le it is, for it recounts deeds of the sea quite as
audacious and high-handed as anything performed on land by Jesse James
and his stage-coach bandits. Up to fifteen or eighteen years ago the
estuary bristled with Chinese pirates, and wherever native fishermen and
sailors foregathered, at Hong Kong, Canton or Macao, schemes for
holding-up and sacking steamers carrying bullion and valuable
merchandise were hatched with a frequency that gave a phase to local
commerce that was anything but comforting, and more than one brave
Yankee or British sailor went to his death fighting yellow thugs against
overwhelming odds. The public decapitation of a handful of these
murderers appeared to place no check on the outlawry.

[Illustration: PRINCIPAL SECTION OF MACAO]

Once a Canton-bound steamer, carrying the mails and a considerable
amount of specie, had her progress obstructed by two junks that wilfully
forced her into shoal water. In the confusion that followed the
grounding, a score of coolies, who up to that moment had been regarded
as honest deck passengers, rushed to the pilot-house and engine-room and
murdered every white man on board. Practically everything of value was
then transferred to the junks, now conveniently alongside, and the spoil
was landed at such points in the estuary that made official detection
well-nigh impossible. This is but a sample of the stories you may hear
while yellow-faced Chinamen are serving your food, and it must be
confessed that it affords a sense of confidence to know that the grates
of the stairways are actually locked, and that the rifles of the guards
are loaded with ball ammunition. As he sips his black coffee at the
termination of luncheon, the captain assures you that until within a few
years a skipper was suspicious alike of every native deck passenger and
every fishing junk indicating a disposition to claim more than its share
of the channel; "but the old days in China," he concludes, "have
disappeared forever, and piracy as an occupation has passed with them."

Getting back to the forepart of the ship, the views on land and sea are
engrossingly interesting. On the shores of the mainland and on an
occasional island are ancient forts which revive memories of interesting
experiences of the white man's invasion of the Celestial kingdom, and
the foreground of rice-fields is backed by interminable groves of
mulberry-trees explaining China's preeminence as a silk producer.
Numerous village