear for next season's supply. True, to do this means exchanging the foreign houseboat and its amenities for the unadulterated native article and the manners of strange men ; but with a little trouble, the exchange can be made to afford a very profitable and pleasant experience, and bring into our wanderings that variety which is the salt of life. In another place I shall tell of the native houseboat and its ways on the Chientang river.

"And God created great whales and every living creature that moveth, and every winged fowl after his kind ; and God saw that it was good."-The First Book of Moses.

It is in the variety of the quarry, in the chances and surprises of the day, that lies the essential charm of our sport, a charm which comes home to one with renewed force after a season of pheasant or partridge driving in the old country. I imagine that most of us have realised this, more or less, during a day on English stubble fields or by the coverts, where the quality of unexpectedness is almost entirely lacking, however warm our corner ; where, unconsciously at first, but definitely at last, the scene before us is focussed into comparison with certain bamboo-groves and fern-clad hills that we know on the other side of the world. Thereat, our compassion goes out to the generous host whose half-guinea birds follow each other in such gorgeous but monotonous succession. For sport has this in common with love, that you find it in perfection where the joys of expectation and imagination have their fullest scope. It is the obvious, the foregone conclusion which kills, and toujours perdrix (however game the bird) is a bitter cry. For which reason (permit the digression) when, by the sale of this book, or other more remunerative labour, I come again out of the land of Sinim unto mine own people, I propose to seek in the wilds of Ireland those conditions of sport which most nearly approximate to that of our house boat days. If there be truth in the man who writes to The Field, I hope to find them there.

Let me not in this matter appear churlish or ungrateful. The comparison of our driven game in England with the rough shooting of the Yangtsze suggests itself inevitably, and I set it down in all honesty, but in its conclusion there lurks no doubt something of that spirit of cussedness which makes purblind humanity ever to prefer the beauties of the distant scene to those of its front garden. In the same way I have heard many a man up country, especially after a long day when birds have been scarce or wild, sing the praises, in no uncertain tone, of some snug little place in Norfolk. Be this as it may, I would not that this frankness of mine should ever prevent any hospitable man from asking me down to shoot his birds.

With us the piece of resistance, the first object of our excursions and sorties, is the pheasant, that goodly fowl (Phasianus torquatus), progenitor to the more delicate and gentle sporting poultry of England, whose habitat extends practically throughout China to Mongolia and Corea. When I think of how much this brave bird has done to build up in me the delightful character which my friends appreciate but dimly, how much more he has endeared himself to me than most of my near relations, I find it in my heart to spare him all further harassing and threats of violent death in my heart only, for apart from the irradicable bloodthirstiness of man in the chase, there is something in the wild pheasant of China, in his courage, his infinite resource, and (I verily believe) in his enjoyment of all this business of bustling dogs and men, that brings to his pursuit a perennial flavour of delight. I speak here of the cock pheasant only, a bird as beautiful as anything in Nature, and infinitely finer here in his native wilds than in the semi domesticated state. When, sitting between the dull walls of a brick and mortar house, I think of him rising swift and straight from the gossamer-spangled bracken, with the sunlight gleaming on all his gorgeous jewelry of colour, sounding, as he goes, a clarion challenge, a note of derision unmistakable, my eye travels instinctively to the corner where dog Rex lies snoring, and I thank Heaven that both of us are still good for a long day in the open.

There are still places in the lower Yangtsze where the pheasant may be found in a comparatively unsophisticated state, but these are few and rapidly disappearing. In such spots you may flush him close to the dog's nose in warm grass at mid-day, or even from the uncut paddy. In such spots the beaters will send him out over your gun from the little copses that stand behind the farm-houses. Not of this confiding nature, however, is the bird with whom we have to deal in the nearer hunting-grounds, but a very Ulysses among fowls, wary, subtle, of many devices, a sprinter of no mean quality through cotton or beans, a rare judge of distance and the carrying capacity of a twelve-bore, a strong flier, particularly skilled in placing cover between himself and the gun, and an expert in distinguishing between the various races of dogs and men that come within his purview. Remarkable, indeed, is the rapidity with which pheasants, by a sort of local consensus, come to discriminate between the " smell-dog " and " the run-dog," the " gun man " and the " walkee man," and to act accordingly ; that they know English voices from Chinese is most certain,

