nd though
generally excellent sea-boats and easily handled, their sailing powers
are poor when compared with corresponding European craft of similar
tonnage.

A peculiar custom is the supplying of all vessels, whether steamers,
junks or sampans, with large eyes, which are painted one on either
side of the bows and as a reason for which any Chinaman will explain
to you--"S'pose no got eye, no can see. S'pose no can see, how fashion
can walkee."

Another thing to be noted is that all sails without exception have
bamboo reefing battens, which although destroying the smooth set of
the canvas are infinitely superior to our reefing points, inasmuch as
the largest sail can be reefed from deck, or rather reefs itself, just
as quickly as the capstan can lower it, and without that hard work,
waste of time and risk which going aloft or along the spars in bad
weather necessarily entails.

Up the mighty River Yangtse different types of junks may be
numbered by the hundred, all varying in tonnage, dimensions and
draught according to the waters they are designed to navigate.

[Illustration: FOOCHOW JUNK, SHOWING EYE.
_To face page 98._]

In the estuary, and as far up as Chinkiang, sea-going papicoes from
Ningpo are to be seen in great numbers. These gaily-painted vessels of
from twenty to eighty tons, with their high freeboards, wide sterns,
raking masts, tanned sails and gaudy vanes, are extremely quaint and
picturesque.

_Via_ the Grand Canal, which connects Tientsin with Hangchow, great
quantities of tribute rice are forwarded by Chinese officials from the
Central and Southern provinces to their Manchu rulers in the north,
every Manchu, owing to the bare fact that he is of the ruling race,
being entitled from his birth to a monthly allowance of rice and
silver, and as the canal crosses the Yangtse at Chinkiang many
deep-draught grain junks may be seen arriving there with cargoes from
various places on the river.

A few miles higher up, at a place called Iching, there are always
scores of junks anchored in orderly rows waiting to load salt as it
arrives overland from the sea-coast, where, being a Government
monopoly, it is manufactured in saltpans under official supervision.

Both the grain junks and the salt junks possess a certain official
status, and are therefore kept in far better trim than the ordinary
trader, and ranging anywhere from sixty to one hundred and fifty tons,
are probably the best class of craft