sickness, you glide on day and night over calm waters
in a dream-like peace, broken only for a short time every few hours by
the necessary stopping at ports of call to work cargo, and at
riverside stations for Chinese passengers, who, however, do not mingle
with the Europeans, but have saloons set apart for their own exclusive
use. Some of these boats were built in the golden days of the early
sixties, upon American models, and were fitted up on a scale
considerably reduced in newer vessels.

The large bathrooms on these older boats are a great feature of
comfort, and so numerous as to be almost bewildering to strangers; in
fact, I have heard that a nervous young man fresh from home was the
victim of an untoward mishap by mistaking the captain's bathroom for
the one belonging to his own cabin, when on dashing in, the door
having evidently been insecurely fastened on the inside, he found
himself face to face with the captain's wife in her bath. Retreat was
naturally instantaneous, but the position was so serious that his only
course was to at once seek the captain and explain. This awkward task
he started to perform, though in considerable trepidation, and found
the husband reading in his cabin, and who, after listening calmly to a
recital of the details, laconically remarked, "Ah, she has a beautiful
figure, has she not?"

And the incident was closed.

The compass has been known for many centuries to the Chinese, but in
accordance with their strange habit of doing so many things in an
exactly contrary manner to Europeans, they "box" it the reverse way to
ourselves, speaking of an east-north or a west-south breeze, and so
on.

The expressions "to the right" and "to the left" I have never heard,
for it is the custom to say "go to the east-south" or to the
"west-north," as the case may be. Even in cities, when asking your
way, the natives will direct you by the points of the compass rather
than by the names of the streets.

Chinese screws turn from right to left, which is the opposite way to
our own, and of this I had a practical demonstration when, on
returning one morning from the mountains, a chair-coolie
surreptitiously abstracted my flask from the tiffin-basket and tried
to unscrew the stopper to get at the whisky, but being ignorant of the
different method, he in reality screwed it on tighter, till at last it
broke off, and when some hours later, on board the steamer, I
discovered my ruined flask, an array of