and the ingenuity they display in selecting feeding- and roosting-grounds with a clear line of retreat would do credit to a Kuropatkin. If, however, you wish for an example of cunning approaching the devilish, then study the ways of the " runner," an old bird for choice, winged in the open. Dropped in a field so bare that you would swear it could not conceal a mouse, he makes like a hare for the nearest thicket, doubling all the while amongst the furrows, head, back, and tail one dull indistinguishable line of brown ; at the first cross furrow he is lost to sight, and eventually hides, quarter of a mile away, in the opening of a grave or under some shelving bank. Creeks baffle him not, for he swims them like a duck. Once lost, unless you have a dog that is fast and lucky to boot, that " runner " is not for your bag. Yet, when one thinks of all the perils that environ the ground game of these districts, the hawks that hover by day, and the foxes, cats, and countless vermin that prowl by night when one remembers that the native trapper and snarer knows no close season and no mercy for a sitting hen, one realises that these resident game birds of ours, the pheasant and partridge, must either become exceeding " slim " or follow the dodo down the path of extinction.

And the bamboo partridge of this country is a bird even harder to circumvent than the pheasant, hard to flush from cover, and hard to shoot. In size and general appearance he resembles his French cousin, the most noticeable feature of the bird being his bright red underwing that catches the eye, as a soft note catches the ear, with a vague sense of unanalysed pleasure, as he flashes through the undergrowth. Throughout the province of Chekiang he is to be found on all the hillsides and in the wooded copses that lie scattered amongst the cultivation, in coveys ranging from six to a dozen or more ; but in Kiangsu he is fastidious in choice of location, and this for no apparent reason. You will find him in the Haiyee country, and again at Esing, west of the Great Lake, but the Soochow hills know him not, nor is he to be found in the Wuhu country. We await better information in regard to this bird and his distribution and many other matters which we may get perhaps when that most knowledgeable and kindly of naturalists, Mr. Styan, gives to the world his garnered wisdom of years ; in the meanwhile, from the sportsman's point of view, we may write him down as a fowl well worth following, as tricky as a corncrake and as game as a bantam.

At feeding time you may flush the coveys in the loose undergrowth " that just divides the desert from the sown," and if your dog knows his work, the birds can be made to break outwards and head for the nearest adjoining covert. Rising in a compact bunch with a mighty whirring of wings, they divide swiftly, like minnows startled in a pool ; flying hard and low, some will come at you with most disturbing directness, pass within a foot, and disappear into the thicket ten yards behind you ; already the rest are vanished, perdus, and your beater's ideas as to their whereabout are hazy. The whole performance is uncommonly like a firework, a sort of feathery Roman candle, and it frequently ends, like the candle, in noise, smoke, et preeterea nihil. In time one learns to stand clear of the covert, taking the birds as they rise, but here again there is cause for uncomfortable perturbment of body and mind, for they give you but little time for thinking, and all the while there is at the back of your mind the horrid knowledge that they are flying at the height of a man's head, and that there are always natives gathering fuel in the woods at this season. It is certainly nervous work, and I have known careful men give it up with cold perspiration of the brow and a weakness of the knees.

Once flushed and scattered, you may find the birds again with keen beaters and good dogs unless they have made for the hillside. There the quest is well-nigh hopeless, for they invariably head upwards in the thickest covert, taking to the trees as readily as to the ground. I know of no other partridge that has learned this device, nor is there any evident cause for such subtlety unless it be that polecats and stoats have taught them to roost in the bamboos ; by day they do it only when hard pressed. When you have marked a bird into a copse, and the dogs can find no trace of him, look carefully through the bamboo-tops and you shall see, luck permitting, your little brown friend swinging on a branch and doing his best to look like a thrush. He succeeds very passably.

With pheasant and bamboo partridge in good numbers, no better sport need we ask ; in circumventing their wiles we attain to craft of field and forest, and many hitherto unheard voices of Nature and man become distinct and speak to us out of the silent places of this ancient land.

