uggest as an excuse that they are but following in the
foot-steps of their sisters of the Far East, where, it may be roughly
stated, the women-folk of a third of the human race smoke pipes.

I cannot say that very young girls appear to indulge much, though
women of all ages do to a great extent, inhaling the smoke and puffing
it through the nose in thick clouds. The pipes in general use are
either small brass ones, having straight wooden stems a foot in
length, with clumsy porcelain mouthpieces, or brass water-pipes, which
when being smoked make an unpleasant gurgling sound. The bowl of
either kind is so tiny that it will only hold a pinch or two of very
fine tobacco, which three or four whiffs consume, when it has to be
refilled and lighted from a slow-match held ready in the hand until
the smokeress has smoked enough. The picture is neither winsome nor
sweet.

The Chinese have very few amusements corresponding to our outdoor
games, although at treaty-ports, and in those places where there are
any roads, men are taking readily to cycling, albeit, from the flowing
nature of their garments they generally use ladies' bicycles. Of these
few pastimes archery is considered the most _distingue_, while boys
attain to great skill in playing shuttlecock with their feet, being
able to keep up the feathered cork for a dozen or twenty times, and
passing it considerable distances from one to another. Judge then of
my surprise when, on asking a young Chinaman at Peking how he had
spent his holiday of the previous day, he replied quite naturally that
he had passed the afternoon at his cricket club.

I could hardly believe my ears, for as far as I knew a game of cricket
had never been played at Peking, even by Englishmen, there being no
suitable ground, and it was only by plying him with questions that I
elicited it was the cricket of the hearth to which he alluded, and
that his club was a gambling-house to which young men brought their
crickets, there to fight grim duels in a basin for the championship,
while noble owners staked considerable sums on the prowess of their
diminutive gladiators and stimulated their energies by tickling them
with straws.

On all the waterways of China enormous flocks of tame ducks are to be
seen. These flocks generally number several thousands of birds each
and are carefully herded by the duck farmer and his sons, who swim
them about from place to place in search of suitable feeding-grounds.
On the Y