beautiful garments, and around which innumerable squibs were
hissing and cracking, revealed themselves to our astonished gaze.
Another change! The human element disappears. Birds and flowers, with
swarms of brilliant butterflies flitting amongst them, and alighting on
their gorgeous petals, the light all the time ever-changing and varying
in color. These in their turn disappear, and a grand pagoda suddenly
drops, as from the skies, out of the burning mass, its different storys
all distinctly marked by parti-colored lamps, whilst little rockets are
continually going off at all its windows. What, not finished yet? No;
exit pagoda, enter a royal crown, dominating the Prince of Wales'
feathers, with the initials "A V" and "G" underneath. Bear in mind all
these changes emanated from the _same_ ball, which was but one of scores
such, and all different. Each ball generally wound up in one tremendous
report, and a rocket, which shot far into the night, and whose sparks,
scintillating for awhile in space, rivalled in brilliancy the tints of
the stars.

This was but the first part of the entertainment; a far prettier was yet
to come. Starting from the various Chinese guilds, and uniting in front
of the governor's house, a grand procession, over a mile long, commenced
the perambulation of the streets of the city. Each man bore on his
shoulders exaggerated representations of all the domestic and food
animals used in the Chinese menage, principally fish, fowls, and pigs,
constructed of bamboo framework covered with tinted gauze, and illumined
from within by colored candles. Illuminated shops, trophies, interiors,
representations in character from the sacred books, the figures being
real and resplendent in the most beautiful silks, were amongst the most
important objects in the ceremonial. Bands of music--save the
mark!--filled up the intervals. Towards the end of the procession came
two dragons--a gold one and a silver one--of such a length that each
required somewhere about thirty pairs of bearers. They were divided into
sections, to every one of which a pair of men was attached, illumined
from within, and covered with a rich scaled brocade, in which the
bearers themselves were also enveloped, their legs and feet appearing
from underneath like the legs of a huge centipede.

Whilst on the subject of dragons I may just mention a curious ceremony I
witnessed, during the earlier part of the day, in connection with one of
these--the g