Far from " the great town's heart-wearying roar " we, who wander in unconscious obedience to the hunter instinct of primitive man, amidst the quiet grave-strewn hills, may hear and understand something of the eternal truths that whisper through their memorial trees ; let the bag be small or great at the end of the day, there have been moments in the deep places of the woods, and by the green-fledged river-bank, when all the shoutings and pushings of our materialism seemed but a pitiful waste of breath ; when we have realised that a man may do worse than go to bed at night without having added his voice to the shrill clamour of the market place. Socrates, Plato, Omar, the Lord of Montaigne, all the wise men whose words lie bound in the undisturbed volumes on our shelves, tell us these forgotten truths in vain while the noise of the counting-house is in our ears ; but here, as we make our ways homewards at dusk, as the soft cadence of an old world temple bell comes drowsily across the water and the last rearguard of Care retreats before the " familiar glimpses of the moon," we learn to love this patient deep-breasted Mother Earth, old and grim though she be ; we are glad to be alive, to breathe the pine-scented air and hear the voices of our fellow-men. In such mood, if it be only for a moment, we learn to see life steadily, gauging its relative values, and we catch an echo of the comfortable songs that first old Homer sang " on some vast headland of the Cyclades."

But we were talking of game, of the birds and beasts that call us to the wilds. It is not everywhere nor every-day that the beaters return burdened with pheasant and partridge, and in the nearer hunting-grounds we must look for another quarry. For this we depend largely on migratory birds, on the chances of wind and those other mysterious laws that determine the flight and resting-places of woodcock, snipe, quail, and water-fowl. Quail, it is true, are to a certain extent residents of these parts, though their great breeding-grounds lie in Manchuria and the Siberian plain. It is thought that their main line of migration branches westward and south from Manchuria, passing us by ; but occasionally, like the children of Israel, we get our providential sendings of quail, when the little brown fighting bird is to be found in every patch of cotton and grassy field, providing good shooting and excellent training for your dogs. There are men, I know, who profess to despise quail-shooting, but most of us have had cause to be grateful enough for his presence and cheery chirp on days when other shots were few and far between.

The woodcock, except on red-letter days, is always something of a joyful surprise when he rises silently from a damp bottom, or comes wheeling round the edge of the covert ; yet there are certain spots in every district which, after November, seem to have a sort of prescriptive right to a long bill or two. How the supply is so regularly main-tained, by whose direction, and from what unseen head quarters of the tribe they come, is one of the many mysteries of bird-life. One learns to know these haunts, and to head for them instinctively; rarely are they drawn blank unless, indeed, some other gun has been there before us, and the deceased incumbent's successor has not arrived. To find this silent tenant of the coverts in good numbers the best chances are after a fall of snow. I do not attempt to account for the fact any more than for the sudden unanimous vanishings of winter snipe in certain changes of weather, but fact it is. Is it not recorded in the log of the Mighty Atom how at Haiyee, one afternoon of the year of the great snow, we accounted for twenty-seven?

And when all else fails there are always wildfowl or snipe to be found, either in the sea-wall country that runs along the coast from Woosung to Hangchow or in the creek-infested region which adjoins Soochow and the Grand Canal. If the waterlevel is propitious, the great lagoons that lie between the S3-arch bridge and the hills afford as fine a snipe district as heart of man can desire. Here, as in all the creek country, the day's chances generally include mallard and teal ; widgeon and pintail duck are common on the lakes, and good flighting may be had by any man who will study the craft and brave the rigours of a winter's evening behind a grave. The Bean goose comes with November in mighty squadrons, high flying before the north monsoon. As winter sharpens, they seek the inland feeding grounds ; on the Chientang river and in the Bingwu country you find them, vedettes posted, a grey and silent army on the bare swept fields. In a high wind they fly low at sunset, in twos and threes, following a line between the river and the fields which varies not, which was their forefathers' before them, since the first goose found and laid down the law. Finally, the great bustard haunts the sea-wall, a rare bird and shy as the ostrich-a quarry for the elect.

So much for the feathered tribes on our frontiers and their ways. Of the beasts, less may be said. The hare is with us, and the river deer, but both are comparatively uninteresting, beasts of little resource, bourgeois habits, and no individuality. The hare, it is true, has learned to swim and live underground (chiefly in graves), but in the process his body has shrunk to rabbit-like proportions, and his existence appears to consist almost exclusively in dodging hen harriers and Chinese dogs. A poor thing, yet for some inscrutable reason an object of perennial interest to Chinese husbandmen. Our river deer is a timid, hornless creature that seeks the thickest hillside covert by day and the farmers' crops at night. Twenty years ago, when around Kahsing and all the Taipings' silent cities lay the uncultivated wilds, these pretty beasts were plentiful ; but now they are rare enough. As venison 'tis a poor thing, of little flavour; nevertheless, a haunch makes a gift presentable to thrifty housewives. For our own use we will keep the liver only, commending it as very delectable for a houseboat breakfast ; and for the rest, there is no better food for your dogs on a long trip (where beef cannot be bought) than deer-meat, soup, and biscuit.

Of larger game, such as the wild pig and leopard of the further hills, I say nothing here; they are beyond the range of our houseboat wanderings. Sometimes, both on the Yangtsze and the Chientang, pigs of more than ordinary enterprise and wanderlust may be seen at daylight close to the cultivation, but to find them in their own place you must camp out among the higher hills ; there too, if native testimony be creditable, are the leopards and many strange and fierce beasts, referred to collectively by villagers as yeh wu wild things. I have seldom met a native who has not seen and heard the yeh wu, but the descriptions given conflict so wildly both as to the habits of these ferocious beasts and their anatomy that I cannot identify them. From all accounts, however, I conclude that hills in the vicinity of Chinese farms are inhabited by an omnivorous and unclassified quadruped well worth the attention of adventurous naturalists and sportsmen. Leopards may, of course, be responsible for some of the bloodthirsty legends these quiet people tell, and perhaps the fox, badger, coon-dog, and civet-cats might claim the credit for others ; but I have heard tales from guileless men that compel me to believe in the existence and nightly prowlings of a beast which combines in one fearsome body the qualities and panoplies of the Snark, the Poom, and the Icthyosaurus.

The Major, who has offered rewards for anything bigger than a civet-cat, disagrees with me on this subject ; yet how else can even he account for an animal that admittedly destroys not only standing crops but also goats and hens ; that cannot be shot at close quarters with a ten foot gingal; that opens locked gates with ease and devours everything he shoots anything that sits or walks slowly within range. His young wife accompanies him on these excursions, and I shall not easily forget the joy and pride with which, when last I ran across them near the lakes, she showed me the corpses of six crows, a sea-gull, and some miscellaneous small birds. Well, well, to every man in his humour, and happily crows are plentiful. Frankly, I prefer those scavenger birds, untimely slain, to the pheasants and duck which always hang in triumph on M'Alpine's boat, and which, as every lowdah on the river knows, his boy buys in the market and smuggles on board for " face pidgin."

But there is one animal which none of us willingly shoots, yet which, sooner or later, figures in every bag-Homo sinensis to wit, our Chinese fellow man. When one remembers how ubiquitous and numerous is this blue clad creature, how its innate curiosity and other forms of cussed-ness invite disaster, the only wonder is that we bag so few. Suddenly rising between you and a flushed quail in the cotton, or bobbing up from behind a grave, as you are snapping at a partridge-how often have we seen his sheepish grin as the gun comes away just in time, that grin which broadens as the marrow trickles in our bones, and we curse him in the ecstasy of our relief ? But every pitcher has its appointed day, and most of us, either for our own or for another's offences, have heard the vox humana rise strident from cover and seen our undesired " bag " emerge, loudly bemoaning his (or her) impending doom. If it be a man, reason and sycee salve will often adjust matters unless the wounds are serious ; but if your quarry is an old in sight ? How else account for the disappearance of his own leggings, left by night on the deck of the Saucy 'ane, and the loss of edibles without number from the after-deck on many occasions ? Either this was a Poom's work or I know nothing of field-craft.

So much for our quarry. Let me observe, however, that I have dealt with the subject from the Anglo-Saxon's point of view only. I know that there is another, and that for our Continental friends, as well as for the well-meaning sportsmen of Dai Nippon, there are other objects in the chase. Some of these we may guess at, by furtive inspection of the trophies hanging at the rear, of their homeward bound boats ; others we may glean from the indiscretions of lowdahs and boys. Ccelum, non animam, mutant, and for a certain class of Frenchman, the shooting of thrushes and larks is a national pursuit, sanctioned by custom and tradition, and greatly approved by thrifty wives. I know one boat which usually brings back with its sporting owner a collection of small birds that calls to mind the ornitho-logical wealth of an Italian market-stall ; que voulez vous ? Pheasants are scarce, and snipe extremely hard to hit. But he has a noble-looking dog, carries a goodly flask, and enjoys his Nimrod days with the best of us ; in fact, to hear him, a la Tartarin, recounting his exploits, one is inclined to envy an enthusiasm which thrives so cheerily on the day of small things. Another acquaintance of mine, a subject of the great White Tzar, frankly disclaims all idea of pot-hunting on his wanderings ; he takes a gun because it is the proper thing to do, and, sticking to the river-bank, woman, or if one of these shrill viragos appear screaming on the scene, your best plan is to make swiftly for the boat, and from that coign of vantage discuss matters through the lowdah. Like everything else in China the cost of peppering a native has increased absurdly of recent years, and for those who do not speak the language it has become almost prohibitive in some of the more turbulent districts. We all remember the days when a dollar and a bit of sticking-plaster would atone for half a charge of No. 6 ; now a dollar a pellet is cheap enough as prices go, and the nearer you are to schools of Western learning and the unspeakable Baboo, the higher the value of a native's injured feelings. In the farther wilds you will still find sturdy country folks to whom the pattering of a stray shot or two on their padded clothes is a joke ; nearer home it means the welkin rent with wailings and aged beldames rolling in the dust, the parading of predestined orphans, and the price of blood discussed with half a village. This fly lurking in the amber of our up-country joys is one of the inevitable results of our civilising theories about the rights of man ; happily it comes but rarely to the surface. And, after all, this is the Chinaman's country through which we stride so blithe and debonnaire with beaters, dogs, and guns, and if we have to pay occasionally for our bad luck or his stupidity, why, let us pay cheerfully, and thank Heaven he is still unsophisticated or good-natured enough to dispense with barbed-wire fences and the laws of trespass. There is one rule inviolable if you have trouble with natives inland ; settle the matter somehow, but settle it before you move on. To give largesse is easy, but it creates a bad precedent and an itching for more ; to " talk reason " costs time and temper, but pays best in the end. But to fold up your tent like the Arab and to leave the thing unsettled means bad blood in that neighbourhood against all foreigners for many a day. In other words, to quote the Major, if you have done it " pay up and look sweet."

All of which brings us naturally to consideration of that much-described enigma, the Lord of the Soil.

"Along the cool sequester'd vale of life

They kept the noiseless tenour of their way." GRAY.

RMA virumque, of the Man I sing ; not in his relation to humanity at large, nor as a specimen for the sociologist, but simply as I have seen and known him since first I wandered, gun in hand, through his well tilled fields and marvelled at the infinite patience and industry of his race. No doubt that, like the rest of us, the Celestial offers wide scope for religious, philosophical, and psychological speculation ; he is undoubtedly a complex monster (even as you and I), ever capable of surprising those who flatter themselves they know him well, by some swift variation from the accepted type, some unsuspected mood or outburst of unfathomed devilry ; and all this without more obvious cause than, shall we say, pretty Fanny's April tears. Complex and mysterious he is, being human (and it is a farther cry from Peking to Canton than from London to Berlin), but he gains nothing in simplicity when we consider him from the half-dozen standpoints, and apply to his dissected anatomy the latest panaceas, of all the political, medical, biblical, and whimsical persons who are good enough to interest themselves in his present behaviour and future salvation. If one may judge by the amount of attention he has recently received, and by all the wind-puffed nonsense written about and around him, our poor friend's character should by this time be satisfactorily disposed of and put away amongst the half-digested crudities which make up our so-called public opinion. It is possible that in diplomatic circles there may still be an open (even if occasionally empty) mind on the subject, and the political problems emanating from the Celestial Body will continue to serve (that those may write who run) for the transient tickling of amateur statesmen ; but for the rest, the thing has been overdone, and the Chinese race, one-third of the world's bustling ant-heap, has been neatly labelled under suitable, moral, and descriptive headings, its manners and morals tabulated, and the once-doubtful specimen occupies its definite place in the museum of humanity. The man in the street and his board-school offspring are well posted on the subject ; Primrose Leaguers, Passive Resisters, and Seventh Day Baptists have all learned precisely from their particular and divergent oracles what manner of perilous yellow man looms yonder, what are the habits of his heathendom and the uses to which he may aspire in the cosmos, as seen from Shepherd's Bush. To add yet another voice to the Babel were waste of breath; why disturb the complacency of that wisdom which explains the Boxer movement as blithely as the impending doom of Confucian scholarship? These things have been revealed by scores of peripatetic observers, solvitur ambulando knowledge, swiftly acquired, has been as quickly assimilated, through the medium of Titbits, by minds whose earlier impressions were limited to hazy visions of tea-chests, pig-tails, and bird's-nest soup.

Yes, the thing has been done overdone and to tell the truth, I marvel at the hardihood of those last gleaners in our Celestial stubbles, those dogged forlorn souls who solemnly continue to describe China and the Chinese. Remembering all the tomes which burdened our shelves even before the days of travelling M.P.'s, one wonders, as the stream of books rolls on, what and where are the people who buy them ? But that, after all, is not my business and since the patient blue-clad object of all this pother re-mains in happy ignorance of the sudden stir he is making, since it will never be his lot to read these descriptions of himself, nor to decide between the opinions of the " two-and-seventy jarring sects," why should we trouble our-selves about it ? I will only reassure you, good reader, that from me you get little or nothing of useful information this book, at least, can serve neither politician nor trade dissector : not a line in it for all their dreary purposes. Surely the world has had enough of these well-meaning but deluded folks; let us have no more books about this people except those of a light and whimsical humour, calculated to leaven the lump of stodginess.

If now I write of the Lord of the Soil it is from the sportsman's point of view and within the little region of our wanderings. Even within these limits there is room for surprises and much revising of dogmatic opinions, for the native of East Chekiang is farther in tongue and temper from him of North Kiangsu than Glasgow is from Cork. And yet, how little do we know of him, here or there, after twenty years of rambles through his land ? What is he more to us, this silent toiler of ancestral fields, than a dim shadow moving in a land of things unfamiliar, elusive, and remote ? We speak with him, and he tells us, in hoary idioms, whose origins stretch back to the days before Nineveh and Babylon, of obvious surface things, of the immediate side of his material existence, of the price of food, rice, of the feeding-grounds of game, of wind and weather ; but what do we know of the real man, of his inner life, his thoughts ? And if we knew, would we understand ? To appreciate his attitude towards gods and men, his mysterious beliefs, the origin and motives of any one of the thousand enigmatical things we see him doing, we must divest ourselves of the traditions of Aryan experience, and reconstruct our ideas on foundations older than the Homeric period. I have not time for these flights myself, even if imagination sufficed ; I continue, therefore, to regard my agricultural friend as a gentle, half-simple sort of elder brother, a primordial stay-at-home, unable to sympathise with this nomad modernity of ours, disliking many of our noisy new-fangled ways, but tolerant and kindly withal, forcing no issues, desiring no church militant here on earth.

Who can see the green earth any more As she was by the sources of Time ? Who imagines her fields as they lay In the sunshine, unworn by the plough ? Who thinks as they thought, The tribes who then roamed on her breast, Her vigorous primitive sons ?

Imagination stands aghast at the mental and ethical equipment of this cobwebbed civilisation ; yet I love to sit on the sunny side of a hill, looking down on the tender green of the rice bearing valleys, to dream of the forgotten centuries, the uncounted generations that have passed, leaving the patient toiler of this land as they found him, adding little to the knowledge and the needs that were his before our mushroom Empires were dreamt of. Here, if anywhere on earth, is ancientry of pedigree, a landed gentry whose tutelary ghosts hovered about these pine shaded tombs in the beginnings of recorded time and determined their ancestral fengshui for ever. Here, before all the storm and stress of our conflicting creeds, ere the first Roman set foot in Britain, these fields had been tilled by men like him over yonder, men who dreamed of no world beyond their Middle Kingdom, and asked nothing better of life than to be able to live it after the manner of their fore-fathers. I like to think of them peacefully weaving and dyeing their celestial cloth, learning to read their musty books, obeying their mothers in law, and rearing countless saffron broods down long vistas of uncounted years what time Europe still lay wallowing in primitive savagery. Coming nearer to our own days I like to think of all the myriad lives that have " dwelt their appointed hour and gone their way " in the sheltering peace of the East's simple philosophy, undisturbed by all our earth-shaking progress ; red men and black and brown have struggled and gone under since first the white entered upon his "civilising" mission ; in the word of old Montaigne, " the richest, the fairest, and the best part of the world, topsiturvied, ruined, and defaced for the traffick of Pearles and Pepper ; oh mechanicall victories, oh base conquest " ; but the yellow confronts his audacities calmly as of old, resisting pressure with ideas and beliefs that are stronger than all the panoply of science. And, judging by recent history, and the present position of affairs, these dogged Celestials are likely to continue yet awhile in their established ways, to plant and reap, to breed and die, oblivious of all our clamour at their gates. All our fleets and armies, our religions and huckstering activities, affect this people as much, or as little, as my afternoon stroll on their quiet hillsides ; they look on us and all our works as apparitions permitted to emerge in the fulness of time from the shadowy overseas lands, those lands which they know are tributary, even if troublesome, to the Son of Heaven. And so long as we disturb not their ancient ways they are ready to accept us placidly as unexplained phenomena, " unaccountable, uncomfortable works of God," extending to us that gentle courtesy which is part of the surface morality of Orientals. I, for one, am quite ready to accept their hospitality on these terms.

One of the results of that gentle courtesy and of the East's wise conception of man's place and business in the universe is that for them the earth is free and common to all men to go their ways in peace. From one end of China to another, if you will but respect the growing crops and the privacy of men's homes, there is none who will question your right to wander at large by land or water. No fences here nor barred gates ; no man-traps, gins, or spring guns to protect the sacred rights of landed property. The Asiatic claims in the soil only the fruits of his labour and the burial of his dead ; for the rest, is not the Earth the common mother of all ? He knows no laws of trespass ; he claims and gives a general right of way, and asserts no rights of ownership in the beasts of the field or the fowls of the air within his borders. We, the heirs of centuries of feudalism, take this, like many other of their ways, for granted, often despising while we enjoy their democratic equality and simple communism ; but as it is in these green-fledged valleys, so it was in the golden age when the world was young and Pan still piped in the thicket, when there was room to spare for every man and his adventures.

No doubt that the teachings of Gautama the Merciful have much to do with the abundance of birds and beasts in this closely-cultivated land, and with our opportunities of shooting and eating them. Customs and local option vary so greatly in China, we so frequently see yesterday's conclusions upset by to-day's experience, that to generalise is the business of the unwary. I claim no fixed ideas as to the consensus of public opinion amongst natives in regard to this matter of sport ; very possibly there is none. In these central provinces the ideas of a certain utilitarian class (happily for us it is as yet a small one) have gradually been affected by the knowledge that pheasants and other game command steadily-increasing prices in the Treaty port markets ; with these the gentle teachings of Buddha and the duty of kindness to all living things have gone down before the hard fact that a basketful of partridges or quail trapped without violation of the first Law are worth more in cash than many days' labour. It is not in Western lands only that economic pressure affects a man's interpretation of his religious beliefs. Around Shanghai especially, and up the Yangtsze in districts where the great mail lines vie with each other in bidding for enormous consignments of game for cold storage, a race of expert trappers has sprung up; these have devastated our happy hunting grounds for the benefit of floating hotel passengers, and but for the vastly creditable energy of Commissioner Rocher and Customs vigilance the pheasant would have come near to extermination all along the river. Given a close season, the game supply should suffice for our local markets, and within these limits the pheasant trapper's existence is justified by our housewives' needs ; but there are other clouds on our horizon, much larger than a man's hand, that fill me with nervous apprehension. I frankly dislike, for instance, the growing tendency of Young China, taught by Japanese soshii, to assert their vigorous independence of mind by the adoption of our Western menus and manners. Persicos odi: I hate their semi-European restaurants, places where the deportment of the clientele equals in villainy the cuisine and the couvert, and I view with positive horror, in the streets of Soochow and Hangchow, the festoons of pheasants and wild fowl, cheek by jowl with the beche-de-mer and varnished pig that tempt the native gourmet. Herein is augury of evil days to come, as in the growing efficiency of the native trapper, enlarging his craft and the field of his operations to meet these new demands. A few years ago the bamboo partridge escaped his attentions ; now he has learned its habits, watches the birds taking cover at sun down, and bags half-a-covey in a hand-net, bringing them to market alive like his quails. Since he allows me to shoot on his land I can hardly take serious exception to his proceedings; they strike me, nevertheless, as a deplorable lapse from the high ideals of the East, brought about, like all such lapses, by too close contact with our iconoclastic civilisation. For if Buddha proclaimed the sanctity of life in every form, did not that most philosophical of sportsmen, Confucius, modify the law by prohibiting " the use of snares, or the making of pitfalls in catching game " ?

I profess a general inability to determine in any given case whether the controlling impulses that underlie these people's lives originate in Buddhistic or Confucian traditions; most probably, as in Japan, the two teachings have fused. But our native friend is on the horns of a dilemma in either case ; he can only escape the eight hot hells hereafter, and reincarnation in vermin form, by abandoning the Sages altogether. The Major, with that cheery and swift analysis of other nations' souls so characteristic of the British soldier, remarks that " the blighter does not think about it at all ; if he can make a dollar, that's good enough for him or any other Chinaman. Religion ? Rats ! Money talks." It would be futile for me to suggest to him that this race, like our Indian brothers, would gladly give us all its available wealth for a pledge in perpetuity that we would go our ways and leave them in peace to be relieved of the burden of our presence, of our restlessness, all our intolerable and endless talk of morality and mining rights, of peace and progress and quick firing guns ; if we would just drop the white man's burden, and go away and leave them to enjoy their own kind of peace. The Major would describe that as sheer flapdoodle.

We were talking, however, of Chinese sportsmen. In certain districts the native gunner is in evidence and increasing ; particularly around the great cities you find him of the modern type, sporting a muzzle-loader, some rudimentary English, and a half trained work. There is a tentative and bashful swagger about this fellow, a clumsy attempt to give and take something of the freemasonry of sport, that rather appeals to one in spite of the competition which his genesis forebodes. I have even known cases in which the sporting instinct has triumphed utterly over all the voices of the ancient East, producing humorous but somewhat melancholy results. I once went up river at Newchwang with a gentleman whose pigtail stretched its dark length on a tweed Norfolk jacket, who boasted a pair of Purdeys and a fine assortment of English smoking-room stories, pipe-stem legs in leather gaiters, and a remarkable knowledge of international law ; but he had to travel in a boat by himself because he filled the cabin with opium a dozen times a day. But his was a rare case. As a general rule the Chinese sport is a strict utilitarian ; he shoots for the pot, or rather for his pocket, is an adept at stalking, and has no silly prejudices about letting a bird fly if he can get him sitting. His powder is of native origin (generally leakage from the nearest arsenal), and his shot is a mixed lot of old iron ; yet he contrives to make a very decent bag at times, for he knows all about the movement and habits of birds, their flighting- and feeding grounds.

Occasionally one meets with an older and more interesting type of native chasseur, one whose forefathers hunted before him, who asks no new fangled devices. His weapons are archaic, his manners generally unconciliatory, and his livelihood a doubtful quantity ; but he is grateful to the eye, picturesque in all his equipment, a wandering survival of former days. This type is varied and widely scattered, cropping up in unexpected places, often unable to account for itself ; so that one can only guess at the causes, outside the general celestial economy, which produce it. Why, for instance, should the hunting of hares be a solemn public business, officially recognised, in Shantung, while in other provinces puss goes unmolested? Why should duckshooting with a gun of the Plantagenet period (fired with a slow match) be the hereditary pastime of certain clans in Chihli and Anhui ? Since when have they taken life, and provided food for Oriental dissenters ? Who knows what occult laws regulate the Chinese dinnertable, why pig and duck and fish are more lawful food than oxen and geese and sheep ? Why should the quail be a table bird for the literati of Hangchow and a fighting bird only for the men of Canton ? The native hunter does not explain these things.

But the Lord of the Soil, as a rule, concerns himself little enough with sport of any kind. In bygone days, when first the foreign devil was permitted by the All-wise to disturb the peace of the, Flowery Kingdom, his presence attracted the curious wonder of the villages ; his dogs, his guns, his strange garments and bold women would bring men from the fields to stand in silent, awe-stricken crowds around his houseboat. Now the monster's novelty has worn itself out, his many inventions have been explained by priests and elders versed in demonology ; he is accepted as part of the established, though mysterious, order of things, so that the wood cutter on the hillside scarcely raises his head as we go by, and the women no longer run from us in terror. Only in the village children human curiosity survives ; for these quaint little bundles of fatalism we are still a raree show. Our coming is an event, a welcome change from the sober joys of buffalo rides and the terrors of the trimetrical classic, and they follow us, trailing out like a long blue string along the narrow paths that lead from one hamlet to another. Merry little imps, as a rule, who will show you the way round a creek or carry your bird, shouting the while unspeakable names at their retinue of yapping curs. They take a keen interest in spo